TEMPO 74 (291) 3–5 © 2019 Cambridge University Press 3

doi:10.1017/S0040298219000949

EDITORIAL: THE ART OF THE STRING

MULTIPHONIC
Christopher Fox and Ellen Fallowfield

Regular readers of TEMPO will recognise that this issue is unusual. All
the articles focus on recent research on string multiphonics and span
theory, analysis and practice from both the performer and composer’s
perspective. Ellen Fallowfield has drawn all this material together and
most of the words that follow in this editorial are hers, but I want to
begin by thanking her for being such a generous and conscientious
collaborator. We are both convinced of the value of assembling
such a body of work, creating not only a network of information
but also models on which to build future developments. In particular
we believe that it is important to encourage the assimilation of exist-
ing research, particularly across approaches and disciplines, something
that is often not pursued sufficiently rigorously in performance prac-
tice research.
The theory for predicting the pitch content of string multiphonics is
applicable to all stringed instruments, whether they are bowed,
plucked or struck. There are some differences in limits according to
the properties of the strings and bowing/plucking/striking conditions,
but these seem to have less influence than the varying tubes, cones
and keys within classes of woodwind instruments which can make
pitch content unpredictable, and fingering charts inconsistent. It is
curious then that woodwind multiphonics have become much better
established in musical practice than string multiphonics. Extensive fin-
gering charts exist for most woodwind instruments and multiphonics
are a standard part of woodwind repertoire, taught at conservatoires
and used with confidence by composers.
One reason for this is surely the work of Bruno Bartolozzi, whose
New Sounds for Woodwind (1967) established a new technical approach.
His categorisation of multiphonics into cleanly presented fingering
charts (although these have needed significant updates in the interven-
ing decades) provided a basis upon which performers and composers
could experiment. He also blazed an ideological trail: ‘How is it’, he
asked, ‘that, until today, possibilities which have so long existed, have
been always ignored? How is it that instrumental techniques have
become fixed in a pattern which does not allow any results except
those in conventional use?’1 Bartolozzi’s book, in combination with
John Coltrane’s early use of multiphonics on tracks such as
‘Harmonique’,2 inspired Arthur Benade’s eventual acoustical explan-
ation for the technique,3 which provided solid scientific ground.
There followed key resources for flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone

1
Bruno Bartolozzi, New Sounds for Woodwind, trans. Reginald Smith Brindle (London:
Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 3.
2
John Coltrane, ‘Harmonique’ (1959), released on Coltrane Jazz (CBS, 1961).
3
Arthur H. Benade, Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics, 2nd edition (New York: Dover, 1990),
pp. 559–67 (originally published in 1976 by Oxford University Press).

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040298219000949 Published online by Cambridge University Press

 4 TEMPO

and bassoon,4 and several websites are still refining the model and
introducing new multiphonic sonorities, for example, those by
Heather Roche and Helen Bledsoe.5
Just as woodwind multiphonics emerged from Coltrane’s early
experimentation on the saxophone, so string multiphonics also seem
to have origins in improvisation. Håkon Thelin found photographic
evidence of the double bassist Fernando Grillo clearly playing multi-
phonics in the 1970s (since the first notated scores date from the
1980s, it is probable that he was improvising).6 Guitarist John
Schneider produced the first string multiphonic fingering charts in
19857 and, when asked about his influences, cited Bartolozzi and
work with Horatio Radulescu8 (Radulescu’s Das Andere, 1984, for vio-
lin, viola or cello, accurately notates multiphonics on bowed strings).
In the 1990s, works by Michael Bach and Michael Liebman dis-
cussed the technique on cello and double bass but did not present con-
crete fingering charts.9 Pockets of compositional activity include
Gerard Grisey, who notates, albeit with some mistakes, multiphonics
for cello and viola in Vortex Temporum III (1994–96), Salvatore
Sciarrino (early usage in Quarderno di Strada (2003) and extensive
usage in the ninth string quartet (2012)), and Caspar Johannes
Walter, as detailed in his article in this special issue. Knut Guettler
and Håkon Thelin’s contribution to the physical understanding of
multiphonics and Caspar Johannes’s mathematical concretisation con-
stitute important building blocks in our understanding.10 Fingering
charts for piano11, cello12 and guitar13 began the process of standard-
isation and, although some of this research has been independent,
these charts fit together pleasingly well. This special issue is an
attempt to prove the coherence of string multiphonics, show the cur-
rent state of the art, and forge a joint path forward.
We begin with Caspar Johannes Walter’s account of his discovery
of multiphonics, initially as technical ‘mistakes’ existing within transi-
tions between high harmonics and other sounds, and the eventual
integration and development of this technique in his compositions.

4
For flute sources see Robert Dick, The Other Flute (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1975)
and Carin Levine and Christina Mitropoulos-Bott, The Techniques of Flute Playing (Kassel:
Bärenreiter, 2002); for oboe see Peter Veale and Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, The Techniques
of Oboe Playing (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1998) and Christopher Redgate, www.21stcenturyo-
boe.com; for clarinet see Nicholas del Grazia, www.clarinet-multiphonics.org; for saxo-
phone see Marcus Weiss and Giorgio Netti, The Techniques of Saxophone Playing (Kassel:
Bärenreiter, 2010); and for bassoon see Pascal Galois, The Techniques of Bassoon Playing
(Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2010).
5
Heather Roche, https://heatherroche.net/category/multiphonic/ and Helen Bledsoe,
https://helenbledsoe.com
6
Håkon Thelin, Multiphonics on the Double Bass (PhD Thesis, Norwegian Academy of Music,
2011), available at http://haakonthelin.com/multiphonics/uploads/files/4%20Multiphonics/
Multiphonics%20on%20the%20Double%20Bass.pdf.
7
John Schneider, The Contemporary Guitar (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
8
Private e-mail correspondence with the author.
9
See Michael Bach, Fingerboards and Overtones (Munich: Edition Spangenberg, 1991) and
Michael Liebman, ‘Multiphonics: Neue Möglichkeiten in Cellospiel’, Das Orchester 4/1
(2001).
10
See Knut Guettler and Håkon Thelin, ‘Bowed-String Multiphonics Analyzed by use of
Impuls Response and the Poisson Summation Formula’, Journal of the Acoustical Society
of America, 131/1, pt. 2 (2012), pp. 766–72, and Caspar Johannes Walter, ‘Mehrklänge
auf dem Klavier: vom Phänomen zur mikrotonalen Theorie und Praxis’, in
Mikrotonalität – Praxis und Utopie, ed. Cordula Pätzold and Caspar Johannes Walter
(Mainz: Schott, 2014), pp. 13–40.
11
Walter, ‘Mehrklänge auf dem Klavier’.
12
Ellen Fallowfield, Cello Map (2013), www.cellomap.com/index/the-string/multiphonics-
and-other-multiple-sounds.html.
13
Seth F. Josel and Ming Tsao, The Techniques of Guitar Playing (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2014).

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040298219000949 Published online by Cambridge University Press

 EDITORIAL 5

He also introduces his ‘fraction windowing’ algorithm, used to predict

the components of multiphonics, and the online tools that he has
developed for composers and performers. Seth Josel and Thomas
Ciszak significantly expand upon existing multiphonic charts for the
guitar – those by Josel himself and Ming Tsao for acoustic guitar –
by investigating multiphonics on all six strings of various models of
electric guitar and providing fingering charts for the as-yet under-
researched strings 1–3. They compare results on five different guitars
and detail the response of analogue effect pedals. Ellen Fallowfield
compares existing fingering charts and suggests modifications and
extensions to cello multiphonics, using audio analysis to point to certain
areas of technical and musical interest, including pitch content, chain-
like multiphonics, the balance and the intonation of components.
In contrast, there is a dearth of resources for harp multiphonics, so
Gunnhildur Einarsdóttir considers the transition between ‘extended
harmonics’ (any harmonic above the 2nd) and multiphonics in
terms of technique and pitch content. She proposes three multipho-
nics, all of them technically realistic to locate because of their relative
proximity to the 3rd harmonic. These could constitute a starting point
for harpists. Sanae Yoshida considers multiphonics in the context of
her research on microtonality in pianos. Then, focusing on timbre
rather than pitch content, she expands the sound palette by suggesting
playing techniques to colour multiphonics, including scordatura, ped-
alling techniques and glissandi.
Finally, Thomas Nicholson and Marc Sabat use Farey Sequences to
determine a method for finding the location of ‘playable nodes’: the
complete set of left-hand touching points to elicit respective harmo-
nics. This theory can naturally be extended to multiphonics as a method
of predicting their pitch content (or ‘structure’). Furthermore, in the
context of microtonality, Farey sequencing becomes a means of play-
ing microtones reliably by pressing the string rather than touching it
to produce microtonal intervals with inverse harmonic relations to the
open string.
These articles have arisen from different approaches – theoretical,
instrumental, analytical, compositional and performative – and differ-
ent perspectives – microtonality, timbre, technique. Several themes
recur, however, within these diverse texts: the pitch content of string
multiphonics is, within certain limits, predictable and reliably reprodu-
cible, and the separation between harmonics and multiphonics is cer-
tainly not as clean-cut as the terminology would suggest. We hope
that this special issue will stimulate further research. This will need
to include timbre and intonation but, as always, the most important
stimulus for future technical developments will be musical activity
itself.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040298219000949 Published online by Cambridge University Press