A quarter tone play, is a pitch halfway between the usual notes of a chromatic scale, an interval about half as wide (aurally, or logarithmically) as a semitone, which is half a whole tone.
Many composers are known for having written music including quarter tones or the quarter tone scale (24 equal temperament), first proposed by 19th-century music theorist Mikha'il Mishaqah, including: Pierre Boulez, Julián Carrillo, Mildred Couper, Alberto Ginastera, Gérard Grisey, Alois Hába, Ljubica Marić, Charles Ives, Tristan Murail, Krzysztof Penderecki, Giacinto Scelsi, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Tui St. George Tucker, Ivan Alexandrovich Wyschnegradsky, and Iannis Xenakis (see List of quarter tone pieces).
Read more about Quarter Tone: Types of Quarter Tones, Playing Quarter Tones On Musical Instruments, Music of The Middle East, In Popular Music, Ancient Greek Tetrachords, Interval Size in Equal Temperament
Famous quotes containing the words quarter and/or tone:
“The oft-repeated Roman story is written in still legible characters in every quarter of the Old World, and but today, perchance, a new coin is dug up whose inscription repeats and confirms their fame. Some “Judæa Capta,” with a woman mourning under a palm tree, with silent argument and demonstration confirms the pages of history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There was about all the Romans a heroic tone peculiar to ancient life. Their virtues were great and noble, and these virtues made them great and noble. They possessed a natural majesty that was not put on and taken off at pleasure, as was that of certain eastern monarchs when they put on or took off their garments of Tyrian dye. It is hoped that this is not wholly lost from the world, although the sense of earthly vanity inculcated by Christianity may have swallowed it up in humility.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)