A Case Study on the Quarter-Tone System: The Largo of String Quartet No. 02, Op.07 by Alois Hába

• Grant number: 23/16813-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: July 01, 2024
• End date: June 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Music
• Principal Investigator: Denise Hortência Lopes Garcia
• Grantee: Guilherme Corrêa Viégas
• Host Institution: Instituto de Artes (IA). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project aims to investigate the harmonic theory of quarter tones through a case study: the analysis of the Largo of String Quartet No. 02, Op.07 (1920), the first microtonal work by the Czech composer Alois Hába. To this end, a bibliographical review will first be carried out regarding microtonalism, which will seek to build a theoretical framework for the analysis of the work. In this process, the harmony treatise written by Hába, the quarter-tone manual by Ivan Wyschnegradsky and the dissertations by Cristina Yik Man Tam, Yei-in Jin and Myles Leigh Skinner will be adopted as references. Furthermore, books were selected that bring together compositional, historical, philosophical and social perspectives on 20th-century music, to contextualize the work studied, including it in the 20th-century musical panorama and comparing it with other microtonal schools. The data obtained in the musical analysis will be investigated descriptively and diagnostically to identify the harmonic idiosyncrasies of the work, and, at the same time, outline hypotheses regarding the reasons that led the composer to make the compositional choices that were identified, always in constant dialogue with similar musical and scientific works.