Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup crazy_music Re: [crazy_music] JI moonies and modernist musical Branch Davidians

Apologia
--------

Oh boy... here we go again.
Brian, this is becoming a real pain in the buttocks.

To the rest of you: please read this, as you may find
much of it interesting, you will gain some insight into
how *I* actually feel about some of the things Brian charges
me with, and you will see how one might properly respond
to false charges when someone on an internet list accuses
you of them. And then please don't ever expect me to respond
to charges like this from Brian (or anyone else) again.
I've wasted an entire day of my life on this one, and will
not do it in the future. Just assume, from the evidence
you see here, that any charges leveled against me that
seem totally ridiculous, *are* totally ridiculous. Thanks.

(OK, finishing this post hours after I wrote that, I
see another post from you about me which requires a
response, Sunday, July 15, 2001 11:45 PM. After that,
I'm not wasting my time on this kind of stuff anymore.
We obviously both spent our Sunday writing arguments to
each other, with the rest of the list as our audience.
I'm thru with this after this post.)

> From: <xed@...>
> To: <crazy_music@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2001 12:45 PM
> Subject: [crazy_music] JI moonies
> and modernist musical Branch Davidians
>
>
> Experience shows that people interested in microtonality
> divide into opposing factions -- folks who compose
> microtonal music and have little interest in ideology, and
> folks who adhere to one or another fanatical belief
> systems...

I think that's a rather simplistic way of categorizing
the several hundred people around the world who are interested
in non-12-EDO tunings. Certainly there are many, probably
the vast majority, who overlap to a degree into both
"factions".

> ...all these fanatical microtonal belief
> systems actually boil down to 2 basic systems of belief:
>
> [1] JI moonies
> [2] Modernist musical Branch Davidians

And I think that's also a simplistic way of categorizing
the dozens of people who fall into this supposed "faction".

Now I will go thru each of your "characteristics" of the
"JI moonies" and "modernist musical Branch Davidians",
and state my responses, so as to refute your later inclusion
of me in both of these "fanatical microtonal belief systems".
(In fact, I'm the only person you cited to whom you gave
the great distinction of being a member of both.)

First batter up: the "JI moonies".
----------------------------------

The first thing I want to do is commend you on the
characteristically vivid metaphors you use in your
"name-tags".

OK, now down to specifics...

> CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JI MOONIES:
>
> The JI moonies susbscribe to a fanatical belief system
> centered around "the chord of nature." This 4:5:6 chord,
> according to the JI moonies, has magical supernatural
> powers.

Citations, please! - *I* don't believe this.

> The fanatical belief system of the JI moonies derives
> from Rameau by way of Pythagoras.

My opinion is that Rameau and Pythagoras both advocated
interesting musical theories, but also that they were
merely two in a long, long, long line of music-theory
writers and composers who all contributed to the wonderful
variety of tuning theory that I enjoy studying, writing
about, and composing in.

While I acknowledge the tremendous historical influence
these two particular figures have had in music-theory,
I don't place any special importance in their work myself,
at least not to the exclusion of other theorists. I find
the tunings and theories of many other writers to be more
interesting.

> Contrariwise, all musical practices antithetical to the
> "pure perfect natural chord of nature" are considered to
> have a diablic character. Commas are shunned; equal
> temperament is considered "degraded" and "degenerate" and
> "adulterated" -- in fact, sinful and evil, though the JI
> moonies seldom admit it outright.

Citations, please! - *I* don't believe this.

I don't consider any musical practices "to have a diabolical
character", except insofar as they are associated with the
sleazy practices of much of the music *business*, including
record companies, club owners, lawyers, mafia goons, etc.
(I have had ugly run-ins with all of them... yuck.)

I don't shun commas, in fact I rather enjoy playing with them.

And I enjoy hearing, playing, composing in, and theorizing
about many different equal temperaments.

> Thus, the fanatical belief system adhered to by JI
> moonies is a form of Manichean belief -- it postis
> [_sic_: posits] two fundamental forces in the universe,
> the forces of light and the armies of darkness.

Citations, please! - *I* don't believe this.

> To the JI moonies, some musical practices are inehrently
> good (4:5:6 chord and the subharmonic 1/4:1/5:1/6 minor, the
> harmonic series, 5-limit diatonic just intonation, the
> diatonic just major scale, etc.) while all other musical
> practices are inherently evil.

Citations, please! - *I* don't believe this.

> The primarily activities of JI moonies do not center
> around making music. Instead, the lives of the JI moonies
> center around the effort to search out heresy, to make their
> own fanatical musical belief system even more pure by
> weeding out any trace of doctrinal divergence, and the
> effort to shore up the fanatical musical belief system of
> the "chord of nature," all the while recruiting new JI
> moonies for the Sacred Cause.

Citations, please!

This is not my "primarily" acitivity, nor my primary activity.

> Like any other cult, the JI moonies have little interest
> in getting things done in the real world. Their first and
> overriding concern is to increase the size of their cult --
> thus, they must constantly proselytize everyone else on the
> supreme glories of the One True Faith, the Great and
> Glorious Path To Ultimate Musical FUlfillment, the One True
> Church of Music...the sacred ideal pure perfect natural
> "chord of nature" (the godhead) and its sacred stations of
> the cross, the harmonic series and the 5-limit JI etc.

Citations, please! - *I* don't do this.

> Like any other cult, the JI moonies also seek to insure
> the supremacy of their cult (and increase it size by getting
> converts) by destroying and crushing and wiping out all
> competing belief systems.

Citations, please! - *I* don't seek to do this.

Exactly the opposite: I treasure diversity in every aspect
of music, including tuning.

> Thus, just as with the AUm Shin
> Rikyo cult and the Dianetics cult and all the other cults,
> the other main activity of cult members (other than
> prosyltizing for the faith) involves the fanatical effort to
> cursh and silence all critics of the cult.

Citations, please! - This is not *my* "other main activity".

> The first thing any JI moonie does on a discussion group is
> to preach the supreme glories of the sacred 4:5:6 chord.

Citations, please! - *I* don't do this.

> Theinstant [_sic_: The instant] anyone doubts the fanatical
> belief system of the JI moonie, we immediately encounter a
> fusillade of insults and verbal attacks and hysterical lies,
> all designed to crush and silence any criticism of the
> JI moonies' fanatical belief system (namely, the "pure
> perfect natural chord of nature," the godhead of the JI
> moonies, and its associated stations of the cross -- the
> harmonic series, 5-limit just intonation, etc.)

Citations, please! - *I* don't do any of this.

> Most JI moonies produce no music at all. A few JI moonies
> produce a small amount of music, but very little.

Fair enough on this point - partially conceded.

*I* have *not* been very prolific (at least concerning
completed pieces) for the last three years; reason
given immediately below.

> As with all other cults, members of the cult of the
> sacred "chord of nature" have little time left over
> for activities not cirectly related to recruiting new
> cult members, searching for heresy within the cult,
> elaborating the cult doctrine and eleiminating
> contradictions within the cult belief system, and
> crushing and silencing all criticism of the cult.

Citations, please!

None of these are reasons why I have not been prolific
for the last three years. The primary reasons are:

1) I need to spend a lot of time working in order to
earn a living, and

2) I've been very busy creating webpages for my website
(begun in 1998), which I provide mainly as a free
and comprehensive educational service to the
microtonal/xenharmonic community.

If anyone would like to pay me for the work I do on my
website, fine, that would be wonderful... then I could
retire from my day-job and perhaps do more composing,
or at the very least, create additional useful webpages.
I would be much more productive *and* much happier.

Please send checks (any amount accepted) to:

Joe Monzo
4432-B Illinois St
San Diego, CA 92116

I omit your following citations because I find that there
is nothing in them with which I disagree or want to argue.

On to the next "fanatical microtonal belief system".
----------------------------------------------------

> CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MODERNIST MUSICAL BRANCH
> DAVIDIANS:
>
> The modernist musical Branch Davidians subscribe to a
> different fanatical belief system. Their belief system comes
> from Friedrich Herder by way of Georg Hegel, and combines
> elements of B. F. Skinner's behaviorism (actually a
> refinement of Locke's rationalist Enlightenment philosophy)
> with the Hegelian doctrine of historical determinism.

Citations, please!

I'm barely familiar with any of the stuff written by these
guys; mainly only a faded memory of Skinner's work, from
a high-school psychology class.

> According to the modernist musical Branch Davidians,
> history is an ascending ramp and the human mind is tabula
> rasa, a blank slate with no inherent characteristics.

Citations, please! - *I* don't believe this.

> According to the modernist musical Branch Davidians,
> inevitable historical processes drive musical practices, and
> the individual composer's only purpose is to discover this
> inevitable historical engine hidden within the music of each
> era and push music forward, up the ramp of history, on a
> never-ending ascent of Musical Progress toward the ultimate
> state of Musical Nirvana.

Citations, please! - *I* don't believe this.

> In order [_sic_: word missing: to] force musical progress
> forward, the individual composer (if s/he is historically
> worthwhile) must break the old set of musical rules and
> creat new ones through the force of hi/r genius, thereby
> forcing the reactionary and backward-looking audience to
> appreicate the wondrous musical value of his new
> compositional practice by subjecting the audience and hi/r
> critics to so much of hi/r new music that they become
> conditioned to it and finally perceive it as beautiful.

Citations, please!

This doesn't describe the way I compose. Mostly, I simply
have fun playing with sound. When I break the "rules", it's
because I enjoy playing with what I perceive to be the
listener's expectations (based on my own expectations as
an as-objective-as-possible listener), and doing something
that at first seems unexpected but in hindsight, after
hearing more of the piece, makes perfect logical sense.

This procedure is something I have discerned in some of
my favorite composers, such as Beethoven, Mahler, Schoenberg,
Ravel, Gershwin, Robert Johnson, John Coltrane, the Beatles,
Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen,
and Public Enemy.

Because I admire and enjoy their work so much, I emulate this
aspect of their methods in my own pieces. At his point, it
constitutes one of the recognizable aspects of my own "style".

> The path to musical Nirvana at the end of the ever-
> ascending ramp of historical musical progress (according to
> the modernist Musical Branch Davidian) requires more and
> more musical complexity, more and more theory, more and more
> elaborate mathematics, more and more technology.

The first half of this paragraph doesn't apply to me.

I suppose an examination of my recent work, and my postings
to the various tuning lists, would give an observer the idea
that the charges levelled in the second half of this paragraph
could be construed as applying to me.

The only reasons I have so much to say about any of these
things are:

1) I really enjoy studying tuning theory, especially
its history,

2) I *really* enjoy the artwork that goes into making
lattice diagrams, as well as the final result, and

3) I hope to mold some of my very imaginative ideas
about manipulating visual representations of sound
(specifically, the pitch aspect of it) into a very
powerful software application that will provide ways
that are easier and more intuitive, to compose and
analyze microtonal music. See
</justmusic>.

It so happens that mathematics and technology play quite
a large role in all three of these endeavors.

> Thus, like the other fanatical musical belief system, the
> modernist musical Branch Davidians also susbscribe to a form
> of Manichean belief: to the modernist musical Branch
> Davidian, mathematical methods of creating music = good,
> non-mathematical = evil; complexity = good, while simplicity
> = evil; progress toward a glorious music future = good,
> regression to past musical practices = evil; anything new in
> music = good, anything anyone has already done = evil; more
> tchnology = good, while less technology = evil.

Citations, please!

*I* don't subscribe to this "belief", which is actually
a whole set of beliefs. I don't subscribe to any of them.

> And so the modernist musical Branch Davidian also liveis
> in a musical world divided into forces of light and armies
> of darkness. In this case, the forces of light are the
> forward-looking modernist composers who bravely cast aside
> such outworn cliches as recognizable melodies and functional
> harmonies and perceptible rhythms and audible musical
> organize. Meanwhile, the armies of darkness are the
> regressive subhuman troglydytes who cling to obsolete and
> essentially fascistic musical usages like tonality, musical
> beauty, acousticaly smooth musical intervals, perceptible
> musical structures, intuition, emotion, etc.

Citations, please!

Wrong yet again in my case, Brian. You've heard my music.
You *know* that the *majority* of it is filled with "tonality,
musical beauty, acousticaly smooth musical intervals,
perceptible musical structures, intuition, emotion, etc.".

I'm basically a pop-tune composer with a healthy interest
in an extremely wide variety of other types of music, and
a very great admiration for late-romantic symphonic music
(especially Austrian) in particular.

So why in the world are you, a few more paragraphs on,
going to accuse me of being a member of this "faction"?

Citations, *please*!

> Like all other cults, the modernist musical Branch
> Davidians do not have time to produce much music -- if any.
> Most modernist musical Branch Davidians produce no music at
> all. (Alan Forte, Robert Morris, et alii) The sole activity
> of these people is to produce ever-more elbaorate and ever-
> more mathematicaly complex theory to bolster the agenda of
> the modernist musical Branch Davidians.

Citations, please!

Doesn't apply to me. As I stated in my last refutation
of your charges, I produce and upload to my website new
music every week, whether brand new compositions or
theoretical illustrations composed by me, or my MIDI
versions of masterworks of the past.

> The other main activities of the modernist musical
> Branch Davidians involve search [_sic_: searching] out
> heretics and backsliders <snip>

Citations, please!

*I'm* certainly not interested in wasting my time "searching
out heretics and backsliders". Exactly the opposite.
I'm interested in learning all I can about all the different
musics of the world, and the theories about them. I keep
my mind wide open to learning about any new tuning idea
I'm able to understand.

> Since musical modernism involves a foreordained and
> predestined process which is historically inevitable
> (according to the modernistm musical Branch Davidian),
> anyone who criticizes the modernist musical agenda
> <...> is not merely an enemy of modernist music... Such
> critics and dissneters are enemies of progress itself,
> they are the enemies of all humanity, and as such they
> must be crushed and silenced, wiped out, destroyed and
> annihilated to the last man, woman and child.

Citations, please!

Again, I refuted in my last response to you the charge
that this kind of aggressive behavior applies to me.
It does not, and never will. I am a pacifist and a
firm believer in non-violent solutions to confrontation.

> The modernist musical Branch Davidian thus takes on
> the role of a commissar in the former Soviet Union. S/he
> dictates the content of new music concerts in order to
> condition the regressive and ignorant audiences to the
> unspeakable gloies [_sic_] of the latest New Music
> (all musical likes and dislikes are merely a matter of
> Skinner-type operant conditioning, acccorind to the
> modernist musical Branch Davidian), while forcing the
> progress of New Music through the latest musical
> Five-Year Plan (ever more math, ever more theory, ever
> more complexity), and insuring the success of the project
> by searching out and destroying all "counterrevolutionary"
> musical activity and crushing and silencing it.

Citations, *please*!!!!!!!!!

It's *ridiculous* to claim that any of this has anything
at all to do with me, or that I have anything at all to
do with any of it. The only "authority" I possess anywhere
at all is in my webpages and tuning-lists posts, and there,
I always express a very catholic interest in all aspects
of tuning, and never propogate any narrow opinion or
viewpoint.

Now, on to a consideration of citations you use against
the "modernist musical Branch Davidian belief system".

> "[Schoenberg's] miscalculations nonetheless nudge us into
> recognizing something about art that seems to have eluded
> several prominent thinkers of the early twentieth century.

Ahhhh.... at last, we finally come to the subject which
causes you to include *me* in all this nonsense.

> The sorry fact is that if art can be said to evolve at all,
> it does not evolve in the simple direct and unidimensional
> way Schoenberg imagined. It cannot, and for at least two
> reasons. First, as Leonard B. Meyer has said, `Most
> compositions `solve' a host of problems -- that is,
> reconcile a variety of claims, some of which, at least,
> cannot be accounted for on internal grounds alone.' [Meyer,
> "Innovation, Choice, and the History of Music," pg. 536]

I find this *really* amusing.

Again and again, Schoenberg wrote about "compositional
problems". You want a few citations?... :)

Schoenberg, Arnold. 1911. _Harmonielehre_:

>> Again, the first exercises in modulation aim merely at
>> the quickest and simplest solution of the problem;
>> but with every newly mastered means the aim must be
>> extended accordingly.
>> [Schoenberg 1978, _Theory of Harmony_, p 15.]

>> Should someone succeed in deriving the phenomena solely
>> from the physical properties of tone and explaining them
>> solely on that basis, should the problems be thereby
>> successfully clarified and solved, then it would hardly
>> matter whether our physical knowledge of the nature of
>> tone is correct or not.
>> [Schoenberg 1978, _Theory of Harmony_, p 19.]

>> From this point of view it is thus of little importance
>> for the explanation of harmonic problems, whether
>> science has already refuted the function of overtones
>> or only raised some doubts.
>>
>> Should one succeed, as said, in defining the problems
>> sensibly and presenting them intelligibly, even though
>> the overtone theory be false, then the goal could still
>> be reached - even if it turned out after some time that
>> both, overtone theory and explanation, were false (but
>> this outcome is by no means inevitable).
>> [Schoenberg 1978, _Theory of Harmony_, p 20.]

And of course, his well-known lecture from 1934 published
in _Style and Idea_: "Problems of Harmony", which begins:

>> Modern music has centered interest on two problems:
>> that of tonality, and that of dissonance.
>> [Schoenberg 1984, _Style and Idea_, p 268.]

--------------------------------------------

> Second, no art exists as a separate encompassing entity;
> none behaves as an organism or `container' over and beyond
> its family of exemplars, its contributaries linked causally
> in ways that can ensure uniform change. Indeed, the term
> `evolve' needs liberal qualifications and reservations if it
> is to be helpful at all in describing historical successions
> within an art form.
> "Schoenberg erred in taking [Schenker's] biological metaphor
> at face value. He fancies the Art as a totality, as a
> species, if you will, whose systemic changes echoed a
> <snip>

OK, I wrote what comes after this earlier, and
it's now 1 am Monday morning, I should be asleep,
and I still haven't even read all of the anti-Schoenberg
stuff to which I wanted to reply. And now I see that you
finally did respond to my earlier reply regarding
Schoenberg. This is totally out of hand, and there
are some things in your most recent post now that I
must address immediately. So I'm just finishing this
post right now. Just keep reading.

--------------------------------------------

Some statistics about list volume - who's dominating whom?
----------------------------------------------------------

> On the old practical microtonality group, modernist
> musical Branch Davidians made a pre-emtive strike,
> attempting to dominate the list by setting the prevailing
> topics of discussion. Their attempt started exactly as on
> the original Mills College Alternative Tuning List -- by
> flooding the list with vast lists of numbers and equations
> and huge quantities of abstract speculations with no
> discernible connection to actual microtonal music. The point
> men for the modernist musical Branch Davidians were Steven
> Kallstrom and Dan Stearns.
> My posts stoppped that power grab but blew apart the old
> practical microtonality list.
> Withal, notice that no one has tried a similar power
> grab on this current practical microtonality group. It has
> become clear that the price for trying to flood this list
> with numbers and equations and idle theoretical speculations
> will be too high for the modernist musical Branch Davidians
> who attempt it.

All hail Brian McLaren, the savior and liberator of the
practicalmicrotonality groups! (that's sarcasm, in case
anyone out there is too eye-glazed or bored to catch it...)

No, Brian... what really happened is that on 20 May 2001
(exactly one week before this crazy_music list was created,
and 10 days before the original practicalmicrotonality list
disappeared), a new group called "tuning-math" was created,
so that those of us who like to write long posts filled with
mathematical stuff that we believe has something to do with
tuning, can do so without bothering - and without interference
from - those subscribers on other tuning lists who don't like
to read such stuff, don't want their mailboxes filled with
massive amounts of junk they're not interested in, and/or
don't believe that it has anything to do with music, and
who feel the need to complain about it publicly, loudly,
and aggressively.

We have our safe haven and we use it, and are now happy
to leave that kind of thing off of the other tuning lists
as much as possible. And we know that everyone else who
reads it appreciates it as much as the person who posted
it, and that those who don't want it appreciate the fact
that we don't shove it down their throats.

(Hint, hint... can you learn something from this?
There are now enough different kinds of tuning lists
with different topicalities, that there's no reason
why you can't belong to several, as many of us do,
and post on-topic articles to the appropriate list.
In fact one particular list, tuning-challenges, was
created specifically as a forum for you, Brian McLaren,
and you have so far refused to accept public invitations
to join it. There's no need for you to insistently
badger those on this list who have expressed a negative
reaction to your style, when you can go there and post
anything and as much of it as you want to.)

As the evidence either indicates or implies, the one
and only person who has tried to make a "power grab"
on this list is... *you*!

You attempt to "dominate the list" with posts that are
much longer than what many people here are interested
in reading [citation: this list's archives], and you
have bombarded the Files section with up to 10 or so
new mp3's at a time [citation: this list's archives].

And lest you respond by claiming that I'm "attacking"
you, I'm not. I always enjoy your music, and much of
your writing too. I'm simply stating some facts.

Let's examine some crazy_music list volume statistics.

As of the time I wrote this section of the post
(around 4 pm Sunday afternoon) and created the graph
that goes with it, which is at
</crazy_music/files/monz/bytes-posted.gif>,
this is the record of activity on this list since June 5,
nearly a month before you started posting, ranked by order
of size in kilobytes (dates given to specify the largest
of them). The second item on the list is the one I'm
directly responding to in this post.

K author

55 mclaren Wednesday, July 11, 2001 11:36 PM
52 mclaren Sunday, July 15, 2001 12:45 PM
44 mclaren Saturday, July 07, 2001 8:34 PM
44 mclaren Thursday, July 12, 2001 8:24 AM
41 monz Tuesday, July 10, 2001 6:34 PM
34 mclaren Sunday, July 08, 2001 3:02 PM
29 mclaren Monday, July 09, 2001 8:48 PM
27 mclaren Sunday, July 01, 2001 10:53 AM
25 mclaren Sunday, July 01, 2001 8:11 AM
22 Klaus Schmirler Friday, July 13, 2001 4:51 PM
19 mclaren Thursday, July 12, 2001 6:32 PM
18 mclaren Thursday, July 12, 2001 9:54 PM
16 mclaren Wednesday, July 11, 2001 11:33 PM
16 mclaren Tuesday, July 10, 2001 6:02 PM
16 Margo Schulter Friday, July 13, 2001 3:57 PM
14 mclaren Friday, July 13, 2001 7:50 AM
14 Kraig Grady Monday, July 09, 2001 10:36 PM
13 mclaren Tuesday, July 03, 2001 9:21 PM
12 monz Friday, July 14, 2000 9:05 AM
12 Graham Breed Sunday, July 08, 2001 12:58 PM
11 monz Sunday, July 08, 2001 6:59 PM
10 mclaren
9 mclaren
9 mclaren
8 mclaren
8 Margo Schulter
8 John deLaubenfels
8 David J. Finnamore
7 Robert Walker
7 Robert Walker
7 Joseph Pehrson
7 mclaren
7 mclaren
7 mclaren
7 Margo Schulter
7 Kraig Grady
7 John Chalmers
7 Bob Valentine
7 Ed Borasky
6 Robert Walker
6 Robert Walker
6 Margo Schulter
6 Margo Schulter
6 Margo Schulter
6 Kraig Grady
6 Kraig Grady
6 Kraig Grady
6 Bob Valentine
6 Bob Valentine
5 Robert Walker
5 Rick McGowan
5 Rick McGowan
5 monz
5 monz
5 monz
5 mclaren
5 mclaren
5 Mary Ackerley
5 Mary Ackerley
5 Mary Ackerley
5 Klaus Schmirler
5 Jeff Scott
5 Jeff Scott
5 John deLaubenfels
5 John deLaubenfels
5 John deLaubenfels
5 Bob Valentine
5 Ed Borasky
5 Ed Borasky
5 Ed Borasky
5 Davud Beardsley
4 Jon Szanto
4 Robert Walker
4 Robert Walker
4 Robert Walker
4 Rick McGowan
4 Joseph Pehrson
4 Joseph Pehrson
4 Joseph Pehrson
4 monz
4 monz
4 monz
4 monz
4 monz
4 monz
4 Margo Schulter
4 Margo Schulter
4 Margo Schulter
4 Margo Schulter
4 John Starrett
4 Jeff Scott
4 John deLaubenfels
4 John deLaubenfels
4 John deLaubenfels
4 Jacky Ligon
4 Graham Breed
4 FreeNote
4 Dan Stearns
4 Dan Stearns
4 Dan Stearns
4 Bob Valentine
4 Ed Borasky
4 Ed Borasky
4 Ed Borasky
3 monz
3 monz
3 monz
3 monz
3 monz
3 monz
3 monz
3 monz
3 monz
3 monz
3 monz
3 monz
3 monz
3 monz
3 monz
3 monz
3 monz
3 mclaren
3 mclaren
3 mclaren

and 91 3-K posts by other people, 120 2-K posts, and
one 1-K post.

So, until this one here, the longest post here which was not
written by you was my 41-K response to you on "Monzo's
dreary effort to defend the indefensible".

And the main reason that post was so long was because
it contained extensive quotes from your post, as well
as a long citation from Schoenberg which you "required"
from me in order for me to substantiate my claims. And I
started that one off by *apologizing* for the length of it.

And, I hasten to point out to any reader here who didn't
catch it: after you hurled insults and false charges at me,
and I refuted them in that post with the citations you so
doggedly insist on, you *never* replied to that response
of mine. [OK, now, later, I see that you have replied to
it: message of Sunday, July 15, 2001 11:45 PM.]

The next longest post which was not written by you was
Klaus Schmirler's 22-K post, which was also a response
to you.

Finally, we have Margo Schulter's 16-K post to Mary
Ackerley, which is the longest post in this segment
of the archive (337 out of a total of 464 posts),
which is not by you or a response to you.

So on a list which has had 21 regular contributors since
June 5th, you alone have submitted over 31% of the
total bytes posted (and all of them since July 1st!!).
I have submitted over 10% of the total bytes posted
(and I've been active here since nearly the beginning,
but that figure will have jumped up significantly after I
send this post), and no-one else's totals come very close
even to mine, let alone yours.

And since you brought up the "old practicalmicrotonality
list" in connection with attempts to "dominate the list",
let's go back and take a look at *those* archives (which,
unfortunately, are no longer available for public scrutiny).

One finds there a collection of similar-sized posts from
you, then Jacky Ligon grabbing a spot in the top three with
his 77-K post quoting and responding to a lengthy document
by Margo Schulter, and you (mclaren) still planted firmly
on top with one foot in each of the two largest-post spots:

- your Saturday, May 26, 2001 8:59 PM post "Common sense",
nearly double the size of Jacky/Margo's at 132-K, and

- (drum roll please) in the number one position, your post
of Tuesday, May 29, 2001 8:23 AM titled "The greatest
pathologies and dysfuctions of Western civilization",
at nearly double the size of *that* one, a whopping 230-K!

(And barely on-topic for that list, to boot! Perhaps
more than anything else that happened in its final
hours, *that* big off-topic accusative post is what
killed that list.)

Now, *who* was that whom you were accusing of attempting
to make a "power grab", or to "dominate the list"? The
evidence I see *clearly* points to *you*, Brian. *Please*
refute this charge if there is any possible way for you
to do so, because I want to see it! Citations, *please*!!!!

> On this new practical microtonality list, the modernist
> musical Branch Davidians backed off...but the JI moonies
> (probably noticing a power vacuum and seeing an opportunity
> to recruit followers) stepped in and made a pre-emptive
> strike by prosetlytizing of their fanatical belief system.
> The point man among the JI moonies on this list was John
> deLaubenfels, backed up by the JI moonie Graham Breed and
> supported by a person who combined the belief systems of the
> JI moonies and the modernist musical Branch Davidians -- Joe
> Monzo.

Ah, at long last, you finally explicitly include me in one
of your alleged "factions"!

For the poor lost reader out there: *this* is the reason
why I systematically went thru and refuted nearly each and
every one of mclaren's points about "JI moonies" and
"modernist musical Branch Davidians", because he was referring
in part directly to me with all the accusations he made
in those points.

> WHY DO THE JI MOONIES AND THE MODERNIST MUSICAL BRANCH
> DAVIDIANS USE SUCH VICIOUS LIES AND SUCH SADISTIC SMEARS AND
> SUCH HYSTERICAL VERBAL ATTACKS?
>
> Because the members of these 2 musical cults are
> 100% totally convinced of the absolute and final truth of
> their fanatical musical beliefs. Since these cultists have
> seen The Truth, anyone who doubts or disputes their
> fanatical musical beliefs is not merely an enemy of the
> cult, s/he is an enemy of The Truth, an enemy of all
> mankind, a traitor to humanity who must (for the good of the
> human race) be crushed and silenced and discredited in any
> way possible, using *any* means necessary.

CITATIONS, *PLEASE*!!!!!

I *really* resent your continual SCREAMING of these
accusations against me publicly without providing any
evidence whatsoever that they really do apply to me,
and the concurrent need for me to waste *enormous*
amounts of my time responding, so that any innocent
reader who stumbles onto your post at least might have
a chance to hear my side of the truth.

Really, the whole Hitler / Nazi / Branch Davidian /
JI moonie / Partch moonie / Heaven's Gate / etc. parade
that you keep marching out here, has gotten quite
tired by now. To me it's really funny the way you
deride L. Ron Hubbard, because the posts you write
in this vein are (to me) really beginning to resemble
his sci-fi-fantasy account of reality.

Why not use the time and energy you waste on this crap,
which is simply an egotistical show of force by you,
to instead submit more of the thoughtful type of posts
you send from time to time, like your wonderfully
informative ones on recent brain theories and "part 1 of 11"
on why math has nothing to do with music, or the hilarious
one about your night of MIDI hell in the studio?

Do you remember that we are "your *gentle* readers"?
These two types of posts show a much more humane side
of you that is far easier for us to digest than the
massive amounts of tripe you posted that I'm quoting
and responding to here.

> Accordingly any lie is fair game, as long as creates a
> cloud of doubt around the critic.
> As with Stalinist True Believers, any method is
> justified if it furthers the Great Cause. Thus, lies are
> good if they further the belief system. Rewriting history is
> good if it eliminates backsliders who threaten the belief
> system. Eliminating the photographs of discredited Central
> Committee Members is good if it silences dissent. Character
> assassination is good if it deters the enemies of Glorious
> Soviet Socialist progress. And so on.
>
> WHY DO THE JI MOONIES AND THE MODERNIST MUSICAL BRANCH
> DAVIDIANS PRODUCE SO LITTLE MUSIC?

BECAUSE YOU KEEP SCREAMING CHARGES AT US THAT WE FEEL
OBLIGED TO WASTE OUR TIME REFUTING!

> In essence, these 2 belief systems boil down to efforts
> to force music into a static steady state from which there
> can be escape, no change, no alteration. In the case of the
> JI moonies, the static steady state, the ideal goal for all
> music, is pure perfect natural 5-limit just intonation which
> sounds the "chord of nature" over and over again, without
> end. On the other hand, in the case of the modernist
> musical Branch Davidians, the static steady state is a
> modernistic music which is so new and so complex that [_sic_:
> superflous word] and so futuristics [_sic_: futuristic]
> that no melodies and no harmonies and rhythms and no audible
> organization can be perceived.

Citations, please! What gives you *any* grounds at all for
including me in either of these two supposed "belief systems"?

1) I *do not* believe that there should be any "efforts to
force music into a static steady state from which there
can be escape, no change, no alteration". Quite the
opposite. One reason I'm so fascinated with tuning math
and theory is the endless variety of different tunings
and ideas for their use and about their effects.

And, incidentally, since you've accused *him* of it too,
neither did Schoenberg believe this charge - in fact,
he rails against precisely this very viewpoint:

In conclusion to his polemic against Schenker's insistence
on a 5-limit, to which I referred in my 41-K post where
I correct your page-number error in a citation from the
_Harmonielehre_, Schoenberg wrote: [1911: p __, 1978: p 319]

>> Such errors result whenever one merely searches out
>> reasons enough to explain what is known, instead of
>> providing a surplus of reasons to embrace cases that
>> do not yet exist. Such errors result whenever one
>> takes the *known* phenomena to be the *only ones* there
>> are, to be the ultimate and immutable manifestations of
>> nature, and *explains only these*, instead of contemplating
>> nature comprehensively in its relation to our feelings
>> and perceptions. If the latter viewpoint is taken, these
>> phenomena will reveal that they are not conclusive, not
>> final, not definitive; rather that they are a small part
>> of an immense, *incaluable* [emphasis Monzo's] whole, in
>> which the number five is just as interesting as, but no
>> more mysterious than, all other numbers, be they prime numbers,
>> products, or powers. [other emphases all Schoenberg's]

That last clause refers so strongly to my own theory that,
despite Schoenberg's professed lack of mathematical knowledge,
it betrays his keen understanding of what he was hearing.

And I note with *tremendous* amusement that Schoenberg had
as little faith in musical mathematics as you do! [citation:
my emphasis on Schoenberg's word "incalculable"].

Yet you hold him up as a paradigm of someone who simply
played with numbers and created no worthwhile music.

He *did* concern himself extensively with numerology, but
was also a brilliant composer. (And here I stop, because it
enters the realm of opinion, which is not my purpose here.)

2) I do not believe even a tiny bit that 'the ideal goal
for all music, is pure perfect natural 5-limit just
intonation which sounds the "chord of nature" over and
over again, without end'.

True, I like just-intonation, but, as with you, 5-limit
is only one variety of it that I compose in. And I also
like 19- and 72-EDO, still write plenty of music in the
dreaded 12-EDO, am experimenting with other EDOs, and
also with a variety of meantones and irregular temperaments.

3) While it's true that I do like many pieces by others and
do write some myself that can be described as "modernistic
music which is so new and so complex that and so
futuristics [_sic_] that no melodies and no harmonies
and rhythms and no audible organization can be perceived",
I'm very far from believing that that's how all music
should be.

In fact, I find many of your own "nebulous"-style
pieces to fit this description. My music usually has a
much stronger rhythmic drive than yours, as well as
melodies that I think are more recognizable as "tunes"
than yours. This is not meant as any kind of disparagement
of your compositions, and please don't take it that way.

I like a lot of your music; I'm simply stating what I
perceive to be some different characteristics between
our respective styles, which relate directly to the
statements you make in connection with the "Davidians".

> Erv Wilson has described 5-limit just intonation of the
> kind pushed by John deLaubenfels and David Doty as
> "sounding to insipid that if the word `insipid' were not
> part of the English language, it would be necessary to
> invent it to describe this music."
> Most practicing musicians agree. Practicing musicians
> find unacceptably bland and boring the ideal static steady
> state espoused by the JI moonies.

Citations, please! Show me where "Most practicing musicians
agree"... I would wager that not even a tiny fraction of
one percent have ever even heard of John deLaubenfels.

(No offense against you intended, John...
simply making an extremely rough estimate.)

And *PLEASE* show me where Erv Wilson "described
5-limit just intonation of the kind pushed by John
deLaubenfels". I'm really interested in seeing this.

For one thing, deLaubenfels doesn't push fixed JI,
but rather, adaptive JI, which is a dynamic on-the-fly
distribution of fractions-of-a-comma adjustments;
and he doesn't limit himself to 5-limit - he's retuned
pieces of mine into adaptive 7- and 11-limit. I sent two
posts to this recently about my "Bulgarian choral piece"
which John rendered into adaptive 11-limit and is sitting
right now in the Files section of this list (in a lo-fi
version). I'm not arguing against what you say about
"JI moonies", but you can hardly claim with any evidence
that what deLaubenfels "pushes" has anything to do with a
"static steady state".

Secondly, when deLaubenfels uses a fixed tuning at
all (which he calls COFT, "Calculated Optimum Fixed
Tuning"), it's for purposes of "grounding" his dynamic
tuning and it has little to do with any actual JI
tuning. Rather, it distributes fractions-of-a-comma
adjustments resulting in something resembling an irregular
well-temperament, so as to preserve as many JI vertical
sonorities as possible, and this procedure is entirely
dependent on the actual vertical sonorities in any
given piece, which must be analyzed before retuning
by his methods is possible.

Thirdly, I doubt very strongly that Erv has ever even
heard of John deLaubenfels, whose work, while it bears
a resemblance to ideas of Vicentino and other more
modern adaptive-tuning experimenters, to my knowledge
is unique. If this is the case, then how could Erv
possibly describe a tuning "of the kind pushed by
John deLaubenfels"?

Your errors in describing deLaubenfels's work demonstrate
that you have devoted very little time and/or attention
to studying or listening to his body of work.

[Excellent Norman Cazden and Robert Walker quotes snipped
and ignored, because now at 3 AM I simply refuse to spend
any more time on this other than the proofreading I'm doing
right now.]

> On the other side of the fence, both audiences and
> composers have largely rejected the musical work product of
> the modernist musical Branch Davidians. In fact, even the
> modernist musical Branch Davidians themselves find their own
> music intolerably boring, since one piece of "new" "daring"
> "groundbreaking" "new" modernist music with has no
> recognizable melodies and no functional harmonies and no
> perceptible rhythmic pulse and no audible organization
> sounds all but identical to every other piece of "new"
> "daring" "groundbreaking" "new" modernist music with no
> discernible melodies or harmonies of rhythms.

I certainly like *my* own music! These days, I listen to
my own stuff far more often than anyone else's!

I do not find my "own music intolerably boring", and
my pieces hardly sound "all but identical". [Citiation:
listen to the mp3's and MIDI-files residing at my website:
<http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/worklist/worklist.htm>.]

> WHY HAVE THE JI MOONIES AND THE MODERNIST MUSICAL BRANCH
> DAVIDIANS BECOME SO STRIDENT OVER THE YEARS?

HE SCREAMED, IN CAPITAL LETTERS!

L.O.L. is all I really need to say here.

[Again at 3 AM, more reiterations of JI moonie and
musical Branch Davidian hyperbole snipped.]

> WHY DO THE SMART PEOPLE WHO BECOME JI MOONIES AND
> MODERNIST MUSICAL BRANCH DAVIDIANS SAY SUCH FOOLISH THINGS?
>
> Modernist musical Branch Davidians are eseentially an
> apocalyptic cult. Their cult guru, Arnold Schoenberg, ran
> around shouting "The end of tonality is coming!"

No he didn't. Citations, please!

Schoenberg felt *personally* that the resources of
traditional tonal practice had been exhausted because
*he could not express his new musical ideas in terms
of them*!!!

Viewing and treating the 12-EDO scale as a 12-note chromatic
universe instead of a 7-basic-note + 5-secondary-note
diatonic one allowed him to do so. I view this as simply
another harmonic paradigm shift, similar to the one which
occured in Europe around 1450 or so in regard to acceptance
of the 5-limit ratios (or approximations of them) as consonant
intervals and adjustment in practice of some of the long-accepted
Pythagorean intervals to those 5-limit ones.

> WHY DID SO MANY PEOPLE TELL SO MANY LIES AND HURL SO
> MANY PERSONAL ATTACKS AT ME?
>
> The ultimate heresy for all cults occurs when an
> outsider comes into the cult compound and starts urging cult
> members to abandon their beliefs and stop being members of
> the cult.

I'm ignoring the rest of this section because you're not
questioning any cult I belong to. Also, again, *I* never
told one lie nor hurled a single personal attack at you.
[Citation: my post of Tuesday, July 10, 2001 6:34 PM.]

> WHY IS ACTUAL MUSIC SUCH A LOW PRIORITY ON INTERNET
> MICROTONAL DISCUSSION GROUPS?
>
> <hyperbole section snipped>
>
> I have previously remarked on the complete
> incompatability between a text-only ASCII medium which can
> only permit words and numbers to be easily and efficiently
> exchanged, and the process of listening to and composing
> actual music. The process of trying to discuss actual
> music on an internet discussion group is as foredoomed as
> the attempt to convey the visual details of a painting by
> doing a funny dance.

Brian, your criticism here is sadly outdated. As you
obviously know, with the tuning lists hosted at Yahoo,
it's now possible to up/download graphic images as well
as audio files from the web-based group pages.

You yourself have posted far more music to this group's
Files section than anyone else. So why are you still
saying this? Looks like another dead horse to me.
[Citation: my first dead horse reference is in my post of
Friday, July 14, 2000 9:05 AM.]

> WHY DO PEOPLE TRY TO EQUATE ME WITH MEMBERS OF THESE 2
> MUSICAL CULTS?
>
> <snip>
> In actual fact, if you study my posts on the internet,
> you will discover that they all boil down to several simple
> tenets:
>
> [1] Get hands-on experience in microtonal tunings and
> decide for yourself, rather than using an excuse to avoid
> thinking and doing hard work.

Certainly a commendable suggestion.

> Such excuses include using math, folliwng the muiscal
> practices of some guru like Partch,

What's wrong with following a guru, especially if only
for a short "apprentice" period?

> subscribing to the unsupported statements of some
> historical figure, or debating endlessly on the internet (as
> Joe Monzo) instead of actually composing microtonal music
> which demonstrates the validity of your claims.

The only "endless" debates I get involved in are the ones
in which I refute *your* false accusations against me, and
the reason they are endless is because you never respond
to my detailed, thoughtful, and citation-filled replies
- as tho my evidence will fade away or disappear and be
forgotten by subscribers - and then a few days later you
come back and post the same nonsense about me again, and
I have to refute it all over again because obviously you
didn't read the previous refutation...

Frankly, I'm very tired of it, and would much rather be
working on either some music or some tuning-theory.
(or enjoying some sunshine... more on that below...)

> [2] The "sound" or "mood" or "sonic fingerprint" of
> various microtonal tuning cannot be adequately described in
> words -- you must hear these tunings to actually know
> anything meaningful about their overall "sound."

I tend to agree with this. But I also hold firmly to
the belief that non-verbal visual representations of
sound (i.e., musical notations, lattice diagrams) *do*
impart information about music and about tunings which
can be at least distantly, and perhaps closely, related
to what can be heard.

Anyway, each person hears the same thing differently
to some extent, so listening is perhaps no less fallible
a method for determining the "sonic fingerprint" of a
tuning than is seeing a visual representation.

> [3] Hands-one [_sic_: on] experience seems to show
> that there is no such thing as a "good" tuning or a "bad'
> tuning -- experience compsing in a wide variety of tunings
> has shown me that no musical tuning is musically worthless,
> and no musical tuning is "unusually musically useful above
> all others."

I agree *almost* totally with this. "Almost", because I
disagree *somewhat* with your contention that 'no musical
tuning is "unusually musically useful above all others." '

I'd mitigate that statement somewhat, eliminating the bit
about "above all others". In that light, certain tunings
(two examples: 12-EDO and 19-EDO) *do* in fact imply a
wealth of harmonic and melodic resources with a small
number of distinct pitches, and so at least in the sense
of what might be called a "high signal-to-noise ratio",
they are "unusually musically useful above" *some* "others".

> [4] Hands-on experience seems to indicate that neither
> any JI system nor any JI [_sic_: ET?] system nor any NJ NET
> system represents any kind of musical "final state" or "ideal"
> for music. Hands-on experience seems to show that all three
> general categories of tuning (just, equal tempered, and non-
> jsut [_sic_: non-just] non-equal-tempered) can produce equally
> vivid and memorable music, depending on the style and composer
> and the timbres etc.

I totally agree with this, as well as with your dictum that
"the panty sizes of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders could be
used to produce a valid tuning system"... in fact, I think
I'll come up with a grant proposal to do the research and
try that one out! ;-)

> Then study the assertions made by various JI moonies and
> modernist musical Branch Davidians and ask yourself -- who
> is the fanatic?
> The person who presents evidence and asks you to decide
> for yourself?
> Or the person who merely quotes from authority figures
> like Arnold Schoenberg and Hermann Helmholtz, and never
> posts any music on this tuning list so that you can evaluate
> the audible evidence using your own judgment?

Citation: mp3's and MIDI-files of my versions of selections
from several of Schoenberg's early (c. 1894 - 1912) compositions
are readily accessible from my webpage
"A Century of New Music in Vienna":
<http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/schoenberg/Vienna1905.htm>.

Is it absolutely necessary that I take up space on "this
tuning list" by uploading these files *here*, in order to
prove to you that I'm not "the person who merely quotes
from authority figures like Arnold Schoenberg... and never
posts any music on this tuning list so that you can evaluate
the audible evidence using your own judgment"? Why can't
anyone who can access the files posted "on this list",
yourself included, simply visit my own webpage instead,
where there are not only the audio files but also the written
chronology which ties the compositions together into a coherent
and interesting historical thread?

I've seen you say the same to deLaubenfels, who has also
responded that a great deal of his work is available on
his website, and yet you refuse to download anything from
the website and continue to rail against the fact that
he "never posts any music on this tuning list".

What gives?

Lastly, Brian, if you're going to continuously claim
that I belong to some kind of musical cult, or several
of them, then at least please get it right. Those
would be the Mahler cult, primarily, and the Schoenberg
cult, secondarily.

And thanks for being the primary reason why I've been
pinned to my computer all day, Brian (... he said with
bitter sarcasm). It was a gorgeous Sunday today, I had
nothing pressing to do, and it would have been really
enjoyable to take a long bike ride, go to the beach, or
some other pleasureable outdoor activity. Instead, I've
spent the last 16 hours (the entire afternoon and evening,
and now going deep into the night) cooped up in front of
my computer, wasting my time valuable time "clearing my name"
because of your false and inaccurate charges against me.

I'm not doing this again, so I'd appreciate it if in
future you would please listen to and read my work
before writing about it, and refrain from the sort of
writing about me that causes me to feel obliged to
respond like this.

Thanks.

[Well, again at 3 AM, I see I'm too late... you've already
written another and bigger diatribe, this time specifically
against me and my previous post. Oh well... it will mostly
be left sadly unanswered, but for three comments I simply
had to make.]

-monz
http://www.monz.org
"All roads lead to n^0"

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Re: [crazy_music] JI moonies and modernist musical Branch Davidians

🔗David Beardsley <db@...>

🔗rick@...

🔗X. J. Scott <xjscott@...>

🔗monz <joemonz@...>

🔗Graham Breed <graham@...>