famous microtonal work by the Mexican composer

Fausto Romitelli - La Sabbia del Tempo (1991)

neuverBand Ensemble für Neue Musik
conducted by Friederike Scheunchen

Anja Clift - Flute
Valentina Strucelj - clarinet
Helga Karen - keyboard
Alicja Pilarczyk - violin
Anne-Laure Dottrens - viola
Ellen Fallowfield - cello

Fausto Romitelli - La Sabbia del Tempo

Franck Bedrossian - I lost a world the other day (2016)

neuverBand Ensemble für Neue Musik

Nejc Grm - accordion
Alicja Pilarczyk - violin I
Maria Muñoz Lopez - violin II
Anne-Laure Dottrens - viola
Ellen Fallowfield - cello

Franck Bedrossian - I lost a world the other day

performed and recorded by L'Instant Donné

musica spolia (quartet version)

Live performance on RTS of Sydenham Music by Johannes Maria Staud

commissioned and performed by the wonderful Zachary Sheets and Wei-Han Wu!

Live performance at Firehouse12, New Haven

Thread Unfurled

Soprano: Svea Schildknecht
Conductor: Cecilia Castagneto
neuverBand Ensemble für neue Musik
Live recording of the Swiss premiere at Gare du Nord, Basel on 6 February, 2017
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Preludio a Colón [‘Prelude to Christopher Columbus’] is Mexican composer Julian Carrillo’s  earliest extant work to employ the principles of the Thirteenth Sound, a system of microtonality which divides the octave into 24, 36, or as many as 96 intervals (as opposed to the traditional division of 12). It is among the earliest known works for ensemble by any composer to employ such a technique. Carrillo, who had not left his native Mexico at the time of the work’s composition, would almost certainly have been unaware of early experiments in microtonality which were being undertaken by composers in Europe and Russia at around the same time. 

Performance of the work in its original form required the use of a specially designed guitar capable of performing quarter-tones and a harp capable of performing sixteenth-tones. As neither instrument is readily available today, this ‘adapted’ version uses a standard classical guitar whereby certain strings are ‘retuned,’ and substitutes an electronic keyboard for the harp part.  

Despite Carrillo’s use of such a complex system, this prelude, scored for wordless soprano and five instruments, remains firmly rooted in the tonal tradition. Here, microtonality serves not as the basis of a new harmonic syntax, but rather, as a means of embellishing, of swirling and swaying around the persistent tonal centre of E minor. Its title makes reference not, as some have suggested, to the devastating effect that European colonisation had upon indigenous Americans (of which Carillo was a descendent). Rather, it is intended to invoke the spirit of discovery; Carrillo, in undertaking to explore intervallic divisions at such an extreme resolution, was embarking upon a great journey into the unknown.

Juliàn Carrillo -- 'Preludio a Colón' (1925) -- Adapted for ensemble by P. Clift

Estelle Costanzo - harp
Julien Mégroz - percussion
Flavio Virzì - guitar

Larry Polanski - For Jim, Ben & Lou - I. Preamble

Larry Polanski - For Jim, Ben & Lou - II. (Rue Plats) (Resting Place)

Larry Polanski - For Jim, Ben & Lou - III. The World’s Longest Melody

Thürmchen Ensemble under Erik Oña
Evelin Degen (fl), Diego Montes (cl), Thomas Meixner (perc.), Irmgard Zavelberg (vl), Caspar Johannes Walter (vc)
Deutscher Musikrat, Edition Zeitgenössische Musik
Erik Oña,  WERGO 2007

Tiger und Patriarch (1994) quintet

Experimenting with the iRig and amplitube, little tune for my tiny daughter (born 4th April 2020)

For Sophie

Paul Clift (b. 1978 in Melbourne) is a composer of instrumental and mixed music. Since 2016, he is based in Basel, Switzerland. His music often attempts to make concrete associations with a variety of concepts such as modernist literature, collective memory and historical musical traditions, notably through the integration of archival recordings in his works. His compositional outlook is marked by formative studies with Franck Bedrossian, George Benjamin, Jean-Luc Hervé, Fred Lerdahl, Philippe Leroux, Fabien Lévy and Tristan Murail. 

His music has been programmed at festivals including ISCM World Music Days (Tallinn), Agora and Festival Ensemble(s) (both in Paris), Weimarer Frühjahrstage für zeitgenössische Musik, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, ReMusik (St. Petersburg), MATA (New York), Rainy Days (Luxembourg), Musikfestival Bern, SMC Lausanne, Koper Biennale (Slovenia), Close Encounters (Georgia), Ultima (Oslo), Unerhörte Musik (Berlin), Klangraum (Stuttgart), AFEKT (Berlin/Tallinn), Sounding Now (Singapore), Music and Art: Sound Correspondences (Spain), SMC (Athens) and the World Exposition in Milan, among others, and has been performed by ensembles such as Klangforum Wien, Ensemble l'Itinéraire, JACK and Mivos Quartets, L’Instant Donné, Contrechamps, ICE, Ensemble l'Imaginaire, Proton, Neofonía, Novel Ensemble Modern, Adapter, Vortex, Argento, TAG, Trio Sæitenwind, Sentieri Selvaggi and Vertixe Sonora. In 2019, his large-scale scenic work “Portal Fantasies,” composed in collaboration with cultural historian Barbara Piatti, was premiered at the Zeiträume Biennale für neue Musik und Architektur in Basel. 

Paul Clift obtained a Doctorate of Musical Arts from Columbia University, New York, a Masters of Music at King's College, London, and participated in the two years of the IRCAM Cursus, culminating in the premiere of “With my limbs in the dark” for chamber ensemble, electronics and augmented dancer, composed in collaboration with choreographer Alban Richard. He also attended masterclasses including Royaumont Voix Nouvelles, Centre Acanthes, Domaine Forget, IMPULS, June in Buffalo, MATRIX, Internationale Sommerakademie der MDW and the Darmstadt Ferienkursen. 

Paul Clift is the Artistic Director of Ensemble Recherche. His scores are published by Schweizer Musikedition and are also available online at www.babelscores.com.

Juliàn Carrillo -- 'Preludio a Colón' (1925) -- Adapted for ensemble by P. Clift

Paul Clift

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