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Painting Shadows is an opera in one act for two voices, flute, three synthesizers, and fretless bass, based on a libretto by Jeffrey Sichel.
Read the libretto here.
There are only two characters in Painting Shadows, a man and a woman. I gave each of them a tonality, 231 cents apart (8/7), the man on C# and the woman on B7. Using these as drone pitches, I built up a 30-pitch scale using as many common consonant pitches between them as possible:
| Pitch: | Ratio: | Cents: | Keys: | ||
| C# | B7 | ||||
| C#7+ | 63/32 | 1173 | 9/8 | ||
| B# | 15/8 | 1088 | 15/8 | ||
| B^- | 11/6 | 1049 | 11/6 | ||
| B | 9/5 | 1018 | 9/5 | ||
| B7 | 7/4 | 969 | 7/4 | 1/1 | |
| A#L | 12/7 | 933 | 12/7 | ||
| A# | 5/3 | 884 | 5/3 | ||
| A#7+ | 105/64 | 857 | 15/8 | ||
| [A7^ | 77/48 | 818 | 11/6] | ||
| A | 8/5 | 814 | 8/5 | ||
| A7+ | 63/40 | 786 | 9/5 | ||
| A77+ | 49/32 | 738 | 7/4 | ||
| G# | 3/2 | 702 | 3/2 | 12/7 | |
| G#7 | 35/24 | 653 | 5/3 | ||
| FxL | 10/7 | 617 | 10/7 | ||
| G7 | 7/5 | 582 | 7/5 | 8/5 | |
| F#^ | 11/8 | 551 | 11/8 | ||
| F# | 4/3 | 498 | 4/3 | ||
| F#7+ | 21/16 | 471 | 3/2 | ||
| E# | 5/4 | 386 | 5/4 | 10/7 | |
| E^- | 11/9 | 347 | 11/9 | ||
| [E7^ | 77/64 | 320 | 11/8] | ||
| E | 6/5 | 316 | 6/5 | ||
| E7 | 7/6 | 267 | 7/6 | 4/3 | |
| D#L- | 8/7 | 231 | 8/7 | ||
| D# | 9/8 | 204 | 9/8 | ||
| D#7 | 35/32 | 155 | 5/4 | ||
| D7^- | 77/72 | 116 | 11/9 | ||
| D7 | 21/20 | 84 | 6/5 | ||
| C# | 1/1 | 0 | 1/1 | 8/7 |
Two pairs of these pitches - 8/5 and 77/48, and 6/5 and 77/64 - are close enough (only 4 cents apart) to let one key stand for both of them, reducing the actual keyboard scale to only 28 pitches.
(If you don't have enough experience with just intonation to make sense of this chart, try reading the step-by-step Just Intonation Explained section.) In Johnston's notation, + raises a pitch by 81/80, - lowers it by 80/81, # raises it by 25/24, 7 lowers it by 35/36, L raises it by 36/35, ^ raises it by 33/32, and F-A-C, C-E-G, and G-B-D are all perfectly tuned 4:5:6 major triads.
Kyle Gann
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