Interval Chart by Erv Wilson

Interval Chart by Ervin Wilson
2006
11" x 17" archival print, with matte, 16" x 20" frame

This print was featured in the 2015 exhibition "Visual Harmony: Contemporary Tuning Graphics" at the Center for New Music, courtesy of the Erv Wilson Archive, Kraig Grady, curator.

Ervin Wilson (1928 - 2016)

Erv Wilson’s primary role has been not that of the composer, but that of one who creates the systems with which composers can work – or, more accurately, one who seeks to illuminate the tonal possibilities available to all. The mathematical organizing principals that underlie his explorations provide illuminating ways to think about scales of all sorts, and, beyond that, to think about an infinite, non-static universe of possible scales. He has represented his ideas in two-dimensional charts as can be seen in the graphics reproduced here, as well as three-dimensional physical models, and more abstractly as multidimensional spaces.