Melancholia’ (2018), a piece for two horns by Donald Bousted
dedicated warmly to Michael Hugh Dixon, has been uploaded to the folder of Donald’s microtonal compositions on Dropbox (Microtonal Projects’ Resources Folder).
Michael writes:
Donald loved the films of Lars von Trier and gave this duet its title from the film of the same name. Donald said it was his first piece structured in just intonation but he had been thinking about something like it since around 2000 when listening to Erv Wilson at LA MicroFest. He structured the work very simply, from 4 scales which have tonal relationships to each other In an email he said “For me, there is a real power coming from the transformation of the 3 scales which have lots of connections to one which – although still the same scale – has only one pitch rooted in what has gone before. It’s a work with some emotion behind it and some movement away from the strictly ‘just’ would not be inappropriate.” Melancholia was performed in Sydney MicroFest 3 in 2019, both in Sydney and Wollongong by Michael Hugh Dixon and Gergely Mályusz.
The recordings, on Soundcloud and the play-a-longs on YouTube, are by Michael Hugh Dixon in 2022.