source file: mills3.txt Date: Sun, 7 Dec 1997 02:04:35 +0100 Subject: Re: La Musique Arabe From: Gregg Gibson Saw the posting on La Musique Arabe, and since I studied French for many years and read it like a native, have skimmed through most of it. The editors tend to be Pythagoreans, and are in general not too open to the idea of equal temperament, whether of 19, 12 or some other number of degrees. There are a few very interesting passages on the Arab use of the 1/3 tone, which apparently they borrowed from the Greeks (like much else). If Mr Moniodis has some particular questions which seem to him critical to his researches, perhaps I could comment on their general sense. La Musique Arabe is of course a veritable treasure trove of info on arab music, but in my opinion neither the pythagorean intonation that dominated the older arab music, nor the 24-tone equal temperament which has been prominent since the last century, are of much interest. I am pretty much exclusively interested in the 19-tone equal, on which I have accumulated quite a bit of material. In my experience the human ear cannot reliably distinguish intervals closer than those of the 19-tone equal, so the endless debates about minute distinctions between musical ratios, or about equal temperaments with more than 19 tones in the octave, seem to me rather beside the point. The 22-tone equal is at the extreme limit of human auditory acuity in melody, but this is a worthless temperament, for it is non-cyclic. SMTPOriginator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu From: Paul Rapoport Subject: WTC PostedDate: 07-12-97 05:52:10 SendTo: CN=coul1358/OU=AT/O=EZH ReplyTo: tuning@eartha.mills.edu $MessageStorage: 0 $UpdatedBy: CN=notesrv2/OU=Server/O=EZH,CN=coul1358/OU=AT/O=EZH,CN=Manuel op de Coul/OU=AT/O=EZH RouteServers: CN=notesrv2/OU=Server/O=EZH,CN=notesrv1/OU=Server/O=EZH RouteTimes: 07-12-97 05:50:16-07-12-97 05:50:17,07-12-97 05:50:06-07-12-97 05:50:07 DeliveredDate: 07-12-97 05:50:07 Categories: $Revisions: Received: from ns.ezh.nl ([137.174.112.59]) by notesrv2.ezh.nl (Lotus SMTP MTA SMTP v4.6 (462.2 9-3-1997)) with SMTP id C1256566.001A927B; Sun, 7 Dec 1997 05:50:14 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA08445; Sun, 7 Dec 1997 05:52:10 +0100 Date: Sun, 7 Dec 1997 05:52:10 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA08438 Received: (qmail 11945 invoked from network); 6 Dec 1997 20:52:07 -0800 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 6 Dec 1997 20:52:07 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu