We have the winners!

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For the standard, audio-presentation prize:

The winner of the Micro-Cosmos (Mikrokosmos) Microtonal Pedagogy Award is:

In addition, we felt strongly about presenting the five remaining top scorers as a "winner's circle" and will offer an extra ad-hoc special prize of $200 to 4th place piece. The competition was so tight this year for these pieces that it took some time to deliberate. We ultimately decided that these pieces were deserving of special mention do to their overall quality of invention and presentation:

Below are the rest of the pieces, so that everyone can hear all the entries. There are excellent works in here! Composers: remember that if you didn't win, or place as highly as you thought you would, that the process is subjective, and based on averaging the tastes of several people over a large body of works. What we hope emerges is a consensus measure of quality, not an absolute measure of quality. There are pieces that other rated as top score at the same time others rated them lower, so the finalists all emerge as pieces that survived a rather subjective filtering process. All of the works below are worth hearing, and are works that will surely speak to someone! We at UnTwelve salute everyone who took the time to submit their hard work, and encourage everyone to keep on perfecting their art!

Congrats to the winners, and congrats to all! And...thanks again to our guest judges: Charles Corey, Mathew Rosenblum, and Robin Meiksins.

Paolo Fradiani (Italy) - Archetypi | notes

Richard Sanderson (Australia) - Chill Music in 16EDO | notes

Desmond Clarke (United Kingdom) - Music for Miniature Landscapes | notes

Christian Klinkenberg (Belgien) - Souvenir du Souvenir | notes

Douglas Blumeyer (United States) - Zdaubyaos | notes

David Jason Snow (USA) - Beat me mama 23 to the octave, 29 to the bar | notes

Ben Wylie (Canada) - Acousmonium II - for Melodica and Hacked Tape Recorders | notes

Spencer Hargreaves (Canada) - Glass Flowers | notes

John Alexander Coutts (Australia) - Seven Eleven | notes

Federico Bonacossa (United States) - Diversions - for guitar quartet | notes

Levin Eric Zimmermann (Germany) - 11|7 | notes

Skott Johnson (United States) - Lebowski Dream #17 Act 4 | notes

Stephen Leo Weigel (United States) - Six Macrotonal Etudes for Electronic Music Media (2/6 submitted) | notes

Adam/Astrella Luke/Lilith Morin (United States) - Glass Ships | notes

Shruthi Rajasekar (United States) - Gaanam | notes

Ramin Akhavijou (United States) - String Quartet No.2 | notes

Andrea Ravizza (Italy) - Eindickung | notes

Jeff Morris (United States) - Etude NO. 3 for Horn | notes

Ramon Capsada Blanch (España) - Toccata for synthesizer. Subtle differences. | notes

Kevin Michael Kay (United States) - Quiver | notes

Saad Haddad (Usa) - Fugha | notes

Alberto Ezio Colla (Italy) - Wonders | notes

Jacques Dudon (France) - Ragisma Mandala | notes

Bernd Schumann (Germany) - Das Kind von morgen (Tomorrow's child) | notes

Abraham Gonzalez Bejarano (Mexico) - Exploraciones VI | notes

Stefaan Himpe (Belgium) - We won, Didn't We? | notes

Stephen Frank Lilly (Usa) - Embark | notes

Hachè - Costa (Spain) - passaggio | notes

Ben Luca Robertson (United States) - Oxybelis | notes

R. Bruce Burleigh (U.S.A.) - Dream Space 19 | notes

Frederik Vandecasteele (Belgium) - Elevate | notes

Evan James Kassof (United States) - Collective Bargaining | notes

Reilly Pascal Spitzfaden (United States) - Resonances | notes

Ali Balighi (Iran) - A little Piece For Violin | notes

Juan Maria Solare (Gemany) - Between Hay and Grass | notes

Shunya Kiyokawa (Japan) - Das N-EDOs Klavier - "Sound of New Age" | notes

Matthew Autry (United States) - A Dream of the Moon | notes

Nicholas Politi (United States) - spoken softly in the eaves | notes

Daniel Tacke (Usa) - aria mit veränderungen | notes

Aart Strootman (The Netherlands) - Anachronism #1 | notes

Viktor Elinder (Sweden) - Wagner in Space | notes

Niels Mestre (France) - Nature synthétique | notes

Peter John Leonard (Usa) - Scoring Points | notes

Manuel Ribera ((Catalonia) Spain) - Les obnubilacions ontològiques(for quarter-tone accordion) | notes

Claudi Meneghin (Lombardy) - Variations on Handel's Harmonious Blacksmith Air | notes

Christopher Paul Mitchell (United States) - Spaces Between | notes

Eren Gumrukcuoglu (Usa) - Bozkir | notes

Jacob Adler (United States) - 7-limit Harmony | notes

Karina Valdemarovna Baras (Russia) - Meditation | notes

Hirotoshi Uchida (Japan) - Rigaudon for Early Musical Instruments and Ethnic Instruments of 1200-ET | notes

Michael S Sheiman (United States) - Prism | notes

Shaahin Mohajeri (Iran) - Dance of Ascension | notes

Viktor V Pushkar (Ukraine) - Spell to Decrese the Entropy | notes

Jacob Nelson Elkin (Usa) - The Robotic Bug Ballet | notes

Alex Taylor (New Zealand) - Descent | notes

James Kukula (Usa) - sevenths | notes

John L. Baker (Canada) - Symmetrical Design No. 6b | notes

Alejandro Hernández (Mexico) - Esfera Girando (Spinning Sphere) | notes

John Lank Moriarty (United States) - The Un-Warrior Suite | notes

Benjamin Bartels Zucker (United States) - I/O/U | notes

Gregory Carl Pfeiffer (United States) - Spore | notes



Here are the original rules as they were first announced for this year's competition:

July 12, 2018—Some folks have complained that our initial announcement of the competition was not visible in all of the right places, esp. in the microtonal community, and therefore they heard about the competition a bit later than they might have. We have therefore decided to extend the deadline to Wednesday, August 8.

April 4, 2018—UnTwelve is happy to announce the 2018 edition of the Untwelve Microtonal Composition Competition. The competition is an incentive for composers to create microtonal music that demonstrates the vivid color, effectiveness, and inherent musicality of music not written in 12-equal-divisions-of-the-octave. In addition, this year, through our Microtonal Micro-Cosmos Incentive, we will offer additional prize money to a work that advances microtonal pedagogy (the award is named in homage to Bartok's Mikrokosmos).

The judges this year will be: Matthew Rosenblum, Robin Meiksins, and Charles Corey.

Our submission engine will begin accepting your entries on or before May 1, 2018. The competition will close at 11:59 pm Central Standard Time August 8th, 2018. There is no fee for submission. Monetary prizes are in 3 levels this year: $650/$400/$250.

Additionally, we will award the Microtonal Micro-Cosmos Incentive prize of $100 to a/the work that best advances pedagogy of tuning, microtonality or related topics. This could be anything from basic pieces for re-tuned keyboard, a book of vocal exercises, and so forth. Help the world learn and discover microtonality!! Note that these pieces can be submitted as scores only, although a recording is highly recommended. Also, it is possible for a piece to win both one of the 3 main prizes, as well as the pedagogy award.

All entries must follow the following rules:

  1. The contest is international and open to persons of all ages. Board members or direct affiliates to UnTwelve and last year's 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners are excluded.
  2. Only one work per applicant will be considered.
  3. The final audio product - meaning, the composition's musicality, the production quality, the performance (by a human or an electronic or mechanical device) and the compositional skill exhibited in handling an alternate tuning(s) is what is judged. Therefore poor recordings or performances will be a negative factor in adjudication.
  4. A possible exception to this rule is a work competing for the “microtonal pedagogy” prize. This work is more about potential for teaching the world about microtonality, than final recording quality. It will be judged on that potential. However, a work that exhibits a high-quality final recorded product in addition to pedagogical potential might possibly win both a 1st, 2nd or 3rd prize as well as the Incentive Award.
  5. UnTwelve reserves the right to not declare any winners if there aren't any entries of sufficient quality, as deemed by the adjudication process.
  6. Works must be in a tuning or temperament significantly different from 12-tone equal temperament. Such alternative systems include: extended just intonation; any non-12 equal division of the octave; non-octave scales e.g. Bohlen-Pierce; recurrent sequence scales; found or empirically-derived, or "spectral" tunings; or any tunings invented by the composer based on mathematical principles or formulae, etc. See the scala scale archive or the similar web pages for more ideas.
  7. You must describe the tuning(s) used on the entry form. (A suggested and concise way to do so is the Scala ".scl" format just mentioned above--you can copy and paste this onto the entry form.) We will not accept any entry where this information is not present.
  8. Following the competition, UnTwelve reserves the right to have the audio of your entry composition hosted and linked from our website. Finalists must allow public access to their work in this way; and for non-finalists, only in the event of you writing in to request removing audio links will your audio be removed.
  9. By entering your submission, you agree to all of the above these terms.