source file: mills2.txt Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 12:02:38 -0800 Subject: Re: First Published Treatise in English From: Johnny Reinhard Perhaps my new year should begin by cleaning up some mistaken notions expressed by D. Wolf. The world of microtonal music is too great to assume _total_ understanding. I realize it doesn't help that we are all geographically far apart. Still, some on this list have made great efforts to discover what their contemporaries are doing. Others remain happier in a self-designed bubble. On Wed, 1 Jan 1997, Daniel Wolf wrote: > I would agree heartily that the Morley is the first _complete_ treatise on > music, but it does remain sadly deficient on tuning containing not a single > ratio, and the entire section on Hexachord singing ia already at least 20 My mention of Morely was originally to state his useage of the term "just" regarding intervals, the first that I had noticed in the English language. The real knowledge of tuning possessed by Morley is contained within his music. The title of his treatise contains the words "easy" and "practical" which seem to me to make clear the author's desire to fall on the simpler side of things...ratios are not simple. And yet, his music demonstrates his mastery of the materials. > As to the exactitude of the harmonic series in the human voice - this would > require a vocal chord with no imperfections. Of course, I am setting a high > standard for precision, but I think it is useful to be precise and say that > the harmonics _tend_ to approximate the harmonic series, or deviate from > the series by a tolerable amount, or the integration into a single complex > sound is so good that we accept the deviations as harmonic. But the simple > equation of actual vocal sounds with the harmonic series does no service to > either. The above reasoning belongs in a science laboratory. It is an important insight into acoustics, however. Alongside the above one should include Prof. Rudolf Rasch's work with "jitter" which is the tiniest imperfection produced in sustaing pitch due to the heartbeat. To take the extreme position further, one could never call a note G or C because each only has a single frequency or its multiple in the musical tone. One should never listen to digital recording, perhaps, because certain frequencies will be absent due to the technology. I think the extremes language in description does no service to music and merely finds us unable to speak clearly. > I think that Johnny misrepresents La Monte's position altogether. La Monte > contends that one can sing Just intervals only through elimination of > beating and that ET intervals are - because they require the perception and > stable production of more complex beating practically impossible to produce > accurately. Daniel, I am sorry to contradict your assertion here, as before. I worked with La Monte Young for several years as his archivist and I contributed as an editor for his program notes, liner notes, and C.V. At the time of my employ, La Monte explained to me that he did not believe that one could learn to hear 12ET accurately due to their irrational basis in sound. La Monte became more flexible in this position when I would argue that a Masters degree in 12ET allowed for memorization of any array of tones. Just as gamukas are learned by rote, any intervallic basis for ordering pitch can be reinitiated by those talented and devoted enough. As I understand Johnny's approach to pitch, it has more to do > with pitch memory (so-callled absolute pitch) than with elimination of > beats between pitches (and La Monte's approach is more like relative > pitch). (It is not surprising that Johnny named his journal ''Pitch'' > instead of continuing ''Interval''). Sorry, Daniel, no absolute pitch here (which I understand is produced by a gene according to Science Magazine). Elimination of beats is a non-musical process, usually outside of time...except in a few avant-garde contexts. I have trained myself to recognize and initiate relative pitch relationships in multiple contexts. Pitch is merely a smaller unit than interval. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Wed, 1 Jan 1997 21:22 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA06324; Wed, 1 Jan 1997 21:25:38 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA06329 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id MAA26256; Wed, 1 Jan 1997 12:25:01 -0800 Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 12:25:01 -0800 Message-Id: <199701011522_MC1-E20-3ABA@compuserve.com> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu