Martin Mallaun – solo
In his current solo project, Martin Mallaun deals with one of the most fascinating aspects of today's music - microtonality - from alternative tuning systems in contemporary music to meantone temperament of Renaissance music.
In Differenz/Wiederholung 10a, for instance, Bernhard Lang distorts the sound of the e-zither by retuning the instrument based on the partials of C. Lang's loop generator repeats fragments of what is played, modifies the sound, chops it up into the smallest particles.
Two composers who have been working with microtonal music for years have written new pieces for this project. William Dougherty, a New York based composer, layers overtone series into fantastic structures. In addition to the possibilities of microtonality, the Austrian Marco Döttlinger is primarily interested in the integration of computer-assisted processes in the field of contemporary music.
Martin Mallaun contrasts these new works with the lute music of the Renaissance masters John Dowland and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. His Cetra Nova by Klemens Kleitsch - the world's first zither with a meantone fingerboard – was developed especially for this project.
