Composition Commission issued to Carola Bauckholt

pitch 43_tuning the cosmos is a major European project proposed by the musikFabrik ensemble for the organizers’ network “Réseau Varèse” that will be issuing, per organizer, one country-specific composition commission for the body of instruments developed by Harry Partch. Partch developed a highly complex tonal system that divides the octave into 43 tones. This was an unsuitably large number of microtonal intervals that made the realization of his music impossible using conventional instruments. Thus, over the course of his life the composer developed a comprehensive body of instruments – sonorous tonal sculptures of idiosyncratic beauty and great stage presence. In 2012 the entire microtonal body of over 40 instruments, some of them sculptural, was recreated for the musikFabrik ensemble.
For the first time now composers in Europe have the opportunity to study Partch’s Instrumentarium and write new works for it. As part of the project the festival KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen will be issuing a composition commission to Carola Bauckholt supported by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. Commenting on her new work Carola Bauckholt says:
“[…] I have already devoted myself to many types of sound and made these playable using the classical body of instruments. Until now I had not seen any perspective for the differentiated spoken sound of the human voice. The Harry Partch Instrumentarium gives me this opportunity as it was precisely this wish that prompted him to develop his own new instruments with finer tonal steps. […]”

May 29, 2015
Galerie Herrenhausen, Hanover

Further Information:
www.kunstfestspiele.hannover.de