This concert for I Tatti’s community explored the relationship between 16th and 21st century ideas about microtonal music. The touchstone was Nicola Vicentino’s 1555 treatise, L'antica musica ridotta alla moderna, which describes a music system that divides the octave into 31 tones. The concert included music by Vicentino, a world premiere of a work by the Mexican composer Mauricio Silva Ordain, and music from the Ottoman classical music tradition—all using Vicentino’s system. Several of the instruments involved are unique: reconstructions of two renaissance keyboard instruments, which traveled to I Tatti from Basel, and a microtonal guitar from from Istanbul.

Artists