source file: mills2.txt Date: Tue, 31 Dec 1996 14:20:08 -0800 Subject: Re: pure just, or just pure From: Johnny Reinhard On Tue, 31 Dec 1996, Daniel Wolf wrote: > ''Just'' could not have been defined by anyone in the sixteenth century > with reference to an overtone series, as that concept had yet to be > developed. One of the now obsolete meanings for ''Just'' is ''exact'', and > it used in this sense to distinguish Just intervals from tempered, which > were used as approximations. Exact might still mean honest. If one wants to deny connection to nature, I think it not very useful. > I find it not very useful to define Just with any appeal to nature, as > real, existing nature is frustratingly free of exact overtone series as > anyone who has ever tuned a stretched string or a metal bar or played a > brass instrument (I'm a trombonist by training) has experienced. It is > safer to define Just intonation in terms of whole number ratios, and then Performing Moreley's vocal music in just intonation leaves no doubt as to its naturalness in its harmony. The human voice, for which Morely wrote practically all of his wonderful music, resonates in tone through the amplitude of its rich harmonic content. Training in overtone singing brings the natural connection home. Inharmonic instruments seem to be the exception to JI in timbre. To deny the ability to hear and sing just intervals is to deny 12ET accuracy (as had La Monte Young) and this loss of self-esteem will derail your confidence in your abilities to master the material. > The Morley text (1596) - excellent for rhythmic modes and diminution but > decidedly deficient for intonation - is the first of what kind? An earlier > (if inferior) treastise was published in English in 1584, and Morley's debt > to previous non-English publications is everywhere in evidence (e.g. the A Plaine and Easie Introduction to practicall Musicke (1596) is described in Bakers by Slonimsky (1971) as the first regular treatise on music published in England. Who was the author of the earlier English treatise? BTW, I have heard just thirds described as "sweet thirds," "English thirds," and "dull thirds" due to their lack of beating. Tinctoris was describing the admittedly new consonances in Europe still as "ditones" which is a bit twisted. The words for 5/4 weren't yet in the European vocabulary. I suspect Dutch masters in music kept knowledge of these cononances close to the vest, to help insure that they would continue to have jobs. This would help explain why so few ethnic Italians, French, Spanish, etc. composers became prominent before the succession from Willaert to Zarlino, just at the time that keyboard driven temperament was taking off. Even as an Englishman of great musical ability should choose to use the term "just" to describe consonant thirds, a later Englishman (Ll. S. Lloyd) wrote in this century of "Just Temperament." But hey, the British put their punctuation outside the quotation mark anyway. Johnny Reinhard Director American Festival of Microtonal Music reinhard@ios.com Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 31 Dec 1996 23:32 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA05921; Tue, 31 Dec 1996 23:35:08 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA05916 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id OAA20525; Tue, 31 Dec 1996 14:35:07 -0800 Date: Tue, 31 Dec 1996 14:35:07 -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