Morty on tuning

I heard a performance of "for John Cage" (for violin and piano) a few
years ago, where the violinist explicitly interpreted Feldman's often
bizzare accidentals microtonally.

He posited a sharp as somewhere around 80c or so, and same for a flat.
This of course, had very audible consequences in the case of a
double-sharp or double-flat, often found in his scores for seemingly no
reason.

After the performance, I asked the performers about this, they said that
towards the end of his life, he got interested in microtones. But, they
said, he didn't want to "get mathematical" about it, he wanted it to be
up to performer feel, (I guess), and so it seems there is this
(apparentely little-known) "oral tradition" of the 80c or so.

--- In metatuning@y..., Christopher Bailey <cb202@c...> wrote:
> I heard a performance of "for John Cage" (for violin and piano)
a few
> years ago, where the violinist explicitly interpreted Feldman's
often
> bizzare accidentals microtonally.
>
> He posited a sharp as somewhere around 80c or so, and
same for a flat.
> This of course, had very audible consequences in the case of
a
> double-sharp or double-flat, often found in his scores for
seemingly no
> reason.
>
> After the performance, I asked the performers about this, they
said that
> towards the end of his life, he got interested in microtones.
But, they
> said, he didn't want to "get mathematical" about it, he wanted it
to be
> up to performer feel, (I guess), and so it seems there is this
> (apparentely little-known) "oral tradition" of the 80c or so.

this sounds like it would agree excellently with a certain flavor of
meantone . . .

> From: paulerlich <paul@...>
> To: <metatuning@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Sunday, March 10, 2002 2:38 PM
> Subject: [metatuning] Re: Morty on tuning
>
>
> --- In metatuning@y..., Christopher Bailey <cb202@c...> wrote:
> > I heard a performance of "for John Cage" (for violin and
> > piano) a few years ago, where the violinist explicitly
> > interpreted Feldman's often bizzare accidentals microtonally.
> >
> > He posited a sharp as somewhere around 80c or so, and
> > same for a flat. This of course, had very audible
> > consequences in the case of a double-sharp or double-flat,
> > often found in his scores for seemingly no reason.
> >
> > After the performance, I asked the performers about this,
> > they said that towards the end of his life, he got
> > interested in microtones. But, they said, he didn't
> > want to "get mathematical" about it, he wanted it to
> > be up to performer feel, (I guess), and so it seems there
> > is this (apparentely little-known) "oral tradition" of
> > the 80c or so.
>
> this sounds like it would agree excellently with a certain
> flavor of meantone . . .

hmmm ... that's *exactly* what i was thinking before
i read your response, paul!

so don't despair ... you and i are still very much
on the "same wavelength", despite a few differences
of opinion.

as for the "certain flavor", in terms of the more common
varieties, it would be pretty darn close to 2/9-comma
meantone, whose "chromatic semitone" is ~80.2307778 cents.

for fraction-of-a-comma type meantones, 2/9-comma is
the arithmetic mean between 1/4- and 1/5-comma.

1/5-comma, which was much more widely used than 2/9-
(at least in theory), has a "chromatic semitone" of
~83.57620062 cents.

and the "real" meantone, 1/4-comma, has a "chromatic
semitone" of ~76.04899926 cents.

so "a sharp as somewhere around 80c or so" sounds vague
enough to me to be implying plain ol' 1/4-comma meantone.

-monz

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