Ben Johnston, Kepler Quartet - String Quartets Nos. 6, 7, & 8 (2016)
WEB FLAC (tracks) ~ 323.10 Mb | 01:06:46 | Cover+booklet.pdf
Classical | Country: USA | Label: New World / 80730-2
The ten string quartets of Ben Johnston, written between 1951 and 1995, constitute no less than an attempt to revolutionize the medium. Only the first limits itself to conventional tuning. The others, climaxing in the astonishing Seventh Quartet of 1984, add in further microtones from the harmonic series to the point that the music seems to float in a free pitch space, unmoored from the grid of the common twelve-pitch scale. In a way, this is a return to an older conception of string quartet practice, since players used to (and often still do) intuitively adjust their tuning for maximum sonority while listening to each other's intonation.