Role of (periodic as well as aperiodic) tessellations in contemporary composition. The cases of Tesselles sonores and Le Chapeau à douze cornes by Marisa Acuña

The recent discovery of a family of aperiodic monotiles, which includes David Smith’s famous Hat, has shaken the field of plane tessellations. Music composers have already utilised the visual representation of plane tilings in their artwork (Tom Johnson through his use of Vuza’s canons, talea and color in isorhythmic motets…). Constructions of the Hat from elementary geometric polygons provide a different perspective, for example through the sound transformation of microtonal intervals, as seen in Marisa Acuña’s piece Le Chapeau à douze cornes.