Vokalprojekt 31 presents this morning the finest examples of 31-tone music that can be performed by four singers and a 31-tone organ, interspersed with music in meantone tuning. The 31-tone tuning produces wondrous and fascinating music, in which the different voices blend beautifully when creating harmonies together.
The Huygens-Fokker Foundation founded Vokalprojekt 31 in 2015 to showcase the unique possibilities of the 31-tone system and meantone tuning in both early music and contemporary music. The ensemble’s first concert took place during MicroFest Amsterdam 2015. Since then, this groundbreaking vocal group has performed a variety of concert programmes, from which the finest pieces can now be heard.
Works from the Renaissance, early Baroque, and the present day, demonstrating the human voice’s capacity to sing microtones, are interwoven throughout this programme. Early modern intonation exercises by Jan van Dijk are heard alongside the boundary-pushing Renaissance madrigals of Nicola Vicentino. An early vocal work by Luca Marenzio is performed between an atmospheric composition by the contemporary German lutenist Andreas Arend and a four-part work from 1952 by Henk Badings. The programme also features the famous music of Carlo Gesualdo, following a four-minute opera by Sander Germanus about Gesualdo’s murder of his wife Donna Maria. The concert concludes with the premiere of a new work by the composer and musical polymath Matthias Kadar. In short, a unique concert and an absolute must for the adventurous listener!
The Huygens-Fokker Foundation founded Vokalprojekt 31 in 2015 to showcase the unique possibilities of the 31-tone system and meantone tuning in both early music and contemporary music. The ensemble’s first concert took place during MicroFest Amsterdam 2015. Since then, this groundbreaking vocal group has performed a variety of concert programmes, from which the finest pieces can now be heard.
Works from the Renaissance, early Baroque, and the present day, demonstrating the human voice’s capacity to sing microtones, are interwoven throughout this programme. Early modern intonation exercises by Jan van Dijk are heard alongside the boundary-pushing Renaissance madrigals of Nicola Vicentino. An early vocal work by Luca Marenzio is performed between an atmospheric composition by the contemporary German lutenist Andreas Arend and a four-part work from 1952 by Henk Badings. The programme also features the famous music of Carlo Gesualdo, following a four-minute opera by Sander Germanus about Gesualdo’s murder of his wife Donna Maria. The concert concludes with the premiere of a new work by the composer and musical polymath Matthias Kadar. In short, a unique concert and an absolute must for the adventurous listener!
