source file: mills2.txt Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 07:31:34 +0200 Subject: Tibetan tunings, etc. From: Will Grant The Chinese year cycle named as "dog," "pig," "rabbit," etc. is neither more nor less rigid than our own American convention inherited from the English. Other Europeans (e.g., Italian "trecento" for thirteen hundreds) are more sensible, but the nineteen hundreds _do_ comprise the twentieth century after Jesus's teaching. I am not a magical fundamental "Christian," but still it seems true to me that Jesus's teachings are amongst the best wisdom the West has produced, and I see no objection to gauging a calendar from the approximate time that he taught. It's all relative, and it's all arbitrary. Buddha was perhaps more adroit with that particular problem than Jesus was. It might seem absurd to put a Tibetan scale on a Kurzweil, because no one can play a Kurzweil the way one plays a bell, and no one is expected to -- they are different instruments generically. Nevertheless, I think there is no harm in adapting Tibetan ideas to a rather fixed instrument. It's important to remember that we are producing a new music, _not_ Tibetan music. Will Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 12:29 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA02986; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 12:29:31 +0200 Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 12:29:31 +0200 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA02987 Received: (qmail 27486 invoked from network); 2 Jun 1997 10:29:15 -0000 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 2 Jun 1997 10:29:15 -0000 Message-Id: <009B52D6B904849B.3956@vbv40.ezh.nl> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu