"Ivan Wyschnegradsky (1893-1979) was a microtonal composer known primarily for his quarter-tone compositions, although he wrote a dozen works for conventional tuning, and several works for third-, sixth-, eighth-, and twelfth-tone, as well as one work using Fokker’s thirty-one equal divisions of the octave. Over the course of his career, Wyschnegradsky invented many systems to organize pitch in his compositions, and he eventually settled upon a system that he called “ultrachromatic” in which microtonal interval cycles generate sets that do not repeat their pitch content at octave transpositions.
Wyschnegradsky’s 24 Préludes dans l’échelle chromatique diatonisée à 13 sons, Op.22 (1934, rev. 1960 and 1970) does not use the ultrachromatic system, but is based on a quarter-tone scale generated by a cycle of ic 5.5. There are 24 unique transpositions of Wyschnegradsky’s scale, and the set of 24 Preludes is a cycle in which each of the 24 transpositions forms the basis of the pitch material for a single prelude, recalling such earlier works as Chopin’s Preludes or Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier that cycle through all available keys."
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- Préludes dans tous les tons de l'échelle chromatique diatonisée à 13 sons (24), for 2 pianos in quarter tones. Op. 22 (1934, rev. 1960)
