source file: mills2.txt Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 10:54:22 -0800 Subject: Vertical Puns From: Daniel Wolf <106232.3266@compuserve.com> Sorry! My typology was not complete. The previously described puns must be found in a succession of chords in order to project the various readings of a pun. Some single sonorities, however, are self-sufficient puns. 3. Vertical puns: (a) In temperaments, there are some collections of pitches which are going to heard ambiguously (when heard ''tonally''). These are something like those optical illusions which flip-flop between perceived images. (b) A similar flip-flop may obtain in Just Intonation between chords that are ambiguously harmonic or subharmonic. I recall that somewhere in _Finnegans Wake_ (that wonderful book of puns) is an appropriate phrase: ''My herrings, the surdity of it all!'' David Antin has spoken/written about the centrality of puns to the work of Marcel Duchamp ('' a pun is a pendulum oscillating between meanings, therefore Duchamp was a futurist''). One key to Mozart's tonal charm was his use of puns with surprising disambiguations; Stravinsky was constantly using cadential puns to toy with the listeners' expectations. An element of levity is certainly missing in much serious new music, but both Stravinsky and Mozart could count on an audience immersed in tonality: I wonder if we can expect an audience nowadays to listen closely enough to catch such puns? Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 14 Jan 1997 21:01 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA14576; Tue, 14 Jan 1997 21:04:26 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA14610 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id MAA05329; Tue, 14 Jan 1997 12:04:15 -0800 Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 12:04:15 -0800 Message-Id: <55970114175655/0005695065PK4EM@MCIMAIL.COM> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu