source file: mills2.txt Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 08:43:53 +0200 Subject: Why are we writing? From: William Richard Grant Thanks, Aline Surman, for your moderate observation that ET is useful when migrating tonally in a piece. I'd tune differently for playing Bach and Rameau, and maybe even keep a roomful of harpsichords, which is easy to do nowadays, with computers. Though, heaven knows, a real harpsichord DOES feel extremely different. May I speak to my own problems? I want to know where we're going. I have spent a long time in school, and am becoming full of degrees and erudition, but still I don't know where we're going. My teachers seem to feel that I should just "be myself," but in practice my self incorporates more problems than simplifications. It is only a recent phenomenon that any working musician would dream of leaving "da folks" out of his work, even granted that in 1750 "da folks" were aristocrats. Aristocrats, now as then, are notoriously lazy and ignorant. They have lots in common with everybody else. So, where are we going? Why are we working to write music? Will wgrant@cats.ucsc.edu Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 16 May 1997 11:55 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA03586; Fri, 16 May 1997 11:55:06 +0200 Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 11:55:06 +0200 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA03584 Received: (qmail 26907 invoked from network); 16 May 1997 09:55:01 -0000 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 16 May 1997 09:55:01 -0000 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu