source file: mills2.txt Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 08:08:56 -0700 Subject: Another post from Brian From: John Chalmers From: mclaren Subject: weasel-words in the discourse about tuning -- As Sir Joshua Reynolds pointed out, "there is no expedient to which man will not resort to avoid the real labour of thinking." This is nowhere more true than in discussions of musical intonation, and I have been as culpable in this regard as anyone else. In his essay "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell said: "Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step..." An excellent example of the failure to think clearly can be found in Tuning Digest 28, Topic 7. My contribution includes the following statement, a textbook case of a claim both logically unclear and essentially meaningless: "* All listeners, whether musically trained or not, prefer intervals significantly wider than the just values. This observation has been borne out by studies conducted by Piker & Harris, Meyer, ad infinitum. References on request." [Digest 28, Topic 7 -- mclaren] To which David Doty rightly replied with something on the order of: "The Universal Ear prefers such disorted intervals, one presumes; my ears do not." The point was well taken. My inappropriate use of "prefer" muddied the issue and created a confusion between sensory affect and musical affect. Since then, I've tried to be careful to phrase the essential facts quite differently: "The overwhelming majority of psychoacoustic experiments performed over the last 150 years show that both musically trained and untrained listeners consistently hear intervals tuned significantly wider than the just values as `pure' and 'just,' while the precise small-integer ratios are consistently heard as 'too narrow' and 'impure.'" My first statement of the essential facts in Digest 28 was muddleheaded and meaningless: the second statement, above, conveys a real datum with some clarity. Alas, my imprecision and muddiness is not a lone example. It is all too common in the discourse on musical intonation. Some words commonly used when discussing tuning have subtle implications and ought to be avoided. As Orwell points out in "Politics and the English Language," "Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different." Among the worst examples of deceptive and/or meaningless terms & phrases used when discussing tuning are the following: [1] "In tune" [2] "Consonance"/"Consonant," "Dissonance"/"Dissonant" [3] "Prefer"/"Preference"/"Preferred" [4] "Pure" [5] "Natural" [6] "Modern"/"Progress"/"Science"/"Scientific" [7] "Rational"/"Irrational" [8] "Improved"/"Better" [9] "Musical"/"Unmusical" [10] "Mathematical"/"Experimental" [11] "New"/"Novel"/"Unique"/"Original" [12] "Old"/"Old-fashioned"/"Outmoded" [13] "history of music"/"music" [14] "harmony" (in its aesthetic sense) [15] "concord"/"discord" A considerable amount of the total writing on musical intonation can be reduced to collections of these meaningless and muddle-headed terms strung together like boiler-plate. For example, one finds constantly from Isidore of Seville to Tinctoris to Johannes Avianius to Prosdocimo de Beldomandi to Lippius to Zarlino to Rameau to Helmholtz sentences such as: "The natural intonation is purer and more musical than the inharmonious equal temperament of 12 notes to the octave" and "The new equal temperament of 12 notes to the octave is more modern and more musical than the unscientific pitches of just intonation." -- Advertisers know that buzz-words are largely meaningless and thus can be used with impunity. The main idea is to *create an impression* while *saying nothing.* Every new deodorant spray is touted as "new," "modern," "improved," "pure," and "natural." If it were legal to sell pure dioxin, the ads would call it "pure" and "natural," and would state that "2 of 3 customers prefer dioxin because it's scientifically formulated, new and improved." -- Let me go into some detail on each of these slippery words/phrases: [1] "In tune" is obviously meaningless. This phrase basically means "the intonation I like." If you substitute "the intonation I like" instead of "in tune," you elicit the real meaning of the sentence. For example: "Meantone thirds are in tune, as opposed to the out-of-tune thirds of 12-tone equal temperament." This actually means: "Meantone thirds use a tuning I like, as opposed to the thirds of 12-tone equal temperament whose tuning I don't like." By converting what should be a statement of subjective musical opinion into what seems like an acoustic edict, the phrase "in tune" creates an infinite number of unnecessary arguments about nothing very significant. [2] "Consonance"/"Consonant"/"Dissonance"/"Dissonant" This slippery pair of antitheses has at least 6 different meanings: "consonant" can mean "what I like," or "lack of audible roughness in the partials," or "musically not out of place" or "musical" or "concordant" or "schematically/logically consistent with a given system." The classical Greeks used the last definition: to the Greeks, a note which was "consonant" was a note generated logically and systematically from the genus and the tonos which produced it. This is a meaning radically different from most current definitions of the word "consonant." Very often "consonant"/"dissonant" are used merely as statements of musical enjoyment. Thus one often hears "Webern's music is horribly dissonant," which actually nothing more than "I don't like it," or conversely (mainly in modern music journals) "such-and-such a composition employs wonderful dissonances" (which means nothing more than "most people don't like it, but I do.") Probably the most extreme statement of this latter aesthetic was made by John Zorn: "Grinding, horrible, hideous noise--those are four of the highest compliments I can receive." There are two radically opposed aesthetics in today's avant garde music-- one elevates whatever the pop music mass audience hates most vehemently as the "best" music, the other elevates whatever tone combinations exhibit the greatest sensory consonance as the "best" music. The former is exemplified by industrial music (viz., Einsturzende Neubauten, Michael Myers, Nocturnal Emissions, Skinny Puppy, etc.) the latter by the purist just intonation advocates (viz., David B. Doty, Harry Partch, Ben Johnston, Dane Rudhyar, etc.) It is well to bear in mind that most music falls somewhere in between these two extremes, and thus the terms "consonant"/"dissonant" will almost always be used confusingly in 2, 3, 4 or more senses at once. [3] "Prefer"/"Preference"/"Preferred" It's amazing how often this term pops up in the last 700 posts of this tuning digest. You find it almost everywhere, in 5 different meanings: [1] "what I like" [2] "most logically consistent with a given system" [3] "most sensorily consonant" [4] "most musically appropriate" [5] "mathematically simplest." It should be clear that arguments involving the terms "preferred intervals" or "pitch preference" will almost always use the word in different senses. Such arguments are thus not only unresolvable, but usually meaningless as well. [4] "pure" This is an obviously sense-free qualifier. It can be defined to some degree in chemistry--otherwise it's just a buzz-word, especially where aesthetics is concerned. [5] "natural" This word is used in at least 6 senses when discussing musical tuning: [1] "technically impractical" [2] "small integer ratio" [3] "resulting from the mathematical solutions of small perturbations of linear one-dimensional physical oscillatory systems" [4] "consistent with western music from 1500 A.D. - 1880 A.D." [5] "mathematically simplest" [6] "what I like" The term is almost always used in 3 or 4 different senses at once. During my lecture on non-just non-equal-tempered tunings, I start out by blowing across the top of a metal tube stopped at the botton with one finger. A flute-like note results. "That's natural," I tell the audience. Then I hold the tube by a node and hit it with a hammer. "That's unnatural." At this point the audience begins to titter. Then I repeat the process: blow across the tube. "We can talk about this. It's natural." Then hit the tube. "We can't talk about this. It's unnatural." Most of the audience is now staring with poached-egg eyes and looking at one another, wondering when this crazy person will be dragged offstage. This shock effect exploits the schism between many conflicting usages of the term "natural." Of course, harmonic series tones generated by a one-dimensional oscillator (viz., an end-stopped tube with an airflow across the open end--those who claim this oscillatory system is not one dimensional need to learn some physics, and check the rotational symmetry of the wave equation solutions which collapses the eigenvalues down to a 1-D case) and the non- just non-equal-tempered inharmonic series generated by a struck metal tube are both equally "natural." It makes no sense to speak of one type of physical oscillator or set of partials as "natural," and another type of physical oscillator or set of partials as "unnatural." Any set of partials generated by the physical acoustics of vibrating bodies is de facto natural, since that set of vibrational modes is generated in accord with the natural laws of physical acoustics. The term "unnatural" doesn't even parse when speaking of physical acoustics--a sound would have to be produced by violating the laws of physics in order to be "unnatural." Since no such sound can be produced, the term is semantically null. "Natural" is essentially a Victorian buzz-word when applied to the arts. It should be relegated to ads for feminine hygiene products. [6] "Modern"/"Progress"/"Science"/"Scientific" are also Victorian buzz-words. These terms are used instead of the more subjective and thus logically indefensible phrase "what is less easy to understand" or "what is more complicated." The late 20th century is characterized by a unique confusion between quantity and quality. To my knowledge, no other era or culture has so persistently conflated "more X" with "better X." (X can be anything you like.) Thus, in late 20th century music, "more mathematical music " means "better music." "More incomprehensible music theory" means "better music theory." This has carried over to microtonality: "Higher limit JI" usually means "better JI." "More nearly harmonic series ratios" usually means "Better ratios." "More unfamiliar tuning" usually means "better tuning." Thus "modern" plays on the bizarrely late-20t hentury delusion that newer = worthwhile, and more = better. Lou Harrison has turned the misuse of the Victorian buzz-word "modern" on its head by pointing out "how much we've lost since Boethius." Harrison's usage so completely deflates the buzz-word "modern" that it becomes difficult to regard such words as anything but propaganda. (Even so, the buzz-word misuse of "modern" persists. I myself have been told by tenured academics that my music isn't of interest because "it isn't modernistic enough" or "it doesn't reflect a modernist sensibility." To them this is brutal criticism: to me, high praise. Son cosas de la vidas...) [7] "Rational"/"Irrational" This is a mathematically precise but also perfidiously subtle example of an otherwise-meaningful term misused persistently by proponents of just intonation. By calling a tuning "rational" such proponents invidiously imply that the tuning is "more sane" or "more sensible" than equal temperament, meantone, et al. This can most clearly be seen in the title of the cassette "Rational Music For An Irrational World." The words "rational" and "irrational" are used simultaneously in their mathematical and psychological senses, creating endless confusion. [8] "improved"/"better" This is obviously meaningless. Every cheapjack ripoff piece of junk sold by late-night TV hucksters is "new and improved." The same is true of tunings--"better" is simply senseless when applied to an intonation, except as an indication of personal emotional attachment. [9] "musical"/"unmusical" This is a truly insidious buzz-word because it has at least 4 meanings: [1] "the tuning sounds good to me" [2] "the tuning fits in with my mathematical/historical/performance prejudices" [3] "the tuning is ingeniously constructed" [4] "the tuning is consistent with 12-TET conventions" 12-TET has been called both "musical" and "unmusical." Just intonation has been called both "musical" and "unmusical." Perhaps it would be better to substitute the phrase "osmotic" for "musical." This would make completely clear the inanity of the term when applied to intonation. [10] "Mathematical"/"Experimental" The former term is almost always used instead of the phrase "fits with the mathematical system I prefer to use to generate my particular tuning." As such, the term is a statement of personal aesthetic pleasure or displeasure camouflaged as a statement of scientific rigor (or lack thereof). The latter term is a vague means of indicating a desire to be seen as somehow in step with the sciences, and thus "modern," "mathmatical," ad nauseum. In practice, a composer or artist or dancer has foudn that s/he can do anything at all and justify it by claiming that it's "experimental." Thus, pirouetting onstage naked with gefilte fish on your head is idiotic if you do it sans explanation: but if you call it "experimental," suddenly pirouetting onstage naked with gefilte fish on your head acquires a profound new quasi-mathematical pseudo- scientific significance. [11] "New"/"Novel"/"Unique" and [12] "Old"/"Old-fashioned" /"Outmoded" are essentially identical or antithetical (synonym/antonym) to "modern." Just as meaningless. Very few intonational ideas or methods are new--someone somewhere has used all ideas and methods before. For example, Llewellyn S. Lloyd scooped me by proposing the idea of an "inharmonic series" that's just as natural as the "harmonic series" in a 1941 article in JASA. It's almost impossible to invent anything truly new. Thus the term is itself largely a misnomer. In any case, as with "modern," the real intent is to disguise an aesthetic opinion as an historical fact. [13] "history of music"/"music" This is a subtle but pervasive distortion. Writers typically talk about "the intonation of music," the "twelve notes of the musical scale," and so on. These phrases are a priori gibberish. There are many musics throughout the world, and throughout history. To which music does "the musical scale" or "the conventions of music" refer? Is the music theorist discussing the tuning of the Kwaiker xylophone? Or the bonangs of the Javanese gamelan? Is the music writer talking about Western music ca. 1400 after Walter of Odington introduced the 5/4 into music theory? Or is the writer talking about Western Music in the classical Greek period, when genera and tonoi were the mode of discourse and vertical harmony had no significance? Without further qualifiers, "music" is a term so broad as to include virtually every acoustic phenomenon in the circumambient universe. [14] "harmonic" and "harmony" are used in 4 different completely contrary senses: [1] harmonic can mean "member of harmonic series," or [2] "consonant harmony" or [3] "concordant" or [4] "recognizably similar to 12-TET vertical triadic structures." The term "harmony" can be used to mean "sounds good to me" (the tones maketh a sweete harmony together), or "vertical musical structure" or "concordant" or "sensory consonance." Many of the unresolvable and fruitless controversies in music theory stem from the unfortunate fact that the english language uses the same word both to indicate an acoustic fact (vertical simultaneous tones) and an aesthetic judgment (sounds lovely). [1] "concord"/"discord" There is no agreement as to what these words mean. They've been used in at least 5 different senses: [1] "musically conventional" [2] "sensory consonance" [3] "within the mode" [4] "within the scale" [5] "sounds good to me" There is some consensus growing that "concord" ought NOT to mean "sensory consonance," but this does not clear up the vast confusion created by the other 4 possible overlapping meanings of the term. --mclaren Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 12 Aug 1996 17:39 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA11053; Mon, 12 Aug 1996 17:39:16 +0200 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA11066 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id IAA24295; Mon, 12 Aug 1996 08:39:13 -0700 Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 08:39:13 -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