Clashing Harmonic Systems in Haas's Blumenstuck and in vain

Georg Friedrich Haas (b. 1953) has been recognized as a major second-generation "spectralist" composer, but that designation ignores the substantial influence on his music of earlier microtonal composers, especially Ivan Wyschnegradsky, a pioneer of microtonal equal temperaments, and Harry Partch, who developed a system of extended just intonation based on the intervals of the overtone series. Haas's recent works Blumenstiick (2000) and in vain (2000) create large-scale form by dramatizing the opposition between equal temperament and just intonation.