source file: m1587.txt
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 03:33:44 -0800

Subject: Marchetto everywhere

From: monz@juno.com

Gadzooks!

I've been working furiously on my essay describing
a rational interpretation of Marchetto of Padua's
"fifth-tones" so that I could put it up complete
on my website. It's already been there for a
while (albeit unfinished) for those in the know.

I've felt for some time that this is one of my
most original and important papers.  Apparently
everyone else who's discussed Marchetto assumed
an equal division of the whole tone into 5 or 9
smaller parts (see, for example, Margo Schulter's
recent posting here).

This didn't make sense to me.  A theorist in the
early 1300s would have divided intervals arithmetically
on a monochord, which gives unequal ratio divisions.
This was the point of departure for my analysis.

These ideas appeared in print originally in a chapter
on Marchetto that was in the 1997 draft of my book.
(a real collector's item by now -- I think Kyle Gann
has the only remaining copy in its original form).

Well, today John Chalmers tipped me off that the
issue of MTO (Music Theory Online) that just got
posted today has an article about...
you guessed it.  Jay Rahn gives a reading of
Marchetto's theory that's pretty much identical
to mine.  Incredible timing.

So, even though there's more to be added to mine,
here are both URLs for your reading enjoyment.

My paper:

http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/marchet.htm

The MTO article:

http://smt.ucsb.edu/cgi-bin/check-browser.pl?rahn+98.4.6

- Joe Monzo
  monz@juno.com
  http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html

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