Ezra Sims

Ezra Sims (January 16, 1928 in Birmingham, Alabama — January 30, 2015 in Boston, Massachusetts) was one of the pioneers in the field of microtonal composition. He invented a system of notation that was adopted by many microtonal composers after him, including Joseph Maneri. His professional debut (12 note ET music) occurred on a Composers Forum program in New York, 1959. In 1960, compelled by his ear, he began writing microtonal music, and continued to do so for the rest of his life, with the occasional exception being taped music for dancers. His last composition in quarter tones (his sixth microtonal one) was his Third Quartet (1962). Since 1971, whatever music he has composed that is not purely electronic has employed a system of asymmetrical modes of 18 pitches per octave, drawn from a 72-note division of the octave. I seem finally to have identified and made transcribable what my ear was after all along: a set of pitches ordered in an asymmetrical scale of 18 (or 19) notes, some of them acoustically more important than others, transposable through a chromatic of 72 pitches in the octave. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Koussevitsky commission, and an American Academ