Organist Ere Lievonen unravels the secret of meantone through a selection of idiosyncratic old and new music. This morning concert provides answers to the question of why meantone tuning disappeared and how it can be applied once again in modern times. In addition to a premiere, chromatically coloured works in meantone tuning by the famous Italian composer Girolamo Frescobaldi – as well as by his contemporaries – will be performed on the 31-tone organ. Among these is a work by Gioanpietro del Buono, in which curious modulations occur to distant keys (making use of 17 tones within the octave), while in the work of Fabio Colonna, the 31 different keys of the Fokker organ are explored through conventional modulations. As a modern counterpart to Colonna, a 1997 composition (first performance!) by the Rotterdam-based violist, music theorist and composer Leo de Vries will be performed – a piece that also travels through all 31 keys, but now by means of microtonal harmonies within a contemporary idiom. The twentieth-century work by composer Hans Otte included in the programme, by contrast, is written entirely for the twelve tones of meantone tuning. The concluding work by James Hewitt from 2010 is classical in form and takes as its foundation the twelve meantone pitches rather than the 31 chromatic tones of the Fokker organ.