source file: m1589.txt
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 17:59:48 -0500 (EST)

Subject: Re: TUNING digest 1586

From: Johnny Reinhard <reinhard@IDT.NET>

Stephen, I enjoyed greatly your devil's advocate role.  Perhaps the answer
is _res cognitans ergo sum_.  (pardon spelling errors)

I had an interesting discussion with a Bulgarian bagpiper Stoyan
Boshnakov (staying with me on an arts exchange).  He wants me
(self-described polymicrotonal composer) to write for 2 bagpipers and 2
voices and bassoon -- this for a collaboration.  

Surprising to me, a Varna-based erudite player wanted to warn me against
being too "dirty," although he himself _loves_ my dirty music (Cosmic
Rays, Odysseus, Dune, Raven--he heard these).  He seemed to confuse
materials with theoretical understanding.  He positively flinched when I
suggested having the 2 drones at a 5/4 major third.  No, I did not
describe it to him that way, merely that I'd like a major third.  This
proved to be emanently doable.  

Concerts have proved that the audience receives microtonal music as they
do any other music.  Things that are new are scary in general to many
people.  

Johnny Reinhard
Director
American Festival of Microtonal Music	
318 East 70th Street, Suite 5FW
New York, New York  10021  USA
(212)517-3550/fax (212) 517-5495
reinhard@idt.net
http://www.echonyc.com/~jhhl/AFMM

On Sat, 21 Nov 1998, Stephen Soderberg wrote:

> Re:
> > > Could someone explain to me why many on this list appear to be hung up on
> > > the triad as a systemic harmonic basis?
> Gary Morrison responded:
> >    It's hard to escape the influence of history.  Whether desirable or not,
> > the truth is that most audiences and people in general interpret new
> > experiences in terms of what they already know.
> 
> Hi Gary,
> 	I don't totally disagree with you, but imagine the following
> conversation:
> 
> COMPOSER: Why are you so hung up on 12tET?  Since ancient times and in
> other cultures there have been other tunings, and now, with the aid of
> computers and synthesized sound, we can have virtually any tuning we want
> at the drop of a hat.  Why not open your ears to these other regions, both
> historically based ones as well as ones no one has ever been able to
> access before?  Some of these are quite interesting, rich and complex. 
> 
> MAN ON THE STREET: It's hard to escape the influence of [recent] history. 
> Whether desirable or not, the truth is that most audiences and people in
> general interpret new experiences in terms of what they already know. 
> 
> Would you, as the composer, close up shop at this point and just write in
> 12tET?  How do you *know* that an audience (and we should all distrust
> this collective noun) is responding to the "triad-ness" of a piece, or its
> "12tET-ishness" or some other element?  When you come right down to it,
> why should you even draw an audience's attention to "microtonality" at
> all?  Should the audience care?  If so, why ... since historically(?) 
> general(?) audiences(?) haven't had the foggiest idea about the
> intricacies or simplicities of the tuning they were hearing?
> 
> Further, don't you unnecessarily pigeonhole yourselves when you have a
> "microtonal festival"? And don't such festivals confuse the audience (and
> worse, the critics who are always looking for convenient labels) into
> believing there is such a thing as "a microtonal composer" or a
> "microtonalist school"  when, as we've seen just on this list, there's a
> stunning variety of ways to compose with an astounding variety of
> microtonal pallettes?  (I'm playing devil's advocate in all of this, and
> would rather argue the other side -- but I think none of these questions
> is inconsequential.)
> 
> Returning to the difficulties of trying to override historical (or any
> other kind) of prejudice, I'm reminded of the 19th(?) century astronomer,
> Maria Mitchell, who noted, "If the earth had waited for a precedent, it
> never would have turned on its axis." 
> 
> Steve Soderberg
> 
> PS: Please don't any literalists who may be lurking out there think I'm
> anti-triadic! My response to my own question is that, in the context of
> the complexities of 20th century music, it's a matter of texture.  In
> fact, one of the interesting things about the particular pentachords
> generated with the Erlich string that I noted in an earlier post is that
> they can be broken into third-order maximally even triads.  Thus, the
> pentachords can be viewed as forming an architechtonic layer BETWEEN the
> scale and the triads... an interesting "composing out" possibility for
> mega scale structures such as this.
>