source file: mills3.txt Date: Sat, 20 Dec 1997 03:38:32 +0100 Subject: Last Long Post for a While From: Gregg Gibson It is the part of a wise man to always maintain a small corner of his mind open to some conception of art totally different from his own, or to that of the general sense of mankind. Past centuries have sometimes been very eager to condemn musical tunings outside their own habits of thought, but not intrinsically fatal (or gravely inimical) to the musical art. Still, we do the men of the past a gross injustice to pretend that their minds were closed in matters of intonation, or for that matter of diatonicism versus chromaticism or enharmonicism. With all its crowds of artists more interested in shocking than moving (nor do I find this love of flamboyance wholly an unsympathetic attitude), the really closed-minded century has been our own, with its Hitlerian insistence on the 12-tone equal temperament. In reaction to this, we now suffer (a few of us) from the opposite error to having a closed mind, which is to cherish a mind so flaccidly open that one denies all universal principles, or the possibility of such principles. To make (for once) a sweeping statement, such an attitude is abhorrent to art, and would have been viewed with horror and disdain by every Great Western (or Eastern) Composer who has ever lived. This brings to mind Oscar Wilde's delicious remark (I quote from memory): "To find all styles in art equally good is to betray the soul of an auctioneer." People who fall into this error often compound their error - human nature being what it is - by imagining that it is a viable option for a musical culture to have _no_ universal tuning or even any favored set of _similar_tunings. Each musical artist would then have to reinvent his own musical language from scratch. This is as if each poet had to invent his own language. We should then perhaps have strange new poetries ? most of them pathetically valueless and inept, a few of them perhaps (within a narrow sphere) exquisitely beautiful. But the latter class of languages and poetries would be precisely those that most closely imitate some one (or several) of the 'natural' languages and known cultures. In the real world, poets ? sane, serious, level-headed, money-grubbing, great poets ? do not invent their own language. The most they try to do, is to bend a little to one side the great common possession of mankind, language. Though the analogy is not perfect of course, music is essentially in the like case. The composer who announces that he has found a marvelous tuning that, by the way... doesn't stoop so low as to give consonant fifths and thirds within a single coherent system... is like the English poet who announces that he is banning all words with more than four letters from his verse. The thing might be possible ? but why bother? I can state with _absolute_ finality, and with divine closed-mindedness, that such poetry would be drivel. On the list, I believe someone ? by no means devoid of understanding ? said that "Gibson's preference for mean-tone temperaments is well-established" as if there are any others worth discussing (for long). Well, there is just intonation and Pythagoreanism, but they are not temperaments. There are 22- 29- 41- & 53-tone equal, but I do hope that by now I have explained why these 'temperaments' are valueless, for they cast out the consonant thirds from their tonal fabric as soon as one tries to preserve the consonant fifths. When one knows nothing of the matter of tuning, the choice of a tuning appears purely arbitrary, but the more one learns of the principles that govern music ? all human music ? the more one realizes that, although there is incredible tuning variation within human music, there is also a very obvious and powerful tendency toward just intonation, or rather, toward some system that shall preserve the advantages of just intonation, while remedying its defects, and if possible even adding to its available melodico-harmonic resources, especially in conjunct music of very limited compass, where sheer dead-reckoning can be used to sing and understand intervals outside the realm of just intonation. And note that the variation in human tuning systems _is concentrated_ in precisely this domain of conjunct music within limited compass. As soon as cultures move out of this domain, and also as soon as they use harmony, just intonation assumes a compelling r?le in their tuning systems. Some may imagine that ? falling into that habit of the human mind which causes us to become passionately attached to whatever we much use, and to which we ally our own vanity ? I advocate 19-tone equal as a kind of obsession or quest for notoriety, etc. This is not so. I dislike notoriety very much, and wish someone else would promote the most essential ideas that I have presented, leaving me free to my poetry and my music, only no one has, at least so far as I know, in the requisite depth and with the suitable insistence. My own artistic vanity happens to be more attached to poetry than to music, and it is a matter of personal indifference to me whether anyone uses 19-tone equal or not. I do rather pity those who do not. But I have already presented some very strong evidence which suggests that 19-tone equal is _uniquely_ close to the tendencies of human intonation, and also far, far richer in real, usable, melodic ? and therefore, granted the presence of consonances, in harmonic ? resources. These are almost certainly facts, and will not be shaked. There are exceptions, there are caveats... but the trend is as clear as the daylight. I have much more evidence, better suited for a book ? a 10,000 page book ? than for this forum. I would like to suggest that no one, whether they happen to like my personality or not, should deny himself the pleasure of carefully exploring the 19-tone equal in a variety of musical styles. This surely is bigger than matters of personality. BTW, I have a notion that Schoenberg would have been fascinated with the 19-tone equal, had anyone explained its potentialities to him. Finally, I wish to state again that the masses, although seemingly ignorant of and indifferent to tuning questions, are, like it or not, our masters. The most imperious dictator who ever lived, the haughtiest aristocrat who ever breathed, lives in nightmarish fear of popular ridicule. The people ? our own, Western people especially ? exert a potent influence, via popular melody and musical instrument makers (to name just two influences) on the choice of tuning, and on all music. Those who refuse to decide on a universal tuning, and consider the notion tyrannical, closed-minded, limiting, etc will merely have the choice of a universal tuning made _for_ them, most probably in favor of 12-tone equal, but one day, most probably, in favor of 19-tone equal. The latter should prima facie interest microtonalists more than the former. I have already spent far too much time here ? it is rather addictive, and I have corrected several errors or incompletions in my theories by reading the list ? but I hope I have offered some ideas of value. SMTPOriginator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu From: Gregg Gibson Subject: Reply to Paul Ehrlich PostedDate: 20-12-97 05:42:22 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: 20-12-97 05:40:12-20-12-97 05:40:13,20-12-97 05:39:48-20-12-97 05:39:48 DeliveredDate: 20-12-97 05:39:48 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 C1256573.0019A640; Sat, 20 Dec 1997 05:42:05 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA22476; Sat, 20 Dec 1997 05:42:22 +0100 Date: Sat, 20 Dec 1997 05:42:22 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA22460 Received: (qmail 11744 invoked from network); 19 Dec 1997 20:42:19 -0800 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 19 Dec 1997 20:42:19 -0800 Message-Id: <349BAF35.7E0D@ww-interlink.net> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu