fave listenings of this month

in the pic : Tim Buckley

"musica assoluta" (agosto 2022)

The String Quartets

080122002 MDLR Ambient

One of my all-time favourite recordings of free improvisation is „Limescale“ by Tony Bevan, Alex Ward, Derek Bailey, Sonic Pleasure, T.H.F. Drenching @stuart-calton. Here I play contrabass recorder along the first track „Burger Plus“.

Limescale Playalong

What Does The Night Say?

dig perc piano, dig piano, violin: matthias boss

so wie die dinge liegen

walking around in circles

a repaired version of string quartet 1, 1999, revised today, 2022. The original sounds nothing like this, but the underlying harmony is the same. Neither polytempic but a little microtonal.

String Quartet #1: first movement

The transmogrification of string quartet 1 continues with the second movement, which, I admit, is difficult listening due to the density of texture and harsh dissonances in high harmonics strings. The melody and harmony are underneath as this pieces tears up your innards and burns your soul. 1999-2022

String Quartet #1, second movement redux

This is a short quick ending to the tripartite SQ 1, with a much quicker, brisker pace and some ass kicking dissonance. 1999-2022

String Quartet #1: third movement

Hypercube is a polytempic polymicrotonal string quartet in four tunings and tempos, 12, 19, 31, and 53 tet, and 96, 76, 124, and 106 BPM,  for my doctorate thesis in 2012. This is a live concert recording of  Neo Quartet from Poland and is performed live in Paris Sept. 17, 2023. Yes, the quartet is using click tracks in personal ear buds from their devices. I worked with them on click tracks and the tunings are fairly good, from three other "mean tone" tunings aside from the 12tet in the first violin, to show the microtonal differences.

String Quartet #2: Hypercube, in Polymicrotonal Polytempo, live in Paris

Four Part midi realization of a polytempic polymicrotonal string quartet in 13, 14, 15, and 12 tet, with the tempos 92, 86, 100 and 80 BPM. Composed in 2013, input into Finale and midi realized in 2016.

String Quartet #3, in Polymicrotonal Polytempo

To all concerned: 
I am announcing publication of my new book, NOW AVAILABLE:
https://www.routledge.com/Maqam-Melodies-Pitches-Patterns-and-Developments-of-Music-in-the-Middle-East-and-other-Microtonal-Writings/Thoegersen/p/book/9789815129052
My book, Polytempic Polymicrotonal Music, is available on Amazon. 
https://www.routledge.com/Polytempic-Polymicrotonal-Music-The-Road-Less-Traveled/Thoegersen/p/book/9789814968294

I have a new album out through Magic&Unique Group Records on Spotify and other digital streaming platforms:
https://open.spotify.com/album/5qWHmcvyAemvVn2TJH1bio?si=OD5TmPptQ-ypr8WOI0EZKA&nd=1

https://whitecentipedenoise.com/products/peter-thoegersen-facebook-cantos-cdr-flea
My CD via Flea label has been out since April, 2021, featuring the wonderful Lore Lixenberg singing over my microtonal piano accompaniment
Hope you enjoy it!

https://www.newworldrecords.org/collections/vendors?q=Peter%20Thoegersen

From the liner notes on my CD now available on AMAZON and New World Records:
"The author of these notes has spent his life explaining radical music, and the music on this disc may be the most radical I've ever written about. Peter Thoegersen (b. 1967) is not yet a name known to the music world; not for any lack of connection to other famous musicians, but because he came to composition late, and because his artistic aims are so broad and complex that they have taken years to evolve. His aesthetic is well defined, and he is upfront about having a name for it: "Polytempic Polymicrotonal Music." That means he has musical layers simultaneously moving in different tempos, plus, even more radically, that he has different microtonal scales playing at the same time. Few composers have aimed at such fervent and heterogeneous multidimensionality. And yet, while Thoegersen's music can seem overwhelming at first, running through it is a level of charm and simplicity that belies the initial impression.

In total, these three pieces emphasize a particular side of Thoegersen's output. The image his music creates of ornately mathematical structures filled with intuitively friendly melodies maps on to the personality of the man himself: outspoken and acerbically ruthless in his musical opinions, Thoegersen is also marked by a jolly sense of humor and an inexhaustible love of cats and other animals that make him ultimately less imposing and more personable than he might seem at first. The same can be said for his music. And by going further than anyone else has gone in terms of this particularly American concept of fusing the polytempic with the polymicrotonal - extending and combining the conceptual worlds of Ives, Cowell, Nancarrow, Partch, Carter, even Frank Zappa and many others - he has created a special place for himself within American music."                                                             

-Kyle Gann (from the liner notes)

String Quartet #1: first movement

pthoege