For guitarist Melle Weijters, it has long been a cherished wish to present a concert centred on the work of Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695). Huygens’ most relevant work in relation to music, Le Cycle Harmonique (1691), is a concise mathematical treatise in which he names the 31-tone system as the most excellent of all tunings. He does not support this claim with musical examples, but with a logarithmic table he had already compiled in 1661. In his final work, Cosmotheoros, which Huygens completed in early 1695, he speculated, among other things, about life on other planets. According to Huygens, a form of life similar to that on Earth existed there. His Cosmotheoros could thus be considered an early form of science fiction.
In this work—a pair of philosophical writings addressed to his brother Constantijn on the structure of the universe and the potential habitability of celestial bodies (posthumously published in 1698)—Christiaan Huygens presents his musical discoveries in a very different way: the 31-tone tuning is so universal that it undoubtedly exists elsewhere in the cosmos. His gaze is not only upward; he also contemplates the world around him. The combination of science and imagination inspired Weijters to create this theatrical programme.
Melle Weijters studied jazz guitar at the Conservatorium Maastricht and has devoted himself for many years to fretless and microtonal guitars. He has already used his guitar to control the Fokker organ in both 2014 and 2016, including improvisations on additive chords by Adriaan Fokker, which will also feature in this concert. In addition to being a guitarist, Melle has served for many years as artistic coordinator of the Huygens-Fokker Foundation. During this performance he will be joined by regular Fokker organist Ere Lievonen and a special mystery guest.