notation replies

As I stand now, I think that Dan's ideas are very good; while Ben gives
special accidentals to 7 and higher primes, he combines 3 and 5, with both
using the 81/80 (+/-) diacritical. Dan's system (an I understand it) uses
sharps and flats (double sharps, etc.) for an ever-extensible Pythagorean
chain, and applies + and - only for the intervals on the 5-plane.
Therefore, the 5-relationship of any major chord built on an uninflected
pitch will be followed by a -. I haven't used Dan's notation because it
wasn't very practical to study with Ben and confuse him with a very similar
yet different notation. Similarly, in my string quartet, I use A+=400
(while Ben always uses A=440); however, in my arrangements of Partch for
string quartet, I defer to Ben's precedence.

>For my own theoretical purposes I remove these two anchors, and relativise
>the system completely; since I'm dealing with modal or tonal music, 1/1 is
>be identified with whichever letter-name is the modal final or tonal centre.

What happens when you modulate? A tricky situation (one of the thorny
sides of this notation) is that in music that I have analyzed as 5-limit
(such as Lassus, Gesualdo, Palestrina, even Chopin), it can drop by 7 or 8
commas in a short piece. Jonathan asked:

>I'll be interested to see what you come up with [regarding key signatures]
>eventually.

The simplest approach I can think of is not very good for perforance, but
in my transcriptions of Renaissance music, I used brackets above the staff
which contained the number of commas to correct. I would usually add these
when it dropped (or raised) more than three commas. This is better for
analysis than for performance, but those commas are tricky to perform,
aren't they? I find that the music which needs such corrections is music
which ignores the comma. When a composer pays attention to it like I do,
the music doesn't modulate that far. It is my great dream, however, that a
simple notation will be developed that will allow for the easy modulation
to remote lattice regions--it is the notation that keeps me for writing
such highly modulatory music, and notation should never guide composition.

>> I do find it curious
>> that so many people have made transcriptions of Partch scores in
>> Johnston*s notation which goes against both the whole limit (factoring)
>> idea of Partch, and Partch*s decided invertibility. Moreover, the
>> instances in Partch*s music which are based upon the syntonic diatonic
>> scale are minimal.

Partch's music, actually, goes against the whole theory of "limits" (except
for isolated examples, notably The Letter and parts of Oedipus)--that was
his book and not his music. In practice, the Monophonic Scale was treated
as a source for improvisation, and prominently features "out of tune"
intervals. Near-but-mistuned fifths and thirds are favored, even in free
instruments like the Adapted Viola and the voice. Decidedly, the reason to
use Ben's notation for Partch transcription is because it is exact and
unambiguous. One should always bear in mind, however, that it was designed
for Ben and not for Harry. Furthermore, Harry was shown the notation and
liked it.

>> If you have a real gripe and would like to set Fonville straight, I
>> suggest that you write him at San Diego State University...

Pardon me--I meant to write University of Calif., San Diego.

To Jon Szantos: are you still bored?

Yours,
Adam

_________________
Adam B. Silverman
153 Cold Spring Street; A3
New Haven, CT 06511
(203) 782-1765

abs22@pantheon.yale.edu



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