source file: mills2.txt Date: Mon, 22 Jan 1996 14:39:03 -0800 From: "John H. Chalmers" From: mclaren Subject: 10 smart ideas in late 20th century music theory --- Everybody knows that the most important composers and music theorists are those who influence the largest number of people. Everybody knows this, and it's wrong. The rock group KISS influenced far more people than any avant-garde theorist or composer. Should we devote a chapter of every modern music textbook to KISS? I propose a different (and more sensible) definition of "influential." If a dumb fad influences 500 composers to write rotten music, the idea is NOT influential. It's a craze, like pogs, or hula hoops, or pet rocks. And it has no importance. But if a smart idea influences 5 composers to write excellent music, then the idea IS influential. And it has *vast* importance. As I've mentioned before, Tops 40s corporate rock and the avant garde are evil twins. They both use identical means of promotion: hoopla, ballyhoo, shock-value stunts and the cult of personality. They both use identical means of measuring a composer's importance: SHEER QUANTITY. If rock star X sells 8 squillion CDs, he's a "genius" and a "brilliant composer." If avant garde music theorist X inveigles 50,000 gullible students to spew out reams of bad music derivative of the latest craze, he's a "genius" and a "brilliant composer." Obviously, a new definition of "influential composer" is required. Now, what this has to do with microtonality is obvious: the two most influential (as opposed to faddish) composers of the second half of the 20th century are clearly Conlon Nancarrow and Harry Partch. Neither of these guys were on the cognitive elite's TOP TEN charts during the 50s or 60s. On the contrary. As Joel Mandelbaum has pointed out, "It is a matter of everlasting shame that the musical establishment gave Harry Partch the back of the hand treatment." This alone should give all music students pause. When you read the conventional history texts of 20th century music, ask yourself: Why isn't microtonality mentioned? And why isn't music by "the big names" of the post-1950s played any longer? The answers to these questions are connected. And they can be found in the following list of the 10 best ideas of post-1950 music theory: --------------------------------------------- SMART IDEA #1: Joseph Yasser pointed out in his 1938 book "Theory Of Evolving Tonality" that musical tunings change with time. Intonation fashionable in one era becomes unfashionable in another. Any composer who, in the 1940s or 1950s, had read Yasser's book would have realized that serialism was just another fad...neither better nor worse than Venetian antiphonal brass choirs, Baroque quodlibet, or late Medieval mensuration canons. Yasser's realization that tunings are not static, and that musical cultures influence one anther and tend to blend and intermingle over time, is a lesson that STILL hasn't been absorbed by the writers of conventional music theory texts. --------------------------------------------- SMART IDEA #2: Harry Partch proposed abandoning the conventional 12 tones. Instead, he built his own instruments and trained his own performers. It doesn't much matter what you abandon those 12 tones for... just intonation? Non-12 equal temperaments? The original tunings of Dowland and Byrd and Bach? Non-just non-equal-tempered scales? The crucial decision is to kick over the chess board by building your own instruments. This alone changes the rules of the conservatory-and-concert- hall con game. The fact of the matter is that Partch's decision to step on the 12-tone anthill breathed much-needed life into post-1950s music... And the existence of this tuning forum is testimony to the continuing power of that idea. -------------------------------------------- SMART IDEA #3: Jean-Claude Risset's idea (following John Pierce's and Max Mathews' 1966 & 1969 papers, & later taken up by John Chowning, James Dashow, William Sethares and most recently Parncutt and Strasburg in the 1995 PNM article "'Harmonic' Progressions of Inharmonic Tones") of basing non-12-tone methods of tonal and timbral organization on the findings of modern psychoacoustics was a brilliant one. It has consistently led to beautiful music. ----------------------------------------- SMART IDEA #4: Erv Wilson's notion of augmenting with permutation techniques the conventional Partchian organization by harmonic and subharmonic series (viz., the tonality diamond). Erv's technique offers a more tonally efficient alternative to Partch's tonality diamond, and it has proven exceptionally useful to just intonation composers. As Kraig Grady wrote in 1/1, "With the introduction of Erv Wilson's combination product set, Just intonation took a giant leap forward." [Grady, K., "Erv Wilson's Hexany," 1/1, 7(1), 1991, pp. 8-11.] If anyone needs further proof, Warren Burt's superb composition "Vingt Enflures Sur L'Enfant Melvin" is a vivid demonstration of the musical value of Erv's ideas. ---------------------------------------------- SMART IDEA #5: Fokker's introduction of ratio space has influenced generations of composers to produce interesting and impressive music. The idea has been extended by Tenney, Polansky, Johnston, Chalmers, Scholz and many others. One of the very best po-mo xenharmonic compositions, "Lattice [2237]" by Carter Scholz, would be impossible without Fokker's original organizing principle. ---------------------------------------------- SMART IDEA #7: Lou Harrison's notion that all music students should be trained in at least one other culture's musical traditions. If this were done, it would end at one stroke the onanistic over-theorizing, the bizarre yearning to convert music into a species of mathematics... Yes, it might even straighten out the tortuous verbiage that has made a bottomless chum bucket of 12-tone music theory. Lou's idea is a brilliant one, long overdue. When will someone put it into practice? ---------------------------------------------- SMART IDEA #8: Ben Johnston's idea of training conventional performers in non-12 techniques. Just as dinosaurs turned into birds, the smart post-Webern serialists turned into extended JI composers working with conventional performers. If Webern had lived, he'd obviously have given up 12 by 1950 at the latest. ----------------------------------------------- SMART IDEA #9: Max Mathews did what all geniuses do when he applied the computer to music: something that at first looked bizarre, then became blindingly obvious, and finally seemed inevitable. With its binary precision and enormous speed, the computer was and is an ideal musical instrument. Max Mathews gave a huge impetus to 20th century composition in general (and non- 12 composition in particular) by writing the first acoustic compiler. ------------------------------------------ SMART IDEA #10: Ivor Darreg pointed out in 1975 that every kind tuning has its own "sound" or "mood" or "sonic fingerprint." Choosing the "sound" of a composition by choosing the tuning has proven an endlessly productive idea, and inspired a wide variety of xenharmonic composers. ------------------------------------------ It's worth noting that every one of these post-1950 ideas is inherently xenharmonic. That ought to tell us something about the direction of the vital currents of late 20th century music... Attention, music students! How about asking your professors why THESE ideas aren't mentioned in your textbooks? --mclaren Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 23 Jan 1996 08:01 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id XAA26305; Mon, 22 Jan 1996 23:01:20 -0800 Date: Mon, 22 Jan 1996 23:01:20 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu