"Le Greygnour Bien" by Matteo de Perugia in "Peppermint"

Hi,

I wanted to use the Early Patches soundfonts I purchased a while back to
illustrate some medieval polyphony. No better example than medieval music at
its most dizzyingly complex and intellectual--"Le Greygnour Bien" by Matteo
De Perugia.

In honor of Margo Schulter, our resident neo-Medieval expert and connoisseur
Alpha, I tuned it to a 12-note "Peppermint" temperament (named by Margo in
honor of Keenan Pepper, who first suggested it). It is a chain of ~704.082
cent 5ths. Why ~704.082? It is a 5th arrived at by a Fibonacci sequence of
n-tets: 5,12,17,29,46,75....

Here's my final result:

http://www.akjmusic.com/audio/greygnour.ogg

NOTES ON THE REALIZATION:
__________________________

The original MIDI file I was _going_ to use was the Gary Rich's Ars Subtilior
'homepage' version, but it really seemed damaged....the page is
http://www.pacificnet.net/~garyrich/subtilior/

No good.

So, the better one I found, by Googling, was Japanese, by someone N.Nakamura,
and I found it on a great page of Medieval MIDIs at:
http://maucamedus.net/midi-index-e.html

The original MIDI file
http://maucamedus.net/midi/matteo01.mid

In my modified MIDI file, panning, volume, and patches were changed; the
tuning was changed by means of a timidity tuning table....

____________________________________

Tools used:

***Early Patches soundfonts for 2 of the 3 instruments (the Shawm by Moulder,
and the Shawm by Richter; these are the bright nasal instruments in the left
and center of the stereo field), and the Unison soundfont for the trombone in
the right channel

***Timidity++ (command line: timidity -Ow -Z pepr_12.tbl greygnour.mid)
(you won't find a 12 note version of peppermint in the Scala archives, I made
my own)

***mf2t/t2mf (midi file to text, text file to midi for quick editing of things
like panning and volume without having to load a large sequencer app...)

***oggenc (for .wav to .ogg, used the default -q 3 (quality), which seemed
sufficient to my ears

unessential but interesting info:

***Slackware Linux-10.2 with the 2.6.13 kernel version, a low-latency audio
workstation running the KDE-3.4.2 desktop.

Enjoy!

Best,
Aaron.

> I wanted to use the Early Patches soundfonts I purchased a while back to
> illustrate some medieval polyphony. No better example than medieval music at
> its most dizzyingly complex and intellectual--"Le Greygnour Bien" by Matteo
> De Perugia.

Sweet...

I love the polyrhythms! I can never figure out why they disappeared
in "classical" music... I can still imagine them in Bach, but not
really anything after that.

Stephen, are you listening? How's that for a beat?! Rather, "beatS" lol

The tuning is nice, but I'm used to hearing medieval tunes with more
spicy 3rds and 6ths, like a Marchetto tuning that really pushes to the
cadences. Would peppermint be considered a reasonably "authentic"
tuning for this material?

-Chris

>I love the polyrhythms! I can never figure out why they disappeared
>in "classical" music... I can still imagine them in Bach, but not
>really anything after that.

This one swings more than those of the period I've heard.

I can imagine them in Bach (try kenneth.nu for one take on that),
but I don't believe Bach's 16ths were played anyhow other than
straight at they time they were written. Could be wrong. (I often
do imagine they were played with more feeling than we often hear
in recordings.)

>The tuning is nice, but I'm used to hearing medieval tunes with more
>spicy 3rds and 6ths, like a Marchetto tuning that really pushes to the
>cadences. Would peppermint be considered a reasonably "authentic"
>tuning for this material?

The authentic keyboard tuning is pythagorean. Other than that, it's
hard to say. In a way, Peppermint is very much like pythagorean.
But in another, more accurate way, it isn't.

-Carl

>Hi,
>
>I wanted to use the Early Patches soundfonts I purchased a while back to
>illustrate some medieval polyphony. No better example than medieval music at
>its most dizzyingly complex and intellectual--"Le Greygnour Bien" by Matteo
>De Perugia.
>
>In honor of Margo Schulter, our resident neo-Medieval expert and connoisseur
>Alpha, I tuned it to a 12-note "Peppermint" temperament (named by Margo in
>honor of Keenan Pepper, who first suggested it). It is a chain of ~704.082
>cent 5ths. Why ~704.082? It is a 5th arrived at by a Fibonacci sequence of
>n-tets: 5,12,17,29,46,75....
>
>Here's my final result:
>
> http://www.akjmusic.com/audio/greygnour.ogg

Sweet dude! That sounds awesome!

-Carl

> This one swings more than those of the period I've heard.
>
> I can imagine them in Bach (try kenneth.nu for one take on that),
> but I don't believe Bach's 16ths were played anyhow other than
> straight at they time they were written. Could be wrong. (I often
> do imagine they were played with more feeling than we often hear
> in recordings.)

I'm not actually talking about "swing" or feeling, but polyrhythms.
There are a few different (all very "straight") pulses that have
varying strengths at different points in the piece. Even the rhythmic
"innovations" of blues/rock/latin music never approaches this kind of
thing...

I only know a little about medieval music, but I think they had very
specific ways of notating this rhythmic counterpoint, based on the
basic Pythagorean relationships (3:2, 4:3, even 9:8!)

Anyway, good stuff.

Chris

On Tuesday 27 June 2006 2:37 am, c.m.bryan wrote:
> > I wanted to use the Early Patches soundfonts I purchased a while back to
> > illustrate some medieval polyphony. No better example than medieval
> > music at its most dizzyingly complex and intellectual--"Le Greygnour
> > Bien" by Matteo De Perugia.
>
> Sweet...
>
> I love the polyrhythms! I can never figure out why they disappeared
> in "classical" music... I can still imagine them in Bach, but not
> really anything after that.
>
> Stephen, are you listening? How's that for a beat?! Rather, "beatS" lol
>
> The tuning is nice, but I'm used to hearing medieval tunes with more
> spicy 3rds and 6ths, like a Marchetto tuning that really pushes to the
> cadences. Would peppermint be considered a reasonably "authentic"
> tuning for this material?

The authentic tuning is pythagorean...these fifth are wide of pure, so the
thirds are actually wider than 81/64....

-Aaron.

At 03:21 AM 6/27/2006, you wrote:
>> This one swings more than those of the period I've heard.
>>
>> I can imagine them in Bach (try kenneth.nu for one take on that),
>> but I don't believe Bach's 16ths were played anyhow other than
>> straight at they time they were written. Could be wrong. (I often
>> do imagine they were played with more feeling than we often hear
>> in recordings.)
>
>I'm not actually talking about "swing" or feeling, but polyrhythms.

I think there's been some misunderstanding.

>There are a few different (all very "straight") pulses that have
>varying strengths at different points in the piece. Even the rhythmic
>"innovations" of blues/rock/latin music never approaches this kind of
>thing...

But 20th-century composers like Henry Cowell surpass it, at least
in terms of prime limit.

>I only know a little about medieval music, but I think they had very
>specific ways of notating this rhythmic counterpoint, based on the
>basic Pythagorean relationships (3:2, 4:3, even 9:8!)

There were red notes, which gave you three. Cowell suggests
note head shapes through, was it, 11 or 13.

-Carl

At 03:21 AM 6/27/2006, you wrote:
>> This one swings more than those of the period I've heard.
>>
>> I can imagine them in Bach (try kenneth.nu for one take on that),
>> but I don't believe Bach's 16ths were played anyhow other than
>> straight at they time they were written. Could be wrong. (I often
>> do imagine they were played with more feeling than we often hear
>> in recordings.)
>
>I'm not actually talking about "swing" or feeling, but polyrhythms.

I think there's been some misunderstanding.

>There are a few different (all very "straight") pulses that have
>varying strengths at different points in the piece. Even the rhythmic
>"innovations" of blues/rock/latin music never approaches this kind of
>thing...

But 20th-century composers like Henry Cowell surpass it, at least
in terms of prime limit.

>I only know a little about medieval music, but I think they had very
>specific ways of notating this rhythmic counterpoint, based on the
>basic Pythagorean relationships (3:2, 4:3, even 9:8!)

There were red notes, which gave you three. Cowell suggests
note head shapes through, was it, 11 or 13.

-Carl

PS- Did you check out the Bach?

> >There are a few different (all very "straight") pulses that have
> >varying strengths at different points in the piece. Even the rhythmic
> >"innovations" of blues/rock/latin music never approaches this kind of
> >thing...
>
>
> But 20th-century composers like Henry Cowell surpass it, at least
> in terms of prime limit.

Yes. My definition of "classical" ends earlier than Cowell ;)

I've been brewing my own rhythmic intricacies, stay tuned for details...

-Chris

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, c.m.bryan <chrismbryan@...> wrote:

> The tuning is nice, but I'm used to hearing medieval tunes with more
> spicy 3rds and 6ths, like a Marchetto tuning that really pushes to the
> cadences. Would peppermint be considered a reasonably "authentic"
> tuning for this material?

I don't think so, but Margo is the one with the answer. If you make
the fifth a fraction of a cent wider, you get the 46-et fifth of 704.3
cents. I've been thinking of a 46-et article for Wikipedia, since we
actually have a few examples of music, and wonder if it would be
cheating to use something like this.

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, c.m.bryan <chrismbryan@...> wrote:

> The tuning is nice, but I'm used to hearing medieval tunes with more
> spicy 3rds and 6ths, like a Marchetto tuning that really pushes to the
> cadences.

In this web page:

http://mto.societymusictheory.org/issues/mto.98.4.6/mto.98.4.6.rahn.html#Section7

Rahn goes round and round, leaving me with the impression no one
really knows what Marchetto's tuning was.

An interesting aspect of sharp fifth tunings in the 704-704.5 cents,
however, is that in this region, the four fifths generated third
becomes close to 14/11. This is certainly true of 46-et.

Golden Peppermint fifth 2^((67+sqrt(5))/118) = 704.096 cents
Third is 1.126 cents flat of 14/11

46-et fifth: 704.348 cents
Third is 0.117 cents flat of 14/11

14/11 "eigenmonzo" fifth: 704.377 cents
Third is exactly 14/11

That makes for one spicy meatball when we use these for meantone
music, but it may make a lot more sense for Medieval music.

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, c.m.bryan <chrismbryan@...>
wrote:
>
>
> Sweet...
>
> I love the polyrhythms! I can never figure out why they
disappeared
> in "classical" music... I can still imagine them in Bach, but not
> really anything after that.
>
> Stephen, are you listening? How's that for a beat?!
Rather, "beatS" lol

+++++++++ Chris

I think I'm hearing what you are hearing.

Carl mentioned someone named Henry Cowell.

If anyone has a link to some of his stuff, I'd listen.

-Stephen

On Wed, 28 Jun 2006, Gene Ward Smith wrote:

> In this web page:
>
> http://mto.societymusictheory.org/issues/mto.98.4.6/mto.98.4.6.rahn.html#Section7
>
> Rahn goes round and round, leaving me with the impression no one
> really knows what Marchetto's tuning was.

BTW the same journal has a much more recent article on Marchetto's tuning (among other things), with interesting sound files:

http://mto.societymusictheory.org/issues/mto.06.12.2/mto.06.12.2.woodley.pdf

-JW

> 2j. Re: "Le Greygnour Bien" by Matteo de Perugia in "Peppermint"
> Posted by: "Gene Ward Smith" genewardsmith@... genewardsmith
> Date: Tue Jun 27, 2006 12:23 pm (PDT)
>
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, c.m.bryan <chrismbryan@...> wrote:
>
> > The tuning is nice, but I'm used to hearing medieval tunes with more
> > spicy 3rds and 6ths, like a Marchetto tuning that really pushes to the
> > cadences. Would peppermint be considered a reasonably "authentic"
> > tuning for this material?
>
> I don't think so, but Margo is the one with the answer. If you make
> the fifth a fraction of a cent wider, you get the 46-et fifth of 704.3
> cents. I've been thinking of a 46-et article for Wikipedia, since we
> actually have a few examples of music, and wonder if it would be
> cheating to use something like this.

Hello, there, and I would follow Carl in noting that Pythgorean tuning
rather than any irrational temperament is what medieval theory describes,
although with Aaron I find that an "accentuated Pythagorean" temperament
like this is pleasant and congenial to the music -- albeit in a "not so
period-authentic manner."

One could argue that major thirds around 14:11, minor thirds around 13:11,
and diatonic semitones around 22:21 could have occurred in vocal practice
as mild variations on Pythagorean -- but the idea of a regular temperament
to achieve this seems a frank "anachronism."

I do it all the time, and just want to take the opportunity to acknowledge
the "modernization" involved.

Also, while Peppermint and (56/11)^1/4 are closely akin, the latter as
you have noted seems a closer approximation of 46-et (or vice versa).
Curiously, I started to use (56/11)^1/4 at the end of August 2000, a
few days before Keenan Pepper suggested the regular tuning that I
quickly adopted as another fine shading in 12 notes, and which in 2002
became the basis for the 24-note Peppermint with two chains at 58.68 cents
apart.

By the way, I should add that while I got involved and enthusiastic with
14:11 or near-14:11 thirds in the summer of 2000, George Secor used eight
fifths at (56/11)^1/4 in his 17-note well-temperament of 1978 -- as I
learned around the beginning of summer in 2001.

> That makes for one spicy meatball when we use these for meantone
> music, but it may make a lot more sense for Medieval music.

I'd agree, because unless the timbre is especially mild or customized,
using 14:11 where something like 5:4 is expected is not likely to bring
out the restful quality of thirds and sixths as "imperfect _concords_"
in a 16th-century style.

However, using 14:11 where something around 81:64 is expected nicely
fits the unstable although somewhat blending quality of medieval thirds
and sixths as "_imperfect_ concords." Aaron has neatly demonstrated
this in some great arrangements!

As to medieval pieces with prominent (but unstable) thirds and sixths, I'd
say that Aaron's _Le greygnour bien_ has some good examples at around
0:58, 2:19, 2:29, 2:51 (within a second or two, anyway). These are common
in lots of 13th-14th century pieces, along with some prominent seconds and
sevenths also. Guillaume de Machaut is one obvious place to turn.

The point is that as long as you expect thirds to be unstable, the use of
a Pythagorean or modern "eventone" tuning (like a meantone, but with wide
fifths, with a meantone as a case of a narrow eventone -- i.e. two regular
major seconds equal a major third) can be very congenial. There is also an
interesting passage of what would later be called fauxbourdon in the Missa
Tournai from the early or middle 14th century.

A common 14th-century technique is to end a phrase or section with an
unstable sonority which invites a resolution -- following immediately
(possibly when the form returns to the opening sonority of another
section), or sometimes delayed, building anticipation. In the 13th
century, Adam de la Halle sometimes does this on a miniature but very
charming and effective style in his three-voice rondeaux -- indeed
sometimes opening a piece with a third and sixth above the lowest part
which expand to fifth and octave.

Again, for telling pauses on thirds and sixths, I'd recommend Machaut
as one model composer.

This is a different situation evidently than a number of 13th-14th century
English pieces where thirds seem virtually stable, and where the comments
of theorists such as Theinred of Dover and Walter Odington about 5:4 and
6:5 as ratios close to the Pythagorean 81:64 and 32:27 would strengthen
a stylistic impression that thirds, as Christopher Page puts it, may well
have been "mollified."

Aaron, thanks so much for these two great arrangements -- and Gene, for
asking some relevant questions. (If you're curious, Peppermint happens
to be quite close to 121-et, which George Secor and Dave Keenan and I
agreed is a useful system for Sagittal representations.)

Also thanks to Jon Wild for the Woodley article, which I've only
glanced through quickly but will read soon. Here's a Rahn-style
interpretation (cadential semitones around 48 cents, or close to
37:36) of a texture with prominent cadential thirds and sixths
having either an immediate or a delayed resolution.

By the way, this uses two 12-note Pythagorean chains at around 42
cents apart, so fifths and fourths are pure -- the "authentic"
period approach, however one might view the best reading of
the sizes of semitones and cadential thirds and sixths in the
system of Marchettus.

<http://www.bestII.com/~mschulter/PythEnharImprov01.mp3>

In peace and love,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@...

On 6/28/06, stephenszpak <stephen_szpak@...> wrote:
> Carl mentioned someone named Henry Cowell.
>
> If anyone has a link to some of his stuff, I'd listen.

Honestly, I prefer Conlon Nancarrow, who took Cowell's ideas and
carried them to their logical extreme. He wrote around 50 pieces for
Player Piano that take polyrhythmic counterpoint to the same pinnacles
of composition that Bach reached with "The Art of the Fugue" in
immitative counterpoint.

Here's "Study 37", which covers a wide range of textures and uses a
lot of the techniques that show up in Nancarrow's music. 12 canons,
each with 12 voices, each voice at a different tempo, rational tempos
in the 7th limit.

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=D7648F4D2A5C19D9

--TRISTAN
(http://dreamingofeden.smackjeeves.com/)

Thanks for sharing this, Tristan!

I can see why it's for player piano, not human
performance ... ;-)

Ideas carried to extremes, indeed! It's the
"rational tempos" I find most exciting here.

Regards,
Yahya

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Rozencrantz the Sane" wrote:
>
> On 6/28/06, stephenszpak <stephen_szpak@...> wrote:
> > Carl mentioned someone named Henry Cowell.
> >
> > If anyone has a link to some of his stuff, I'd listen.
>
> Honestly, I prefer Conlon Nancarrow, who took Cowell's
> ideas and carried them to their logical extreme. He
> wrote around 50 pieces for Player Piano that take
> polyrhythmic counterpoint to the same pinnacles of
> composition that Bach reached with "The Art of the
> Fugue" in immitative counterpoint.
>
> Here's "Study 37", which covers a wide range of textures
> and uses a lot of the techniques that show up in
> Nancarrow's music. 12 canons, each with 12 voices, each
> voice at a different tempo, rational tempos in the 7th
> limit.
>
> http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?
> action=download&ufid=D7648F4D2A5C19D9
>
> --TRISTAN
> (http://dreamingofeden.smackjeeves.com/)

On 6/30/06, yahya_melb <yahya@...> wrote:
>
> Thanks for sharing this, Tristan!

Glad I could expose someone else to Nancarrow.

> Ideas carried to extremes, indeed! It's the
> "rational tempos" I find most exciting here.

He has a very wide range, most of his pieces use rational tempos (one
goes up to 61/60) though the chaotic nature of some of his writing
obscures the relationships. He also has a few pieces in irrational
relationships (e/pi, square roots, and others) and a few in which the
relationships change over time. I reccomend the Wergo set of all
published studies, there isn't a single wasted note in five discs.

It's hard to say if this is off topic. Everything he wrote was for
12-EDO, but the way he uses the tuning is in many ways very
non-meantone. A lot of musical events seem to exist in a tonal limbo,
neither consonant nor dissonant. Also, the way he uses frequency
ratios is certainly suggestive of Just Intonation theory.

--TRISTAN
(http://dreamingofeden.smackjeeves.com/)

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Rozencrantz the Sane"
<rozencrantz@...> wrote:

TRISTAN

I did listen to excerpts just now.

-Stephen

>
> On 6/28/06, stephenszpak <stephen_szpak@...> wrote:
> > Carl mentioned someone named Henry Cowell.
> >
> > If anyone has a link to some of his stuff, I'd listen.
>
> Honestly, I prefer Conlon Nancarrow, who took Cowell's ideas and
> carried them to their logical extreme. He wrote around 50 pieces
for
> Player Piano that take polyrhythmic counterpoint to the same
pinnacles
> of composition that Bach reached with "The Art of the Fugue" in
> immitative counterpoint.
>
> Here's "Study 37", which covers a wide range of textures and uses a
> lot of the techniques that show up in Nancarrow's music. 12 canons,
> each with 12 voices, each voice at a different tempo, rational
tempos
> in the 7th limit.
>
> http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?
action=download&ufid=D7648F4D2A5C19D9
>
> --TRISTAN
> (http://dreamingofeden.smackjeeves.com/)
>

>> Carl mentioned someone named Henry Cowell.
>>
>> If anyone has a link to some of his stuff, I'd listen.
>
>Honestly, I prefer Conlon Nancarrow, who took Cowell's ideas and
>carried them to their logical extreme.

Yeah, Nancarrow is on my 'composers of the last 500 years' list.
But then, so is Cowell.

-Carl