FAKEFOLK

FAKEFOLK was composed by Mat Muntz in 2023, in collaboration with performer Miroslav Beinhauer for the Alois Haba 1/6-tone harmonium and the regional Croatian bagpipe primorski meh.

The harmonium is a unique instrument currently housed in the Czech National Museum of Music, developed in the early 20th century by the composer Alois Haba as a means of realizing his groundbreaking theories of intonation and microtonal composition. A major inspiration on Haba’s thought was the wide diversity of intonational practices within musical traditions of the Slavic peoples within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, traces of which are clearly audible in his own compositions for the 1/6-tone harmonium. By combining Haba’s harmonium with a living South Slavic folkloric tradition in the form of the primorski meh, a hyper-regional bagpipe from the northern Adriatic, I aim to create a shared vocabulary of contemporary experimental music between these two historical instruments. One of Haba’s goals (shared by his contemporaries

Ivan Wyschnegradsky and Bela Bartok) was to use folkloric practice as a structural support in the construction of a 20th-century modernist vocabulary. This project seeks to extend, invert, and interrogate this process, placing the traditional and experimental on equal footing and in direct dialogue with one another.

Mat Muntz - primorski meh

Miroslav Beinhauer - 1/6-tone harmonium