source file: mills2.txt Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 19:52:34 +0200 Subject: Re: JI Puns From: Daniel Wolf Paul Hahn wrote: ''This misses the point. The above description would fit modulation or even a simple chord change. I don't think anyone is served by using such an overbroad definition.'' My definition is not overbroad, it is quite strict: A tonic is established from > within a collection of pitches, and a pun is a function not of a single > intervallic relationship but of a set of relationships. In the most familiar tonal repertoires, the fixed collection establishes tonic/dominant relationships clearly so that common tones between such chords will not be heard as puns. A pun will be heard when the ear requires some reorientation, that is when the membership in the collection has been altered in some way. Think of it this way: the collection consists of those (usually) closely related pitches accessable during a given time span in some music. A temporal pun occurs when a single pitch from an initial collection is now heard in terms of new collection. Expressed in of just intonation, _any_ such pun will envolve collections upon the same lattice, and puns can be composed at _any_ distance on the lattice. It is true that when the collection is ignored the function I describe is identical for common tones in a tonic-dominant pair and for a more exotic interval pair, the function alone is insufficient to make a pun. A pun must be supported by some musical form of ''syntax'' that supports both interpretations, or it will not be heard as a pun. For that reason, it has to be framed in terms of distinct operative collections of pitches. I assume that I needn't note that the effectiveness of an intonational pun depends upon the identity of this function with that founds in familiar modulations or chord changes; the difference is not strictly one of degree - i.e. distance on the lattice - but of context. This might be positively contrasted with a pitch-saturated music like Princetonian serialism, where 12 tone aggregates are the basic collections. In such a music, the lack of content distinctiveness among collections leads to a situation where all the puns fall flat. (Although intervallic diversity may create very different lines - or lynes, as they would have it - in the end all of them map onto the same set of pitches). Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 12 May 1997 00:28 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA09393; Mon, 12 May 1997 00:28:29 +0200 Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 00:28:29 +0200 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA09407 Received: (qmail 7740 invoked from network); 11 May 1997 22:28:19 -0000 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 11 May 1997 22:28:19 -0000 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu