Since mid-January 2011, the Huygens-Fokker Foundation has been the proud owner of a remarkable instrument: the Carrillo piano, also known as the 96-tone piano or 1/16-tone piano. This microtonal piano, developed in the 1950s by the Mexican composer Julián Carrillo in collaboration with the German piano builder Carl Sauter, offers an unprecedented richness of sound thanks to its refined tuning of 96 equal tones per octave.
For the Foundation, which has promoted microtonal music for decades, this acquisition is of great significance. The Carrillo piano opens up new artistic and educational possibilities, such as concerts in combination with the Fokker organ and the performance of microtonal compositions that were previously unplayable. Its small intervals also make the instrument particularly suitable for analysis and demonstration of microtonal tunings and overtone structures. Moreover, the piano can be played by any trained pianist, increasing the accessibility of microtonal music.
The acquisition of the Carrillo piano was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Netherlands Acoustical Society and the consulting firms Cauberg-Huygen, DGMR, LBP|SIGHT, M+P, Peutz, and Wijnia-Noorman-Partners. With their contribution, the Huygens-Fokker Foundation can further deepen and share its mission in the field of microtonal music with a broad audience.
The ‘new’ online archive
In addition to our new website, the Huygens-Fokker Foundation has an extensive online archive, which largely consists of the contents of the former website that had been online since 2008. Although the design of this old website is now somewhat dated, it contains a...



















