source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 5 Sep 1996 17:54:34 -0700 Subject: Re: TUNING digest 829 From: Paul Rapoport Thanks to Brian McLaren for an interesting and helpful reply to my somewhat exasperated reply to his...etc. I have no idea whether anyone else is interested in this stuff any more. I won't respond to all of Brian's points, because most of them either clarify the matter or allow the reader to choose how to proceed. Much of this may be about different ways to structure and use ETs. I think really that you may use many of them differently. Clearly the closer you want to derive from Pythagorean principles, the closer the notation may resemble the traditional one. But it is certainly true that using only sharps and flats in 19 may mislead people who are used to 12 and are unable to make the switch. I have seen it happen so often that I wonder if it ever *doesn't* happen with untutored performers. On the other hand, presenting most performers with a radically different notation carries obvious problems of its own. There seems no "solution" here independent of many other variables and contexts. I am indeed interested in "wild" notations which capture unique aspects of tunings. I don't happen to have invented any, but I've certainly read through a fair number. There's still time... Brian's claim that "when faced with anything other than an ultra-conservative completely common-practice-period notation, Paul's interest appears to drop drastically" is odd. His recollection of our one meeting in 1992 certainly isn't mine. I have spent a lot of time teaching fairly far-out music with bizarre notations or no notation in music history surveys and seminars for nearly 20 years. Recall the discussions about John cage...Again, if anyone cares, please don't take pars pro toto. If you have read my articles written mostly about notations derived from the common practice period, don't assume that that's all I accept. Of course few have read them as carefully as Brian, but that's a different point. I am intrigued by turning the "essentially no one attends live concerts" point into a question of ratios. Of course far more people listen to recordings and the like, but that answers a different question. It's rather like saying that essentially no one lives in New York because there are several billion Chinese on the other side of the planet! Blackwood does more than create music in Pythagorean frameworks. Several of his pieces derive modes of various kinds which don't relate to Pyth. thinking any more than Messiaen's modes do. And that is probably enough. Except to say that Brian's carefully thought out and written ideas are a pleasure to read. For me, anyhow. ========================== ================================= Dr. Paul Rapoport e-mail: rapoport@mcmaster.ca SADM (Music) tel: (+1) 905 529 7070, ext. 2 4217 McMaster University fax: (+1) 905 527 6793 Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 6 Sep 1996 06:09 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA23573; Fri, 6 Sep 1996 06:10:55 +0200 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA23469 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id VAA10031; Thu, 5 Sep 1996 21:10:53 -0700 Date: Thu, 5 Sep 1996 21:10:53 -0700 Message-Id: <960906040828_71670.2576_HHB45-5@CompuServe.COM> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu