The music of Guillaume de Machaut and Philippe de Vitry was radically new over 650 years ago; Vitry himself coined the term “ars nova” for it.

Now Helge Slaatto (violin) and Frank Reinecke (double bass) show how closely the power of this music was connected to the common intonation system of the time, based on pure perfect fifths, which lead to highly tense thirds.

Wolfgang Schweinitz examined this system for a long time and became one of the pioneers of just intonation. “Study No. I op. 61a” can be considered the quintessential result of this work. Using the tiniest microtonal distinctions, for which he even developed his own notation system, he creates a music consisting purely of intervals derived from the harmonic series.

The Slaatto-Reinecke duo, who have been specialists in just intonation for many years, draw a fascinating line from the Ars Nova of the 14th century to the New Music of our time.