Stain Class and Penuflection

This is the final CD for 2006 from Greg Fox. A 79-minute CD album based around three types of music; the outer fanfares are just short markers to show where the thing starts and ends, the "penuflection" movements are subtle, soft and meditative, without the usual clichés of repetition, et cetera, and the "stain class" movements are a kind of twisted up baroque music with outlandish combinations of tuning systems attempting to reconcile their differences in perfect har mo ny.

The tuning obsession of "The Trinity" and "Stain Class and Penuflection" reaches its culmination here in a harpsichord tuned to 127 equal temperament divisions of a five-octave span (in other words no just octaves, etc.), a harp in 53 of the same and a lovely vibraphone in 37 of the same. It also draws on some of the 11- and 19-equal-divisions-to-the-octave instruments from "The Trinity" and is, in effect, a final companion-piece to that other sound-world. I would particularly recommend "Stain Class 1", which is quite a frightening neo-baroque exploration of disparate tuning worlds trying to play 'together', featuring a particularly touching 12-tet cello, the sole representative of the 'normal world'.



The CD is online complete in FLAC, MP3, OGG Vorbis and WAVE format via The Internet Archive here.

You can also order an audio CD of the piece below: