Getting into Alice Tully Hall etc.

In my opinion _tuning_ is an essential musicological topic, but it is not
necessarily the best theme around which to group musical programs. Good
concerts programs are built around stylistic and practical considerations,
and hopefully more of the former.

As a composer, I wish to be identified without the qualifiers _microtonal_
or _just intonation_ stuck in-between the words _good_ and _composer_. It
strikes me again and again that the best pieces in just intonation or in
some _microtonality_ are good pieces of music first, and the intonation is
one of many factors contributing to that quality, the whole really being
greater than the sum of the parts. As one example, take Douglas Leedy�s
_Pastorale_ for chorus with retuned piano (just), four hands, a work that I
consider to be first class. I could imagine this work being played in a
program with early western music, or with middle or late Stravinsky, or
with a work by Lou Harrison. But in a program with some arbitrarily chosen
quarter-tone piece, or a work by Harry Partch, the Leedy would simply not
fit.

I note that many of the composers of the so-called _New Complexity School_
use microtones with great extravagance, yet this usage has never been of
central programmatic concern, only a feature of one material parameter.

Daniel Wolf


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