xenharmony means A genre of music characterized by the non-conformity to the common 12-tone equal temperament. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 100 out of 100.
Why “xenharmony” is a great word
XENHARMONY — [Noun] A genre of music characterized by the use of tuning systems that differ from the standard twelve-tone equal temperament. Coined by Ivor Darreg from xen- (from Greek xenos, meaning 'foreign, strange') + harmony. Unlike 'microtonality' (a broad technical term for intervals smaller than a semitone) or 'equal temperament' (the conventional, smoothed-out tuning of modern pianos), xenharmony is an aesthetic declaration—a conscious migration into the strange. It is the shimmer of a just-tuned chord that feels more ancient than Pythagorean math, the unsettling resonance of a Bohlen-Pierce scale, and the melancholic slide between pitches that have no name on a piano. It is the sound of a door being opened to a room we didn’t know was there.
noun
- A genre of music characterized by the non-conformity to the common 12-tone equal temperament.