source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 07:49:55 -0800 Subject: From BRian McLaren From: John Chalmers From: mclaren Subject: the pervasive lack of information about microtonality from academia -- Some time ago J.A. M. Salinas mentioned "I'm a bit mad about the little access there there is to `microtonality' or tunings in the educational system." Despite Greg Taylor's hallucinogenic claims to the contrary, a pervasive mindset exists in higher education which universally discourages the exploration of non-12 non-Pythagorean intonations. (I say "usually" because remarkable and praiseworthy academics like William Alves, William Schottstaedt, Brian Belet, Allen Strange, Larry Polansky and a few others consistently fight the hand that bleeds them by teaching music via an overtly non-12 approach. In this regard Lou Harrison is the supreme exemplar. Alas, teachers of Harrison's caliber and insight are all too rare in music departments throughout academia.) Because of this pervasive "always 12, only 12, forever 12, in the beginning was the word and the word was 12, and 12 moved upon the face of the waters and said `Let there be 12'" attitude in academia, there has been very little specifically xenharmonic investigation and even less of it has been published in the yakademic music theory journals. As a result there is in the late 1990s as enormous a disjuncture between what composers are actually *doing* in the real world and music theory as it is *taught* and *published* (12-TET only) as there was in the late 15th century. Back then, even 50-100 years after the introduction of the just 5/4 by Walter of Odington and the amazement created by English choirs using his theories as they toured the continent, even in the 1450s the music theorists wrote *only* in Pythagorean terms. Examine music texts of the late 14th and early 15th century, and you will discover *no* reference to our modern 5/4 just major third. Instead, the 81/64 third is still derived by Pythagorean calculations and is then considered to be "detuned" to obtain the 5/4. This is a completely bizarre way of deriving the 5/4 third, but it makes sense if you remember that everyone in the 15th century was totally marinated and immersed in the rigid mindset of Pythagoreanism. They were so brainwashed that for most music theorists it was all but impossible to make the break *out* of Pythagorean paradigms to 5-limit and its resulting rich musical implications. In just the same way, nowadays music theorists are so immersed and marinated in the rigid mindset of 12-TET that it is all but impossible for most of them to make the break to something other than subdivisions of 12 so beloved of James Wood and other continental European microtonalists. The infinite realm of non-octave scales, non-just non-equal-tempered scales, and high-limit extended just intonation seems as unthinkable to the doyens of contemporary 12-TET music theory today as 12-TET would have seemed to the doyens of Pythagorean music theory in the late 1300s and early 1400s. However, the lesson of history is that intonation constantly changes. Thus 12-TET is not permanent, and is in fact in flux as we speak (though current academics and curricula *refuse* to recognize this). History shows us that technology drives intonation; the reason for Pythagorean intonation from 600 A.D. through the 1380s is that the organs of that period (and yes, Frankish kings had great organs constructed, they were common as early as 900 A.D.) did not use modern secondary bellows. As a result the air pressure through the pipes varied drastically, and thus the pitch of the notes rose and fell in a hideous clamor as the organ was pumped and as more or fewer notes were played by hauling out the huge blocks of lumber which sealed the airflow of each organ pipe. Once you realize that teams of bellows pumpers had to tread up and down in exact time to the music on vast rooms full of organ bellows while teams of organ "players" yanked out and slammed back the immense wooden tenons that controlled each pipe, you instantly understand why only Pythagorean intonation would be acceptable and why strictly regular metre was an absolute necessity in playing music on such terrifying contraptions. Regular metre, since the organ players could not risk getting out of step with the rhythmic pumping of those who tread the bellows; and Pythagorean intonation because as the pitches rose and fell by whole semitones, subtler tunings with smaller intervals than the diatessaron and diapente would have fallen within the critical band as their tuning varied wildly, producing a massive blast of dissonances so unbearable as to make even the most hard-core industrial music fan cringe. Indeed, the popularity of the Pythagorean major third of 407.8-some cents becomes instantly comperhensible when you realize that on such an early organ an 81/64 would have started at 407.8 cents and dropped *through* 386 cents *down* even *below* the just 5/4 as the bellows feeding the pipe deflated completely (thus lowering the air pressure through the pipe). In exactly the same way, interest in radically non-12 tunings is exploding nowadays because of the recent advent of digital cheap retunable synthesizers. Technology drives tuning. It's that simple. J.A.M. Salinas' complaint that "I just finished a degree on music composition in the UK, which is meant to be very experimental and avant garde... and nothing was mentioned about any other tuning system different than the 12-TET" is a familiar one. I've encountered this complaint many many times from many many people. It's nothing new. The yakademics have their heads stuck in the sand, and they refuse to wake up and look around and recognize the fact that music is changing. Fortunately, this tuning forum provides the solution. Anyone interested in a wide variety of information about non-12 tunigs should contact John Chalmers and give him your snail mail address. I will send you enormous amounts of information not biased in any particular way--articles on nj net tunings, non-12 equal temperaments, ji and various ethnic and meantone european tunings covering a period of more than 100 years by authors of every conceivable viewpoint. A number of folks on the tuning forum have already asked for and received such xeroxes; they've all been shocked at the depth and breadth of material which has been published on microtonality but which is systematically ignored in the 12-TET musical establishment because of the pervasive 12-only mindset and the profound ignorance of the yakademics. In short, anyone who wants information need only ask. You will be astonished at how much has been published about microtonality over the last 100 years--it does not accord at all well with the false and restricted and artificially limited picture of modern music painted in the typical grad school "avant garde" music course. --mclaren Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Thu, 21 Nov 1996 17:52 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA02638; Thu, 21 Nov 1996 17:53:35 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA02473 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id IAA29991; Thu, 21 Nov 1996 08:53:33 -0800 Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 08:53:33 -0800 Message-Id: <199611211652.IAA29938@eartha.mills.edu> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu