Bad Death Ghosts (2022)

Concert work for microtonally-tuned spinet & lap steel guitar

Bad Death Ghosts (2022) is a concert work for microtonally-tuned spinet and lap steel guitar. The piece explores the xenharmonic one-quarter comma Meantone tuning system of the lower manual of Nicola Vicentino's (1511-1576) microtonal harpsichord, the ‘archicembalo’. Described by Vicentino in his 1555 treatise L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica (Ancient music adapted to modern practice), this lower keyboard comprises a nineteen-note octave with split keys for all chromatic pitches as well as extra keys inserted between the diatonic semitones b-c and e-f.

To tune an orthodox 12-key/octave spinet in this way (here, a Kurt Wittmayer instrument dating from the 1960s), Vicentino’s 19-note octave had to be stretched over a compound perfect fifth. A3 is therefore tuned with a deviation of 0-cents from equal temperament, returning again to A4 on the keyboard’s E5.

The piece then makes use of the very pure thirds available in the temperament, as well as the slightly narrow, ‘beating’ fifths. For example, the prominent major third D-to-F-sharp is almost exactly equivalent (at 387.2 cents) to a Just Intonation major third at the ratio 5:4 (386.3 cents).

The spinet is paired with a lap steel guitar. This uses scordatura based on the spinet’s harmony: Ds, As, an E, and a B♯. The precise tuning of these pitches is taken from Vicentino. Throughout, the guitar plays only its open strings and natural harmonics. In this way, the piece explores the decay of both instruments; whereas the harpsichord is usually thought of in terms of its attack, Bad Death Ghosts explores the instrument’s extraordinary, evanescent afterglow, heightened when tuned to pure thirds.

The piece consists of a repeated chord. The formal unfolding of the work then comprises the removal, addition, and revoicing of pitches to and within this chord. As these changes are made, the interaction between tones is altered. Here, the piece aims at what the American composer Catherine Lamb calls a “feeling of something rotating. Something that is not quite linear. Something more total. You could be looking around it”.

Both instruments were recorded myself in my studio in Sheffield.. The piece is available on my Bandcamp page on a PWYC basis.