source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 18 Jul 1996 13:33:31 -0700 Subject: RE: No Scales! From: PAULE Harold, You wrote: >IMPORTANT: I am NOT proposing a way to integrate the 7LIAs into any particular >scale. I believe many xenharmonicists are too obsessed with scales, and the >correlating melodic-harmonic consistency. Recall those irascible 2nd, 3rd, >6th, >and 7th degrees of the minor scale, and remember how JS Bach, that titan of >tonality, handled them! In any case, the style contexts I am considering are >those which could be described in their most extreme state as tonal >chromaticism >a la Wagner or Richard Strauss. OK, I don't think there's anything wrong with this, although my particular work does propose a way to integrate the 7LIA, or more accurately the 7-limit chord approximations, into a scale. However, I believe this approach has more validity that you may give it credit for. The "correlating melodic-harmonic consistency" is what makes polyphonic music as we know it possible. In analyzing Bach, we use a heptatonic framework, i.e., the intervals are described not in terms of the tuning system but in terms of a scale, however ficticious this scale may be in practice. The reason is that the preponderance of heptatonic (diatonic) melodic patterns, out of which the harmony materializes, causes the listener to conceptualize harmonic as well as melodic relationships in those terms. Motivically, a major second can be re-interpreted as an augmented second, but never as a minor third, even though the latter two intervals may sound the same. The reason is the overarching heptatonic framework; moreover, whatever coloristic alterations may occur to the "canonical" scale formation will preserve or enhance the harmonic consonance-dissonance relationships embodied in the scale. When these relationships are not preserved, e.g., when a perfect fifth becomes a diminished fifth, we upset the prevailing heptatonic hierarchy. Thankfully, because of the special place of the diminished fifth within the "canonical" heptatonic scale, a new hierarchy, i.e., a new key center, is immediately established. Of course, it wouldn't be if Bach's music didn't follow through with this logic. Wagner's music, although based on (almost) the same tuning system, may not observe this heptatonic logic, and so it is not always useful for analyzing his music. A framework such as Vogel's may then be more appropriate (he analyses some Wagner in terms of 7LCAs), and/or a framework which recognizes 12 distinct pitch-classes. If your music leans more towards microtonal Wagner than microtonal Bach, then I would agree that talk of scales may not be too relevant. -Paul Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Thu, 18 Jul 1996 23:32 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id OAA20888; Thu, 18 Jul 1996 14:32:00 -0700 Date: Thu, 18 Jul 1996 14:32:00 -0700 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu