source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 28 Nov 1996 17:23:53 -0800 Subject: Re: TUNING digest 909 From: Paul Rapoport Brian's bit on Cage makes pleasant reading--pleasant because I know what I know (and think) of Cage, and his words don't sway me because, I suggest, he misses his target. I disagree with him, but a list like this is not the place to carry on a detailed argument. One curiosity, however. He mentions a number of professor types who he thinks are OK, against the vast hordes whom he excoriates. Rightly or wrongly isn't the issue. He then goes on to say that these few are the exceptions that prove the rule. Most people, Brian included (I believe-- but he'll have to tell us), think that exceptions prove rules in the sense of confirming them. Now this is a peculiar logic--in which the opposite of something confirms its truth. But how many exceptions do we need to prove their opposite? One? A hundred? A majority? I believe that the word "prove" here is to be used in a different sense only, "to test." In this sense, exceptions do prove rules, and the saying then makes sense. But popular usage has taken this one away from its meaning into nonsense. Lots of what we say is nonsense, I'm sure Brian would agree... Just to make this allowable on a tuning forum, I don't think the exceptions of a (relatively) few microtonal pieces prove (establish) the superiority of 12-tET. But they certainly prove it, don't they? (Test it, I mean!) On a different topic, thanks to all the "lurkers" (terrible term: how about "non-posting readers") for writing in recently. Lots of you newcomers are 'way beyond me. Paul Rapoport Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 29 Nov 1996 06:57 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA11031; Fri, 29 Nov 1996 06:59:06 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA11068 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id VAA10163; Thu, 28 Nov 1996 21:59:04 -0800 Date: Thu, 28 Nov 1996 21:59:04 -0800 Message-Id: <3.0.32.19961128212357.0068ac2c@adnc.com> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu