Music : John Schneider Explores Different Sounds

Not too long ago, many prominent musicians would scoff at the idea of tuning an instrument to anything other than our modern equal-tempered scale--”various degrees of playing out of tune,” they’d say. But, as adapting instruments to different tunings becomes more and more practical, the understanding of Medieval and Renaissance music will be enhanced enormously as well as giving composers new worlds to explore.

Guitarist John Schneider makes a cogent case for the guitar as an instrument that adapts easily to different tunings. An important invention of Schneider’s colleague Tom Stone, interchangeable fingerboards (or switchboards ) on a specially designed instrument allows quick, easy and precise changes between one tuning and the other.

Saturday night at St. Augustine’s Church in Santa Monica, Schneider gave a solo recital that spotlighted his special guitar. His careful attention to sonic architecture combined with a pensive performance style yielded not only a convincing demonstration, but a satisfying recital as well.

Two works by Lou Harrison--Suite No. 1 (1976) and Serenade (1978)--use the so-called Pythagorean tuning method (actually used in Medieval music, not Greek music) and a system of just intonation. Harrison’s approach to tonality--utilizing drones, melodies and pentatonic scales--explores these different tunings with lucid simplicity and imagination.

A meantone tuning system was used exceptionally in John Dowland’s “Lacrhimae Pavane,” a particularly vivid illustration of how different familiar music can sound when performed using its original tuning. Two other Renaissance works by Luys Milan and Alonso Mudarra proved fascinating examples as well.

Yet much of the program used common equal-temperment for music from the 19th- and 20th centuries. Schneider’s performances of familiar works by Villa-Lobos, Barrios, Tarrega and Sor proceeded admirably and provocatively