source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 21:52:20 -0800 Subject: Re: Triadic or tetradic infill? From: Matt Nathan I was rereading old messages. Daniel Wolf wrote about "Triadic or tetradic infill?": > Another possiblity - and one purely from an intonational standpoint - is > that the ET approximation is bad enough to shove the seventh into a > _dissonant_ category and to demand resolution. In this case, however, the > resolutions of seventh chords occuring in real, existing Just intoned > musics - chorales or Barbershop quartets - retain the avoidance of sevenths > in final chords (except for special effects). Is this just conditioning > from the the familiar temperament? [separated for emphasis] > Does anyone know of a way to test this? Here's sort of a way: One of the science fiction stories which most disturbed me (you might want to skip reading it) was about a guy born into a society which kept track of the genetic lineages and predispositions of its members, and occasionally, when a chid was born with the potential to become a composer (or other artist) of significance, the child was removed from the others and most of their cultural influence, and raised in a separate dwelling, tended to only by remote control. In the dwelling of this one child was placed an instrument designed with the potential to produce an almost limitless range of timbres and tunings, and to be easily programmable. As this child grew, he discovered the instrument and began playing around on it with no external guidance and no preconceived notions of what it was or what should be done with it. As the child began to produce completely original unique inspired music, the rest of the society voyeuristically and vicariously fed off of his captive talents. Human nature being what it is, such captive artists often succumbed to deep loneliness with no understanding of what or why it was. Some would eventually stop producing and pass into a sort of living death. Occasionally, a rare one would find the imagination to suppose that there were something beyond the small world he knew and would effect escape. The child in the story is one such person. As a young man, he escapes. After wandering dissoriented and with no idea of how to meet his own basic needs, he ends up in some local bar where an old out of tune acoustic piano collects dust in the corner. The young man sees people, but doesn't know how to relate to them or perhaps even what they are. They don't recognize him and after their initial greetings are met with a confused stare from the young man think him an idiot, and leave him alone. He finds the piano, and begins plunking all the notes. He quickly learns what all the (out of tune) pitches are and begings playing them in such a way as to make the people in the bar turn around and be mesmerized by such unusual and acute beauty. Some of them start to cry without knowing why. He wanders more. With each hour on the outside, impressions from radios and other raw noise of the culture begins to change him. Soon, his absence from the dwelling is noticed and he is persued and caught and returned to his old small world. His brief experience outside has infected his creativity. People listening in notice strains of familiar melodies creeping into his improvisations, imitations of vehicle sounds, and other recognizable noises. I think he escapes one more time and is caught again. His priceless purity of imagination is tainted. Being polluted beyond any hope of being cleansed, his music has become too ugly to listen to. The travesty of must stop. He must be punished for escaping and prevented from producing any more ugliness. They cut off his hands. [I know, and I'm sorry. I didn't write it, I just paraphrased it. It originally appeared in Omni magazine, issue and author forgotten.] Matt Nathan Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 14 Feb 1997 07:15 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA06126; Fri, 14 Feb 1997 07:15:20 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA06123 Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) id WAA17204; Thu, 13 Feb 1997 22:13:42 -0800 Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 22:13:42 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu