microtonal

The following potential definition(s) are available:

' microtonal music can refer to any music containing microtones. The words "microtone" and "microtonal" were coined before 1912 by maud maccarthy mann in order to avoid the misnomer " quarter tone " when speaking of the srutis of indian music. prior to this time the term "quarter tone" was used, confusingly, not only for an interval actually half the size of a semitone, but also for all intervals -considerably- smaller than a semitone. It may have been even slightly earlier, perhaps as early as 1895, that the mexican composer julián carrillo, writing in spanish or french, coined the terms microtono micro-ton and microtonalismo micro-tonalité .'