News 7ET Citings

I just came across an incredible book - Bagpipes and Tunings - by Theodor
H. Podnos (Detroit 1974). Since tuning Larry Cole's Spanish bagpipe, I
have become introduced to some new perspectives on the role of the
bagpipe in the world. Podnos states that the immense variety of bagpipe
tunings indicate ancient pitch arrangements worldwide that are no longer
in practice among other instruments. This is due in part because the
exactitude of pipe tunings (since their is no embochure to alter an
objective pitch description) rarely in in interplay with other instruments.

Regarding new evidence of 7ET (in addtion to the Thai, 'Are'are, Puna,
and central African peoples - especially in Cameroun), there is the
following by Podnos:

"During the fifteenth century, Italian bagpipes were probably tuned in
accordance with equi-distant heptatonc scale formations. These
intervallic measurements have also been used up to the present by bagpipe
players of Miranda do Douro in northeastern Portugal. Such exotic
tunings have been regarded by musicologists as remnants of ancient or
medieval music."

I have included 7ET in my music several times, often in combination with
5ET, in Cosmic Rays, Alternity for double bass, and Millennium (in the
finale for tenor sax, violin, and bassoon).

Johnny Reinhard
American Festival of Microtonal Music
318 East 70th Street, Suite 5FW
New York, New York 10021 USA
(212)517-3550/fax (212) 517-5495
reinhard@ios.com


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