source file: mills2.txt Subject: wolves: last words From: Daniel Wolf <106232.3266@compuserve.com> The term _Wolf_ and its plural _Woelfe_, were established tuning terms in German in the early sixteenth century, and were rapidly imported to English as _wolf_ and _wolves_. The fact is, the name was chosen because of a perceived resemblance of certain intervals to the howling of wolves. As wolves' calls do have a distinctive steady beating, and are often dichordal, this is not an unreasonable metaphor. Any qualitative judgement about this sound is a function of time and place, and we are now - given our modern, urbanized reverence for animals - free to admire both sounds, and recognize certain similarities, much as listeners in the past apparently found both sounds disagreeable, while recognizing similarities. Your regular ( -s) ending for a synechdoche form is without precent grammatically and unnecessary, because the term _Wolf_ was used initially as an unaccompanied noun, and not in the adjective-noun combinations (_wolf interval_, _wolf tone_) found later (my earliest example is nineteenth century - but Jonathan Walker may know an earlier source). As I indicated before, the _wolf_ is a metaphor, and a metaphor must retain the declension of the borrowed term. Furthermore, English has so few surviving Germanic plural endings that it certainly adds to the surface variety of our language to be able to use one when we can! Letīs get back to tuning... Dr Daniel Wolf, Frankfurt ------------------------------ Topic No. 7 Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 15:40:11 -0500 From: Daniel Wolf <106232.3266@compuserve.com> To: "INTERNET:tuning@eartha.m" Subject: Ornaments and Intonation Message-ID: <199612101540_MC1-CE2-BDC2@compuserve.com> In passing, Jonathan Walker mentioned a feature often attributed to European music, the use of ornamentation (from vibrato/_Bebung_ to trills, etc.) as a means of obscuring intonational problems. Since the tradition of performer-supplied ornamentation is not continuous (having been broken by the tendency of composers to notate in ever more detail - and the expectation that novelty in a new composition involved departure from tradition, including traditional ornaments), I am interested in learning how this use of ornamentation is attested to in the theoretical literature. I ask because my experience of continuous ornamental traditions, particularly that of South Indian classical music, has exactly the opposite use of ornaments: in the Karnatic tradition, the ornaments (_gamakas_) are essential to getting the intonation right, not to obscuring bad intonation. In the exercises one practices in order to lear a raga, simple scales are not used, but rather ornamented melodic types that are typical of the raga in question. For example, the raga closest to Major is sung not S R G M P D N s and down again but rather ascending (every four _notes_ is a single beat): S - - - R S R S G - - - P G P - P - - - P s D - s N s N s - - - and descending: s - - - s N s N bN DbN D P - - - M G M G M - - - R S R S S - - - When sung with a Sa= 1/1 Pa= 3/2 drone, the intonation Sa 1/1 Ri 9/8 Ga 5/4 Ma 4/3 (Descending only) Pa 3/2 Da Ascending 5/3 (but only following a high Sa) Descending 27/16 bNi 7/4 (Descending only, and only as gamaka for Da) Ni 15/8 is quite easy to learn. (I learned most of the above from T. Viswanathan and Jon Barlow). Perhaps other list members have similar examples. Daniel Wolf ------------------------------ End of TUNING Digest 921 ************************ Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 10 Dec 1996 22:28 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA21184; Tue, 10 Dec 1996 22:30:11 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA21632 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id NAA29453; Tue, 10 Dec 1996 13:30:08 -0800 Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 13:30:08 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu