source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 20:56:17 -0800 Subject: notation replies From: "Adam B. Silverman" As I stand now, I think that Dan's ideas are very good; while Ben gives special accidentals to 7 and higher primes, he combines 3 and 5, with both using the 81/80 (+/-) diacritical. Dan's system (an I understand it) uses sharps and flats (double sharps, etc.) for an ever-extensible Pythagorean chain, and applies + and - only for the intervals on the 5-plane. Therefore, the 5-relationship of any major chord built on an uninflected pitch will be followed by a -. I haven't used Dan's notation because it wasn't very practical to study with Ben and confuse him with a very similar yet different notation. Similarly, in my string quartet, I use A+=400 (while Ben always uses A=440); however, in my arrangements of Partch for string quartet, I defer to Ben's precedence. >For my own theoretical purposes I remove these two anchors, and relativise >the system completely; since I'm dealing with modal or tonal music, 1/1 is >be identified with whichever letter-name is the modal final or tonal centre. What happens when you modulate? A tricky situation (one of the thorny sides of this notation) is that in music that I have analyzed as 5-limit (such as Lassus, Gesualdo, Palestrina, even Chopin), it can drop by 7 or 8 commas in a short piece. Jonathan asked: >I'll be interested to see what you come up with [regarding key signatures] >eventually. The simplest approach I can think of is not very good for perforance, but in my transcriptions of Renaissance music, I used brackets above the staff which contained the number of commas to correct. I would usually add these when it dropped (or raised) more than three commas. This is better for analysis than for performance, but those commas are tricky to perform, aren't they? I find that the music which needs such corrections is music which ignores the comma. When a composer pays attention to it like I do, the music doesn't modulate that far. It is my great dream, however, that a simple notation will be developed that will allow for the easy modulation to remote lattice regions--it is the notation that keeps me for writing such highly modulatory music, and notation should never guide composition. >> I do find it curious >> that so many people have made transcriptions of Partch scores in >> Johnston*s notation which goes against both the whole limit (factoring) >> idea of Partch, and Partch*s decided invertibility. Moreover, the >> instances in Partch*s music which are based upon the syntonic diatonic >> scale are minimal. Partch's music, actually, goes against the whole theory of "limits" (except for isolated examples, notably The Letter and parts of Oedipus)--that was his book and not his music. In practice, the Monophonic Scale was treated as a source for improvisation, and prominently features "out of tune" intervals. Near-but-mistuned fifths and thirds are favored, even in free instruments like the Adapted Viola and the voice. Decidedly, the reason to use Ben's notation for Partch transcription is because it is exact and unambiguous. One should always bear in mind, however, that it was designed for Ben and not for Harry. Furthermore, Harry was shown the notation and liked it. >> If you have a real gripe and would like to set Fonville straight, I >> suggest that you write him at San Diego State University... Pardon me--I meant to write University of Calif., San Diego. To Jon Szantos: are you still bored? Yours, Adam _________________ Adam B. Silverman 153 Cold Spring Street; A3 New Haven, CT 06511 (203) 782-1765 abs22@pantheon.yale.edu Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 28 Oct 1996 22:17 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA20367; Sat, 26 Oct 1996 20:44:16 +0200 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA05822 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id LAA04109; Sat, 26 Oct 1996 11:44:14 -0700 Date: Sat, 26 Oct 1996 11:44:14 -0700 Message-Id: <961026184005_71670.2576_HHB48-9@CompuServe.COM> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu