Loading details…
Album
For Organ And Brass
Ellen Arkbro →10,278 listeners47,667 plays
3frauen und technikdronemy memories of dreamscontemporary classical
about this album
For Organ and Brass is comprised of two works by the Stockholm-based composer Ellen Arkbro. Both works focus on tuning, intonation and harmonic modulation. In previous projects, Arkbro composed for early music ensembles, wrote a series of durational pieces utilising synthetic tones and processed guitars, and, most recently, presented a work lasting 26 days at the Stockholm Concert Hall. For Organ and Brass looks back to Arkbro's studies in Just Intonation with La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, and their disciple Jung Hee Choi in New York, as well as with kindred spirit Marc Sabat in Berlin. The title composition was written for an organ with a specific kind of historical tuning known as meantone temperament. It was only after locating an appropriate instrument — the Sherer-Orgel dating back to 1624 in St. Stephen's Church in Tangermünde, Northeastern Germany — that Arkbro set about recording both For Organ and Brass and its counterpart, Three. "Hidden within the harmonic framework of the Renaissance organ are intervals and chords that bare a close resemblance to those found in the modalities of traditional blues music," explains Arkbro. "The work can be thought of as a very slow and reduced blues music." The work moves gradually through a series of long, sustained tones played by the organ and in parallel by a brass trio comprised of horn, tuba, and trombone. Arkbro's treatment of pitch resembles the tuning strategies of La Monte Young. The brass parts were performed by mic
why this is interesting
This album invites sustained listening into harmonic territories that most Western music leaves unexplored. Arkbro's engagement with just intonation—intervals tuned by pure frequency ratios rather than equal temperament—creates a sonorous world where small shifts in pitch become revelatory. By pairing organ and brass, she examines how these instruments negotiate pitch collectively, revealing microtonal relationships that emerge through their interaction. The work demonstrates how rigorous theoretical study can yield genuinely sensory, rather than merely conceptual, results. Those curious about how composers are expanding classical music's harmonic vocabulary will find something genuinely thought-provoking here.
