source file: mills2.txt Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 09:21:39 -0700 Subject: Part 2 of McLaren's Biblio Post From: John Chalmers Paul Rapoport's grossly deficient bibliographies, part 2 of 2 -- The last post exposed in detail the deceptive nature of Paul Rapoport's inadequate bibliographies. Bear in mind that Paul is no exception here--YOU are also to blame. Virtually *all* microtonal music theory articles suffer from outrageously incomplete bibliographies, and the net result is that when doctoral students try to write theses about microtonality, they wind up parrotting out-of-date sources like Yasser's "Theory of Evolving Tonality." This is a MAJOR problem for the progress of microtonality, people. Wake up! If the information on the characteristics of various tunings IS NOT AVAILABLE, then *every microtonalist will have to re-invent the wheel.* That's *insane.* It's crazy! It's as though, if you wanted to compose in 12, the only references available were Tinctoris and Boethius and Aristoxenos. -- Here, once again, is Paul Rapoport's bibliography from the article "The Structural Relationships of Fifths and Thirds in Equal Temperaments," Journal of Music Theory, 1994, pp. 351- 389: "Blackwood, Easley. 1982. Twelve MIcrotonal Etudes for Electronic Music Media, op. 28 [sore] New York: G. Schirmer." "---- 1985. The Structure of Recognizable Diatonic Tunings. Princeton: Princeton University Press." "Brun, Viggo. 1961. Muikk og Euklidske algoitmer. Nordisk matematisk tidskrift 9: 29-36" "Fokker, Adriaan. 1987. Selected Musical Compostiions. Ed. Rudolf Rasch. Utrecht: Diapason Press." "Mandelbaum, Joel. 1961. Multiple Divisions of the Octave and the Tonal Resources of 19-Tone Equal Temperament. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, no. 6104461." "Rapoport, Paul. 1989. "Some Temperaments are More Equal than Others...and Decidely More Temperamental. MusicWorks 43: 8-12." "-------, 1991. The Notation of Equal Temperaments. Unpublished. (Now published in Xenharmonikon 16, Autumn, 1995)" "Rasch, Rudolf. 1985. Relations between Multiple Divisions of the Octave and the Traditional Tonal System. Interface (now Journal of New Music Research) 14: 75-108" Regener, Eric. 1973. Pitch Notation and Equal Temperament: A Formal Study. Berkeley: University of California Press." -- We saw last post that Paul Rapoport's bibliography was grossly deceptive--now it's time to demonstrate that it is also atrociously incomplete. Consider, for a start, Easley Blackwood. He was Paul Rapoport's teacher, and if anyone should be familiar with Blackwood's articles and texts, you'd think Paul would be. But not so. Paul Rapoport incomprehensibly leaves out *the most important* of Blackwood's articles on equal temperaments: [1] Blackwood, Easley. "Modes and Chord Progressions in Equal Tunings," Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 29, No. 2, 1992, pp. 167-200. [2] Blackwood, Easley. Research Notes: NEH Grant R0-29376 -78-0642. Privately circulated handwritten xerox. 1981. [3] Blackwood, Easley. "Discovering the Microtonal Resources of the Synthesizer," Keyboard, May 1982, pp. 26-38 [4] Blackwood, Easley. Liner notes for the LP "Twelve Microtonal Etudes" 1980. [5] Genovese, Denny. "Easley Blackwood--An Interview by Denny Genovese, Part I," Interval, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1981, pp. 16-21 [6] Genovese, Denny. "Easley Blackwood--An Interview by Denny Genovese, Part II," Interval, Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer 1981, pp. 18-20 [7] "A Trailblazer tunes in to a musical discovery," John von Rhein, Chicago Tribune Arts & Fun section, July 20, 1980. -- So let's see now...Paul Rapoport, who was taught by Easley Blackwood, cites a grand total of 2 of Blackwood's texts. Rapoport didn't bother to cite the *other* 7 sources. 2 sources out of 7. Is this a reasonable percentage for the person who *taught* Rapoport and stands as *the* major source on Paul's attitude toward microtonality? Paul leaves out the NEH Grant report, by *far* the most important of all of Blackwood's texts--in fact Blackwood's 1992 PNM article represents a tiny condensation of a mere 4 of the 11 chapters of this giant work. Anyone who reads Paul's bibliography will come away with the impression that the book "Structure of Recognizable Diatonic Tunings" is Blackwood's most important work on notating ETs, and the only text available. This is so obviously the *opposite* of the truth that it beggars description. To continue: Paul Rapoport cites Viggo Brun's 1961 article, presumably because Brun defines the properties of various classes of equal temperaments using continued fractions. But Rapoport *fails* to cite Brun's *english-language* article on the same subject: [1] Brun, Viggo,. "Euclidean Algorithms and music theory," L'esnseignement Mathematique Revue Internationale, tome X, fasc. 1-2, 1964, pp. 125-137. And because Paul Rapoport *fails* to cite this vital article, he *also* neglects to cite the *other* important articles which characterize equal temperaments using continued fraction methods, all cited in the bibliography of Brun's english-language 1964 article: [2] Brun, Viggo. Mehrdimensionale Algorithmen, welche die Eulersche Kettenbruchentwicklung der Zahle verallgemeinern," Leonard Euler zum 250. Geburtstag, 1959, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin." [3] Brun, Viggo. "Algorithmes euclidiens pour trois et quatre nombres," XIII Congr. Math. Scan. tenu a Helsinki, aout 1957 [4] brun, Viggo. "En Generalisation av kjedebro/ken I-II," Norske Vid. Selk. Skr., 1919-20, Olso (avec des resumes en francais) [5] Brun, Viggo. "Music and Ternary Continued Fractions," Nordisk Matem. Tijdskrift, B.9, Oslo 1961 [6] Fokker, A. D. "Multiple Antanairesis," Koninkl. Nederl. Akademie van Weteschappen, Amsterdam, Proc. Ser. A, 66, communicated October 27, 1962 [7] van der Waerden. "Die Harmonielehre der Ptyahgoreer," Hermes, Vol. 78, pp. 163-199 And since Rapoport cites one of Brun's continued fraction articles, why doesn't he cite James Murray Barbour's article "Music and Ternary Continued Fractions," American Mathematical Monthly, LV, 1948, pg. 545? Brun himself cites the Barbour article in the biblio of his (Brun's) 1964 article. Barbour's article covers nearly exactly the same ground as Brun's--and if Brun's article is necessary, why is not Barbour's article also necessary? On the subject of continued fractions, the article "Musical Scale Construction: the Continued Fraction Compromise," Utilitas Mathematica, Vol. 42, pp. 97-113, 1992, is an even more important source. Yet Paul Rapoport blatantly ignores it. Why? Is there some good reason for doing so? Moritz Drobisch's book "Uber Musikalische Tonbestimmung und Temperatur," Leipzig, Widmannsche Buchhandlung, 1852, covers much the same ground. Yet Paul Rapoport *also* fails to cite this work. Jacques Dudon's "La gamme doree: Un temperament inegal issue du nombre d'or," in the collection "Nombre d'or et Musique," 1987, pp. 147-157, uses similar continued fraction methods of sieving scales to obtain results similar to Douthett, Drobisch, Blackwood, Barbour, Fokker, Hall, Kronerup, et al. Yet Paul Rapoport *fails* to cite *this* important source as well. Speaking of Kornerup-- Thorwald Kornerup used exactly the same methods as Barbour, Brun and Douthett to classify tuning systems in 4 different articles: "Acoustic Valuation of Intervals," Thorwald Kornerup, Translated by Jean Ferguson, Copenhagen, Aschehoug Forlag, 1934; "Von der Urform 5-Toniger Skalen zu den Golden Tonen Elekstrischer Instrumente," Kopenhagen, 1931; "Kornerup, Throwald, "Die Hochteilung der Oktave," Kopenhagen, 1930; "Die Vorlaufer der gleichschwebende Temperaturen mit 19 oder 31 Tonen in der Oktave," Translated from Danish to German by P. Friedrich Paulsen, Copenhagen, J. Joergensen, 1930. Why did Paul Rapoport fail to cite *these* equally important sources on classifying equal temperaments? Scanning Paul's bibliography, we find yet another GROSS oversight--Donald Hall's name does not appear. Yet Hall has written four *important* articles on the classification of equal temperaments: [1] Hall, Donald. "Acoustical Numerology and Lucky Equal Temperaments," American Journal of Physics, Vol. 56, 1985 [2] Hall, Donald. "Quantitative Evaluation of Musical Scale Tuning," American Journal of Physics, Vol. 42, 1974. pp. 543-552 [3] Hall, Donald. "The Objective Measurement of Goodness-of- Fit for Tunings and Temperaments," Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 17, pp. 274-290, 1973 [4] Hall, Donald. "A Systematic Evaluation of Equal Tempermaents Through N=612," Interface, Vol. 14, 1985, pp. 61-73 -- This is a *criminal* oversight, since it leads the unwary reader to believe that Don Hall has nothing to say about equal temperaments--when he in fact has a great deal to say about 'em. -- Since Paul Rapoport's article deals specifically with the notation of equal temperaments, you'd expect that he'd cite other basic texts on xenharmonic notation. For example, Ivor Darreg's Xenharmonic Bulletin No. 6, 1975, devoted *entirely* to non-12 notation. Or "Notation for Non-Twelve," Ivor Darreg, Interval, Spring-Summer 1980, Vol. 1, pg. 12 "Notation For Non-Twelve - part 2," Ivor Darreg, Interval, Fall 1980, pg. 7 At the very least, you'd expect Rapoport to cite Xenharmonic Bulletin 5, 1975, by Ivor Darreg (the crucial bulletin in which Ivor first wrote about the "moods" or "sounds" or "sonic fingerprints" of each of the equal temperaments), or Xenharmonic Bulletin 10, 1988, in which Ivor wrote an exhaustive commentary on the advantages & disadvantages of most of the tunings between 5t and 53 tones per octave. -- And Paul Rapoport cites *not one single reference* by Ivor Darreg. This is beyond belief. It's like writing an article about visual art without mentioning painting. It's incomprehensible. And guess what? It gets *worse*. -- The veritable library of xenharmonic source materials Paul Rapoport *should* have cited and *didn't* include: Joseph Wu"rschmidt, "Die Rationellen Tonsysteme in Quinten-Terzengewebe," Zeitschrift fu"r Physik, Vol. 2, 1920, pg. 89 (The first systematic discussion of the very subject of Paul's article!--Equal temperaments characterized by the "web of thirds and fifths.") R.H.M. Bosanquet, "An Elementary Treatise on Musical Intervals and Temperament," London, 1876 (this is the origin of the "positive" and "negative" terminology for temperaments, and the origin of the R measurement) McLaren & Darreg, "Biases In Equal Tempered Scales," Xenharmonikon 13, 1990 (the first mention of scalar bias either toward harmony or toward melody) Wendy Carlos, "Tuning: At the Crossroads," Computer Music Journal, 1987 (an important summing-up, with crucial references to John R. Pierce's 1966 "Attaining Consonance in Arbitrary Musical Scales" article, along with the first musical examples of chords which produce this effect) Sebastian von Hoerner, "Universal Music?" Psychology of Music, 2(2), 1974, pp. 18-28 (2nd earliest categorization of large numbers of equal temperaments) Clarence Barlow, "Two Essays On Theory," Computer Music Journal, 1987 (the first printed appearance of Barlow's harmonicity index and its first printed use to classify equal temperaments) Canright, David. "Rational Notation," 1/1, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1985, pg. 8 Banta, Chris. "New Approaches to Pentatonic Notation," Interval. Vol. 3, No. 3, Winter 1981, pg. 9 G. A. Behrens-Senegalden. Die Vierteltoene in der Musik. Begleitschrift zu der Erfingung eines achromatisches Klaviers und Entwurk zur Darstellung der Viertelto"ne als Notenschrift. Berlin: Sulzer, 1892 Berghmans, Jose. "A Music Stave for the Notation of Different musics," Interface, Vol. 12, 1983, pp. 525-540 Darreg, Ivor. "Example of Julian Carrillo's Notation," Interval, Vol. 3, No. 2, Winter 1981, pg. 19 Fokker, A. D. "Les possibilies d'une notation musicale de plus grande precision," Archives du Musee Teyler, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 161-171 Fokker, A. D. "De behoefte aan groete nauwkeurigheid in de muzikale notatie der toonhoogte," Mens & Melodie, Vol. 8, 1953, pp. 114-115 Fokker, A. D., H. Kox, J. Mandelbaum & R. H. Orton. "Report of the Working COmmitte for Notation (IMS)," Report of the Teneth Congress fo the Internationl Musicological Society, Ljubljana, 1967. Kassel: Baerewnreiter, 1970, pp. 473-481 Fokker, A. D., H. Kox, J. Mandelbaum & R. H. Orton. "The notation of 31 Dieses in the Octave," Sonorum Speculum, Vol. 46, 1971, pp. 31-47 Harasek, Richard. "Unified Visualization and Notation of Xenharmonic Systems," Xenharmonikon 2, unpaged. Orton, Richard. First Report to the I.C.S. Committe on XXth Century Notation of Micro-Intervals. London, 1965. Partch, Harry. "Experiments in Notation," in Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music. Ed. Elliot Schwarts and Barney Childs. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967, pp. 209-220 Read, Gardner. 20th Century Microtonal Notation. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1990 Read, Gardner. Source Book of Proposed Music Notation Reforms. Westport, Connectivut: Greenwood Press, 1967 Reed, Thomas S. "Microtonal Musaic, Notation and Instruments," NACWPI Journal, Fall, 1979, pp. 9-14 Regener, E. Pitch Notation and Equal Temperaments. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973 Russolo, Luigi. Enharmonic Notation for the Futurist Intonarumori. Self-published pamphlet, March 1, 1914 Sachs, Melchior. "Das Temperierte 19-Tonsysteme und eien dafuer passende Schrift," Report of the Fourth Congress of the International Musical Society, London, 1912, pp. 279-281 Sims, Ezra. "A Question of Microtonal Notation," Mimeographed. Cambridge Massachusetts, 1986 Terpstra, Siemen. "Reflections On An Improved Notation System for 53-Tone Equal Temperament and Just Intonation," Interface, Vol. 14, 1985 Warfield, Gerald. "The Notation of Quarter-Tones," Contemporary Music Newsletter, Vol. 7, No. 5, 1973, pp. 3-5 Will, Rodney H. "A Proposed Graphic Notation for Harry Partch's `Monophony,'" Mimeographed. Washington D.C., 1983 Wilson, Ervin M. "On Linear Notation and the Bosanquet Keyboad," Xenharmonikon 2, unpaged Wohlgemuth, Gerhard. "Zeitgenoessiche Musik und ihre Notation," Musik und Gesellschaft, Vol. 25, No. 4, 1975, pp. 198-204 -- Along with the usual Yunik & Swift, "Tempered Music Scales for Sound Synthesis, " Computer Music Journal, Vol. 4, No. 4, Winter 1980, pp. 60-65; Stoney, William, "Theoretical Possibilties for Equally Tempered Musical Systems," Chapter 11 in "The Computer and Music," ed. Harry B. Lincoln, 1970, pp. 163-171; Krantz, R. J., "A Measure of the Reasonableness of equal-tempered Musical Scales," J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 95, No. 6, June 1994, pp. 3642-3650, Paul ought also at a bare minimum to have cited such articles as: Hartmann, G. C. "A Numerical Exercise in Musical Scales," Am. J. Physics,Vol. 55, No. 3, pg. 223, 1987; Douthett, J., R. Entringer and A. Mullhaupt, "Musical Scale Construction: the Continued Fraction Compromise," Utilitas Mathematica, Vol. 42, pp. 97-113, 1992; Krahenbuehl, D. and C. Schmidt, "On the Development of Musical Scales," Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 6, 1962, pp. 32-65; McLaren, B. "Circles of Fifths," Xenharmonikon 15, Autumn 1993; McLaren, B. "The Microtonal Notation Mess," Unpublished manscuript, 1989. So let's count up the total number of sources cited in Paul Rapoport's so-called "bibliography:" the grand total is 9. Yes, count 'em...9. Now let's count up the total number that *weren't* cited but *should have been.* THAT total comes to 67. Let me repeat that: Paul Rapoport should have cited sixty-seven more references than he did. Predictably, Paul Rapoport will claim that "he didn't have time" to do a full biblio. This is obviously false, since many of us would have rapidly and efficently supplied the references to him if he'd sent us a pre-print of the article. Again, predictably, Paul Rapoport will claim that the Journal of Music Theory doesn't allow extensive bibliographies. This is provably incorrect, since many articles (viz., Lindley, "Mersenne on Keyboard Tunings," 1980, etc.) cite lists of bibliographic sources many pages in length. Moreover, no journal ever turned down a music theory article because the biblio was too long. That's nonsense. It just doesn't happen. And even if did (which is preposterous), Paul could simply stand by his guns and publish the article in a journal will *does* allow extensive bibliographies--and there are plenty of those. No...the excuses don't wash. The only question now is whether Paul Rapoport's bibliographies are so grossly inadequate because (A) he just don't care, or (B) Paul deliberately wants to give a false, inaccurate and slanted picture of microtonality to his readers. -- To call Paul's bibliography "incomplete" is like calling what happened to the Titanic "a boating accident." And to call Paul's virtually nonexistent list of sources "adequate," as Paul presumably does, requires a capacity for fabulation so hallucinatory as to make Terence McKenna balk. --- Why does all this matter...? It's well to remember the importance of bibliographies. Bright-eyed students receive their first impetus & much of their sense of direction for future study from a bibliography. Control the biblio & to a large extent you control the students' education. A bibliography is the message in a bottle which a wise music theory author sends out to readers not yet born: a good bibliography can start an entire career, revolutionize an entire field of study. Just think of Partch--turned on to Helmholtz by a note in a bibliography. Just think of the many composers and theorists turned on to Partch's "Genesis Of A Music" because of a mention in a bibliography. Here's why this issue matters, ladies and gentlemen: A crassly inadequate bibliography is tantamount to censorship. It gouges out the eyes of the prospective student and punches icepicks into hi/r ears. An incomplete bibliography is a crime against the future, a *savage chainsaw abortion* of nascent microtonal composers while they're still in the womb. Paul, don't you realize that people like Kami Rousseau and Matthew Puzan read your bibliographies and search out the references you cite? By refusing to cite sources of basic importance, you prevent these up-and-coming microtonalists from discovering their heritage. You drive them into the arms of the likes of Paul Griffiths--who stated "If polytonality and microtones offered limited extensions to musical possibility, atonality opened vast new realms." [Griffiths, Paul, "A Concise History of Avant Garde Music: from Debussy to Boulez," New York & Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1978, pg. 40] Ye gods! Since post-Webern atonality is now dead as a steamrollered cockroach, and microtonality is continuing to gather steam as a world-wide trend... wow! Is it possible get any more foolishly WRONG than good old Paul Griffiths??? And THIS guy (who, in a 1994 review, called the superb composer Ivan Vyshnegradsky "almost insane") is STILL the "new music reviewer" for the New Yorker!!! --mclaren Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 19 Jul 1996 18:26 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id JAA05944; Fri, 19 Jul 1996 09:26:05 -0700 Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 09:26:05 -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