Microtonal procedures in 'Sailing to Byzantium'

This short paper introduces and categorises the mictrotonal writing in my composition Sailing to Byzantium for solo recorder player (1999, published Chipping Norton 2016: Composers Edition). It was delivered at UK Microsoft 1 (Riverside Arts Centre, Walton-on-Thames, 15 October 2005), with live musical excerpts performed by Rachel Barnes. (In the text version of the paper these are rendered as musical illustrations from the manuscript facsimile score). Introductory material covers sources of inspiration for the piece and the use of microtones in it, including the poetry of W B Yeats, the Sequenzas of Luciano Berio, the communicable language of Olivier Messiaen, and Tibetan chant. Three categories of microtonal procedure are then identified: those used structurally using special alternative fingerings; 'bent' pitches used colouristically; and written-out glissandi. Six examples are provided in total, covering all three categories. Pitch-divisions are generally limited to quarter-tones, but eighth-tones are also deployed on occasion. Quarter-tone fingerings are based on Michael Vetter's Blockflütencshcule (Vienna 1983: Universal Edition); eighth-tone fingerings were extrapolated from Vetter's chart via an empirical process of trial-and-error.