source file: m1388.txt
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 15:34:06 -0400

Subject: TUNING digest 1387

From: Daniel Wolf <DJWOLF_MATERIAL@compuserve.com>

Reinhard:
>> <snip>  Schoenberg describes temperament as an
>> indefinitely extended truce (Harmonielehre p.25) and says
>> the chord is the synthesis of the tone.  Would either
>> Partch or Erlich disagree?  =


Erlich:

>>The first comment is vague. I don't know what the
>>war was that resulted in the truce. If it was
>>the war between temperament and just intonation,
>>then one side clearly won the war; there was no
>>truce.

I assume that from Scho"nberg's point of view the
conflict was within just intonation itself and due,
although he would not have expressed it in exactly
this way, to the incommensurability of the primes.
Temperament was the 'truce' in this conflict,
allowing intervals whose rational expressions were
unequal to be mapped onto identical intervals in a
given temperament.

Of course, whether the solution employed in the
truce was 'more beautiful, more pleasant, or more
practical' (Scho"nberg's own words) is a central
and unresolved matter in our continuing
discussions. While what is more 'beautiful' or
'pleasant' remain a matter of individual taste
(personally, I find just intervals to be usually
more beautiful, but relish the ornamental use of
beating intervals while intensely disliking tonic
'slips' by commas) what is the more 'practical'
seems to be temporally determined. At the moment,
the most available and affordable technology still
seems to give the edge to temperaments (albeit not
necessarily the most useful temperaments - witness
the inconsistant approximation of 3/2s and 9/8 by
the TX81Z) and I look foward to a time when the
technology is not so biased. =