Ervin Wilson (June 11, 1928 – December 8, 2016)[1] was aMexican/American (dual citizen)music theorist.
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Ervin Wilson was born inColonia Pacheco, a small village in the remote mountains of northwestChihuahua, Mexico, where he lived until the age of fifteen. His mother taught him to play thereed organ and to read musical notation. He began to compose at an early age, but immediately discovered that some of the sounds he was hearing mentally could not be reproduced by the conventional intervals of the organ. As a teenager, he began to read books on Indian music, developing an interest in concepts ofraga. While he was in the Air Force inJapan, a chance meeting with a total stranger introduced him tomusical harmonics, which changed the course of his life and work. Influenced by the work of Joseph Yasser, Wilson began to think of the musical scale as a living process—like a crystal or plant.
Despite his avoidance of academia, Wilson has been influential on those interested inmicrotonal music andjust intonation, especially in the areas of scale, keyboard, and notation design. Among his developments areMoments of Symmetry,[2][3]Combination Product Sets,[4] Golden Horograms, scales based onrecurrence relations (scales of "Mt. Meru"), and mapping scales to thegeneralized keyboard. He citedAugusto Novaro andJoseph Yasser as influences. Wilson built instruments and explored the resources of 31 and 41 equal divisions of the octave. He supported the work ofHarry Partch, proposing the design of theQuadrangularis Reversum and helping build the instrument,[5] as well as providing diagrams for Partch's bookGenesis of a Music.
The goal of Wilson's research with scales was to make them musically accessible to the composer and the listener. "I sculpt in the architecture of the scale. Other people come along and animate it."[6]
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