From 28 June to 2 July, the biennial symposium on microtonality and ekmelic music, directed by Agustín Castilla-Ávila, will be held in Salzburg.
Microtonality specialists from 16 countries will meet in Salzburg from Wednesday 28 June to 2 July to present lectures and recitals on microtonality. The symposium is organised by the International Ekmelic Music Society, an organisation founded on 18 June 1981 by Austrian composers Franz Richter Herf and Rolf Maedel and based in Salzburg. The ekmelic music developed by the two professors had turned Salzburg into a new world centre for microtonal music, so the need arose to coordinate future artistic and scientific activities in the form of a society. The term ekmelic has its origins in Greek music theory: “ek melos” means “out of the series” and was used to indicate tones that were not included in the ancient Greek tonal system. Today, this term is used in a similar sense: it refers to tones that are outside the twelve semitone steps of our traditional tempered tonal system and therefore outside our usual listening. Since 2015, the Spanish composer Agustín Castilla-Ávila (Jerez de la Frontera, 1974) has been conducting the biennial symposium Microtones: Small is Beautiful –a quote from the Austrian anarchist philosopher Leopold Kohr, professor of the German economist Ernst Friedrich “Fritz” Schumacher, author of the book of essays Small is beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered–which has organised this year, among many other activities, four concerts featuring the Ukrainian Kharkiv Guitar Quartet (29 June, at 20: 00), the Danish accordionist Bjarke Mogensen (30 June, at 20:00), the American guitarist John Schneider, and the Austrian violinist Frank Erik Stadler (2 July, at 17:00) accompanied by an orchestra of “Ekcmelian friends” will perform well-known works by composers such as Franz Richter Herf, Violeta Dinescu, Johannes Kotschy and Siegfried Steinkogler, as well as world premieres by Ulf-Diether Soyka – Alien-Mikroetüden, op. 2/77 (2021)-, Tomaž Svete – Sonata no. 2, “Silhouettes” (2018)-, Johnny Reinhard – A Story to tell (2021) – and Agustín Castilla-Ávila himself – Quasi piano (2023), a work for six guitars played as if they were a single piano by the Austria based Spanish pianist Jordina Millà-. On 30 June, the fourth volume of the book Microtones: Small is Beautiful will be launched.