source file: mills3.txt Date: Wed, 24 Dec 1997 23:24:59 +0100 Subject: Danielou's theories From: John Chalmers My objection to Danielou as a theoretical musicologist, beyond what has been presented here earlier, is his rejection of intervals of 7 (and above), which he claims are outside of human experience and spiritually dangerous. This is patent nonsense, metaphysics aside. Intervals of 7, or close approximations, are found in Blues, gamelan tunings, Barber Shop singing, ancient Greek scales, Islamic music (Sachs, etc.) and experimental styles. He tries to justify this bizarre belief by appealing to psychology, specifically George Miller's work on perceptible distinctions (The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two, ...). A corollary of Danielou's theory is that higher prime intervals, are perceived only as deviations from ratios of 3 and 5. Since he believes that there are special spiritual qualities inherent in 3 and 5 that are intensified and retained in powers and products of these factors, intervals of 7, etc. can confuse and possibly disrupt one's spiritual state. Erv Wilson worked with Das Gupta (Cal Arts) on Indian raga scales (thats) and discovered many that contain septimal intervals. However, these are not ones commonly heard, at least by westerners. Das Gupta did say that intervals of 11 and 13 are foreign to the Indian musical system. Scott Makeig has done some work of his own in this area also Miller says that humans can subconsciously make about seven distinctions along any perceptual dimension. Hence most scales have 5 to 7 tones; few have 8, 9 or more. The lack of acceptance of serial dodecaphonic music by the majority of auditors may suggest that even 12 tones is too many to present as a scalar gestalt. What this may mean for xenharmonics is that composes should partition 19, 22, 31, 34, etc into local subsets which may be varied, modulated, etc. Training and scalar structure may increase this limit, however, and I wouldn't consider it an argument against xenharmonics. --John SMTPOriginator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu From: Kraig Grady Subject: Re: Chas Smith and Danielou PostedDate: 25-12-97 05:14:16 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: 25-12-97 05:12:00-25-12-97 05:12:01,25-12-97 05:11:30-25-12-97 05:11:31 DeliveredDate: 25-12-97 05:11:31 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 C1256578.001710DD; Thu, 25 Dec 1997 05:13:52 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA25467; Thu, 25 Dec 1997 05:14:16 +0100 Date: Thu, 25 Dec 1997 05:14:16 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA25307 Received: (qmail 9919 invoked from network); 24 Dec 1997 20:14:13 -0800 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 24 Dec 1997 20:14:13 -0800 Message-Id: <34A1DD40.7885@anaphoria.com> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu