source file: mills2.txt Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 09:26:28 -0700 Subject: Werner "Journal of Psychology" Interval From: PAULE I have certainly experienced the feeling of "enlargement" when playing chromatically with 22-tet. Going back to 12, the semitones sound like whole tones for a little while. Someone mentioned playing their office-mate some music in 19 several times until they got used to it. Then 12 sounded wrong, until they got used to that again. I found that once I had heard music (Bach, Blackwood) in 19, 12 never sounded quite as good again. Although I use 12 all the time, the triads have a certain tension, an element of restlessness, that 19 doesn't have. 19 sounds more peaceful to me. Although it's a subtle difference, I think much of the 12tet canon (Classical & Romantic, whatever composers may be in favor at the moment) depends on that restlessness for its musical effect. Although translating tonal music from one system to the other looks feasible on paper, the emotional effect, if one can perceive it anew each time, is often quite different in each tuning. May I venture a counterfactual: if the great composers has 19tet to work with, they might have come up with music of a quite different character. Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 29 Jul 1996 18:51 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id JAA28353; Mon, 29 Jul 1996 09:51:40 -0700 Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 09:51:40 -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