Re: [cm] "Debate" background -- A day of music

Margo!
As someone who seem s to be the party most lend toward the Just Camp
let me make a few point clear, or as clear as i can , not necessarily my
strong point.
It is my observation that music has many "archetypes" acting upon in
its production that depending on the situation of time and place will
have different level of dominance and /or cross relations with other
forces.
I will venture to say that the harmonic series and it expression as
whole number ratios are one of these archetypes that some cultures have
exploited to a large effect. These being Ancient Greece, India, the
Persians and Europe. These are the places that JI is used or at least
has acted as a model that is strived for in some fashion. The Far East
has examples of Pythagorean but i know of no higher. There is one more
possible occurrence which i will go into. From oral tradition i have
heard of various native american people (who for the most part refer to
THEMSELVES as indians now) in former times singing their songs with the
women of the tribes holding high drones. After the drone (which was
supposed to be rhythmic and layered) the men would start melodies in
there range either on a unison or it occurring within the first few
notes. Paying these melodies in this fashion (with a drone) had lead me
to play the melodies using subharmonic scales as the most logical
choices looking at the pitches being used.
The rest of the world appears to no use JI. Since you brought up the
great Indonesian traditions, let me state one very practical reason JI
would not be something they would want. One of the first acoustical
properties of JI is a decrease in volume. Now if the function of your
music is to be performed for large ensembles with large audiences, beats
add to the volume of group and JI would make it harder to here. It has
been observed that the evolution of instruments has been the history of
louder instruments replacing softer ones.
If you have a scale where each note beat relatively the same, then you
have a scale where each tone has the same dissonance or consonance
degree. The result of such a scale is a counterpoint is based purely on
the melodic lines themselves unhampered by the burden of degrees of
harmonic tension.
One of the things the Indonesian traditions share with Europe is
Modulation. Ptolemy pointed out how modulation was related to a crisis
of a character and in indonesia, it is used as a change of character.
Even in cultures that don't change there scale thematic material is
transposed to different places, starting on different steps. Modulation
i would venture is Archetypal in Character. As a dynamic force behind
meantone as well as the various temperments.
As i mentioned also the tendency to fill it gaps within a scale
is what i attributed one of the qualities of ET's. Wilson considers MOS
and Constant structures related to the archetype as a dynamic force
influencing how and why we make music. Even with Pelog, singers fill in
the large intervals with smaller steps.
I think many of the things that Brian brought up are archetypal
forces too, the changes in intonations when melodic lines ascend and
descend.
These archetypes just to name a few interact in different degrees
of musical Alchemy and produce a myriad of different music. Each informs
the other. It is easy to see how ET or the desire to fill in melodic
gaps (which by the way allows transposition of melodic material to
places where it is easily recognizable) has an effect on JI. Some seem
to have trouble seeing how ratios influence how we perceive ETs or why
they have the moods they do. There are of course other factors and we
should keep our nose and and ears out for any hint of unrecognized
influential forces.
Let me know if i am leaving out one of your points because although
it is common to "pretend it wasn't said" as a tactic of many (i am not
thinking of Brian at this point) in dealing in like discussion.

mschulter wrote:

> Hello, there, everyone, and please let me thank Brian and Kraig and
> Mary and Bob and others for a dialogue on musical style and small
> integer ratios which suggests to me that a bit of historical
> background might put this "debate" in a different perspective.
>
>

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
http://www.anaphoria.com

The Wandering Medicine Show
Wed. 8-9 KXLU 88.9 fm

> From: mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>
> To: <crazy_music@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2001 11:36 PM
> Subject: [cm] "Debate" background -- A day of music
>
>
> Hello, there, everyone, and please let me thank Brian and Kraig and
> Mary and Bob and others for a dialogue on musical style and small
> integer ratios which suggests to me that a bit of historical
> background might put this "debate" in a different perspective.

Hello, Margo, and thanks for a wonderfully detailed account of
historical tuning trends which offers a fresh viewpoint to those
usually encountered.

While it would be my pleasure to respond in detail to everything
you wrote, I don't wish to write such a long posts to these lists
... this time, anyway. :) So please permit me to comment on
some selected sections of your article.

----

> Of course, since sharing new music is a major theme of this group, I
> can't resist the opportunity to include a piece I wrote back in 1985,
> in a 13th-century European kind of style: _Homage to Joyce Ball_, then
> a librarian at the local university library.
> ...
> MIDI: <http://value.net/~mschulter/library1.mid>
> Score in PostScript: <http://value.net/~mschulter/library1.ps>

I don't have a way (or know how) to read PostScript files,
but I did a tiny bit of "surgery" on your MIDI-file to discover
the tuning, and want to let everyone else in on it: it's
a very basic 3^(-1...5) F-C-G-D-A-E-B Pythagorean diatonic tuning.

-----

> As someone who often uses Pythagorean tuning, or Pythagorean-based JI
> systems combining ratios of 2-3-7, I obviously see a role for integer
> ratios, both large and small.

For those who may be unfamiliar with Margo's approach, I've made
some webpages of a few of her detailed tuning list posts, which
explain her tunings using prime-factors 2, 3 and 7. See:

Septimal schisma as xenharmonic bridge?
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/td/schulter/septimal.htm

A 12-tone multi-prime neo-Gothic JI scale of Margo Schulter
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/td/schulter/hi-primeJI.htm

-----

> At the same time, as someone who loves meantone for Renaissance or
> Xeno-Renaissance styles, and regular tunings with fifths wider than
> pure for neo-Gothic styles -- not to speak of 20-tET now and then -- I
> regard temperament as another very useful option.
>
> Maybe it's not so surprising, then, that I find myself on both "sides"
> of this debate, possibly from a certain historical perspective not so
> often articulated.

I find it very interesting that you and I have sent posts in the
last couple of days which, while differing greatly in outward subject
matter (Gothic/Renaissance for you and Schoenberg and modern pianos
for me), are ultimately concerned with a desire to express a
perspective which exhibits a reconcilation of two seemingly opposing
ways of considering musical intervals and divisions of the
pitch-continuum: JI and temperaments.

See my "mediation on a 1-string chord" post:
/crazy_music/topicId_751.html#751

-----

> Although the first known treatises documenting the art of polyphony,
> or music for two or more simultaneous voices, seem to date from around
> 850-900, let us arbitrarily start our "day" a bit earlier, at the
> convenient year 800.

I think your scaling of the "modern" history of European music-theory
into one day was very clever. I'd like to note two very minor quibbles
(which, according to your "one day" scale, amounts to a discrepancy
of about 3 hours), which, based on their opposite conclusions,
actually support your arbitrary starting point of 800 AD:

1)
I believe that the _enchiriadis_ treatises were written quite a bit
earlier (c. 750-800) than the dates proposed by most scholars.
(Over a period of several years I worked at various times on a paper
about this, but it is still in progress.)

2)
At least one person has presented evidence that some supposedly
"earliest" European music-theory treatises were actually written
well after 900.

See Paul Anthony Luke Boncella (Taberg, NY): "Toward a New Chronology
of the Enchiriadis Canon and the Pseudo-Hucbaldian De Harmonica
Institutione", delivered at the Thursday afternoon session (7 November)
of the American Musicological Society [AMS] 1996 Annual Meeting. The
abstract published at <http://www.peabody.jhu.edu/ams96/abstract.html>:

>> At least five important treatises expounding the theory and
>> practice of Frankish-Gregorian liturgical chant are generally
>> thought to have been written sometime between the dates of
>> Musica disciplina of Aurelianus Reomensis (from the 840s,
>> perhaps even the 820s) and Epistola de harmonica institutione
>> of Regino Prumiensis (ca. 901). All five of the discourses under
>> consideration here have been ascribed (at one time or another)
>> to Hucbald, but today only one of them retains an attribution
>> to the famous monk of St. Amandus (De harmonica institutione).
>> The other four treatises--constituting a group that has long
>> enjoyed the status of a canon--are now usually regarded as works
>> by anonymous musicians (Musica enchiriadis, Scholica enchiriadis,
>> Alia musica, and Commemoratio brevis).
>>
>> The current view of the dating and authorship of these treatises
>> is in need of revision; this will be shown in part through a
>> comparison of De harmonica institutione and Musica enchiriadis.
>> In fact, one of these two works clearly represents an attempt
>> to remedy manifest shortcomings of the other; it is possible,
>> thus, to establish the order in which they were written. Also,
>> recent discoveries elucidating the genesis of Occidental
>> modality indicate that these two discourses must have been
>> written well after the beginning of the 10th century. Finally,
>> Hucbald could not have written either of these works; indeed,
>> it is unlikely that he ever composed a treatise on music.

-----

> Around 850 or so, writers start recording what might well represent a
> traditional style of polyphony based mainly on fifths and fourths,
> intervals favored in many world cultures: they speak of _organum_ or
> "organized music," and write in a manner suggesting that this practice
> is already well known. While these stable intervals, plus octaves and
> elevenths (8:3) or twelfths (3:1), are central to the style, unstable
> intervals including major seconds or thirds appear now and then in
> certain examples involving oblique or contrary motion.

I think it's worth pointing out that until about 1000 or so,
all the "European" treatises extant today were written from
within the Frankish Kingdom proper, which formed the core of
the "Holy Roman Empire" created when Charlemagne was crowned
Emperor by the Pope on Christmas Day 800.

Around 1000 we begin to find treatises written in what is now
Germany (Reichenau, at the very southern edge of Germany across
the lake from Switzerland) and Italy -- by Hermannus Contractus
and Guido, respectively, for examples -- which were by that time
also parts of the "Holy Roman Empire", but were later conquests by
Charlemagne and thus not really inhabited by Franks. I'm of the
opinion that these regional/demographic differences are in part
responsible for the "new" ideas we see in these treatises.

Also, I've speculated here before about the role the Vikings
may have played in the evolution of European intonation.

(See my long post </tuning/topicId_3380.html#3380>
about halfway down, and Margo's partial corroboration of my ideas in
Section 3 of her reply:
</tuning/topicId_3422.html#3422>.)

Note that during the period of heavy Viking raids, c. 800-1000
(the early morning hours of midnight to 4 am in Margo's
characterization), the Danes and Norwegians both plundered
the coasts of France, Spain, and Italy, while the Swedes
traveled thru western Russia and into the Caspian, Black,
and Aegean Seas.

As far as actual Viking settlements go (as opposed to plundering raids):
the Norwegians settled Greenland, Iceland, north and west Scotland
(including the islands), east Ireland, and south Brittany (on the west
coast of France); the Danes settled east England (the "Danelaw") and
south Sweden; the Norwegians and Danes together settled in Normandy
(north coast of France); and the Swedes settled the entire east coast
of the Baltic Sea and large areas of Russia and Ukraine.

There is mention of the terror of Viking raids in some of the Frankish
music-theory treatises... the monastery of St Amand (in Flanders),
where Hucbald lived, was destroyed in a Viking raid shortly
after Hucbald died, IIRC.

Note also that almost immediately after the Viking raids died down,
in the mid-900s, there were equally brutal raids into central and
southern Europe by the Magyars. It would not surprise me if Magyar
infiltration left its mark on the music of these areas.

> Interestingly, Richard Hoppin has offered an example of traditional
> Chinese polyphony where there is an interplay between vertical octaves
> at the opening or conclusion of phrases and parallel fourths in
> between, suggesting a possible kinship between various world
> traditions (whatever the "explanations").

This type of "polyphony", which is quite rare in European
practice, is commonly known as "heterophony".

I'm unable to document it right now, but I find this type of
heterophony in much popular music too, and have used it in
some of my own pop songs... notably, between the guitar and bass
near the beginning of my rock tune "Happy Ending for the Devil"
<http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/songs/happyend.htm>.

-----

> During the 12th century (6 a.m.-8 a.m.), a style often especially
> favoring contrary motion while featuring all types of motions and
> intervals gets established in Western Europe -- but its exponents are
> by no means alone.
>
> At the same time, in Georgia, theorists are documenting three-voice
> singing, notably also based on fifths and fourths as the most favored
> concords, while featuring a variety of other intervals. By the end of
> the century, three-voice polyphony will also become the new and
> exciting trend in the West.

By 1227, Georgia had become part of the Empire of Genghis Khan.
Presumably, to avoid the Mongolian invasion, there were many
Georgians who escaped to the West, bringing their musical styles
with them.

-----

> While typical 14th-century styles nicely fit the standard system of
> Pythagorean intonation, one xenharmonicist deserves special mention:
> Marchettus (or Marchetto) of Padua.
>
> Completed in 1318, his _Lucidarium_ may well call for use of cadential
> major thirds and sixths defining in effect new classes of intervals: a
> large major third at around 453 cents, or about midway between the
> usual Pythagorean major third and fourth; and a major sixth which he
> describes as equally distant from 3:2 fifth and 2:1 octave, or around
> 951 cents, about midway between usual major sixth and minor seventh.
>
> His special emphasis is on the principle of "closest approach," in
> which thirds expanding to fifths or sixths to octaves should be
> "colored" or made major in order to make the resolution to a stable
> concord more efficient. While other theorists find the usual
> Pythagorean intervals ideal for this purpose, Marchettus appears to
> carry it yet further, advocating the use of a cadential semitone or
> "diesis" of possibly somewhere around 41-48 cents, in contrast to the
> usual Pythagorean diatonic semitone of 256:243 (~90 cents).

Margo is very familiar with my webpage on Marchetto, but others
may not be: <http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/marchet/marchet.htm>.

In it, I offer two totally different interpretations of Marchetto's
division of the whole-tone into 5 dieses, both of which differ from
the interpretation preferred by Margo.

The later interpretation by me, which I think is probably incorrect
(but it might not be!... one simply can't tell with Marchetto),
gives a result very close to an extended Pythagorean system. The
earlier one, which I think is the most likely, gives a result
approximating or implying something resembling 5-limit JI.

-----

> In a typical Gothic style of the kind prevailing in Continental
> Europe, both the treatment of intervals and the qualities of
> Pythagorean tuning emphasize a contrast between stable fifths and
> fourths with pure ratios, and mildly unstable thirds with complex
> ratios.
>
> By around 1500, however, the new Renaissance textures tend to flow
> smoothly between sonorities featuring thirds and sixths as the most
> favored intervals, and indeed the emerging standard of stable
> saturation. Here the concept of a "smooth" flow means not only the
> pervasive use of thirds and sixths, but the rather cautious and
> restricted use of seconds or sevenths -- in contrast to their more
> prominent role in Gothic styles.
>
> ...
>
> While this trend seems to have taken root in some parts of Continental
> Europe by 1415, it may have been reinforced by an event of that year:
> an all-too-literal English invasion of France, contrasting in its
> martial violence to the gentler transoceanic incursion of the Beatles
> in 1964. The Battle of Agincourt not only inspired a famous carol, but
> may have the famous English composer John Dunstable to France along
> with the Duke of Bedford.

The post of mine which I cite above,
</tuning/topicId_3380.html#3380>,
has a lot of information on this, including extensive quotes
from Hoppins's book.

Note also that ever since the Norman invasion of 1066, England
and France had very close ties (the closeness varying at
different times), with English kings often owning a great
deal of land in France.

For a few centuries after Charlemagne's death, the "kingdom"
of France regressed back to a feudal state, until the reigns
of the strong kings Philip Augustus (1180-1223, during which
Notre Dame was completed and the Universit� originated, around
which Leonin, Perotin, and other early musical masters were
centered), Louis IX (1226-70), and Philip the Fair (1285-1314).
It was primarily thru the laws promulgated by the latter
(which I would refer to as "legal manipulations") that France
once again became a real power in Europe. I would say that
thruout the 1200s Paris was the center of musical innovation
in Europe.

I also noted with amusement Margo's reference here to the Beatles,
because of their famous song "A Day In The Life Of", whose odd
title relates directly to the method used in Margo's post.

love / peace / harmony ...

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

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