In Russian Orthodox tradition, church bells are never tuned to simple major or minor chords. Instead, the massive bells are allowed to sing in their own unique voices, usually on microtonal pitches that cannot be found on a piano. They would fall somewhere in the crack between a white key and it's nearest black neighbor. To most of our ears then, the ensuing cacophony is pretty discordant. But pretty amazing anyway (check out some
recordings here)!
To Konstantin Saradzhev, known as the greatest bell ringer in Russia, the bells created music beautiful beyond reckoning, and it was entirely due to this same discordant quality. Saradzhev, the son of a well-known conductor, claimed to be able to hear
283 microtones between every two whole tones. So that's a Bb, then 121 individual pitches,
then a B. It's probably fair to say that he would have found most western music of the time (he lived until 1942) hopelessly limited, making do with only a tiny fraction of the musical vocabulary that was available. Saradzhev composed many symphonies for the Russian bells, employing the full range of their tonal abilities, but they were seemingly unperformable. Similarly, his attempts to create a new musical notation for the ideas in his head all came to no end.
Stories like these tend to end in insane asylums, and in fact that's where Konstantin Saradzhev ended up. His vision of a new musical language was left unrealized-- nobody else could hear the notes.
We can't exactly hear all the notes yet, but we can hear the
beauty in them.
I was thinking about concluding with a grand, all-encompassing statement on the present and future of music, but I think you can draw your own conclusions. All 3 of you. But hey, if you build it, they will come, right?
Enjoy the music!