One of the most compelling aspects of the traditional music of the Istrian peninsula and northern Croatian coast is the prevalence of two-voiced performances, in which a pair of singers or players of the shawm sopile will align their phrasing and pitch to the point where they seem to merge into a single performer. The bagpipe meh presents the opposite illusion, using its asymmetrical double chanter to produce two voices from one instrument, always moving in the region’s typical untempered parallel thirds.

In CEMBALO BRUTTO, for two guitars displaced by 33.3 cents, I sought to render my impressions of some of the mechanics of two-voiced folk music, particularly the potential of two instruments to merge into one. The title, meaning “ugly harpsichord,” suggests each guitar as a keyboard manual - the paradox (as well as the “ugliness”) with this setup is that due to the retuning, it is impossible for the guitars to ever play in unison. The illusion of unification is accomplished by other means, including hocketing and hypnotically repeating canons.

The 1/6-tone displacement opens up a surprisingly wide harmonic palette, especially for a microtonal system that doesn’t require alternate fingering, complicated tablature, or fingerboard modifications to play. The resulting set of available pitches is an unevenly distributed subset of 36-tone equal temperament, which I was inspired to use due to its proportional similarity to the intervallic shapes found in Istrian folk music. It wasn’t until I began composing that I realized the beautiful harmonic colors suggested by this strange, asymmetrical tuning system. Structurally, the piece resembles a series of dances and dirges that occasionally get interrupted by little technicolor whirlpools as the guitars repeatedly join and decouple from one another.