From BRian McLaren

From: mclaren
Subject: the pervasive lack of information about
microtonality from academia
--
Some time ago J.A. M. Salinas mentioned "I'm a bit mad
about the little access there there is to `microtonality'
or tunings in the educational system." Despite Greg
Taylor's hallucinogenic claims to the contrary, a pervasive
mindset exists in higher education which universally
discourages the exploration of non-12 non-Pythagorean
intonations. (I say "usually" because remarkable and
praiseworthy academics like William Alves, William
Schottstaedt, Brian Belet, Allen Strange, Larry
Polansky and a few others consistently fight the
hand that bleeds them by teaching music via an
overtly non-12 approach. In this regard Lou Harrison
is the supreme exemplar. Alas, teachers of Harrison's
caliber and insight are all too rare in music departments
throughout academia.)
Because of this pervasive "always 12, only 12, forever
12, in the beginning was the word and the word was
12, and 12 moved upon the face of the waters and said
`Let there be 12'" attitude in academia, there has been
very little specifically xenharmonic investigation
and even less of it has been published in the yakademic
music theory journals.
As a result there is in the late 1990s as enormous
a disjuncture between what composers are actually
*doing* in the real world and music theory as
it is *taught* and *published* (12-TET only) as there
was in the late 15th century.
Back then, even 50-100 years after the introduction
of the just 5/4 by Walter of Odington and the amazement
created by English choirs using his theories as
they toured the continent, even in the 1450s the music
theorists wrote *only* in Pythagorean terms. Examine
music texts of the late 14th and early 15th century,
and you will discover *no* reference to our modern
5/4 just major third. Instead, the 81/64 third is
still derived by Pythagorean calculations and is
then considered to be "detuned" to obtain the 5/4.
This is a completely bizarre way of deriving the
5/4 third, but it makes sense if you remember that
everyone in the 15th century was totally
marinated and immersed in the rigid mindset of
Pythagoreanism. They were so brainwashed that
for most music theorists it was all but impossible
to make the break *out* of Pythagorean paradigms to
5-limit and its resulting rich musical implications.
In just the same way, nowadays music theorists
are so immersed and marinated in the rigid mindset
of 12-TET that it is all but impossible for most of
them to make the break to something other than
subdivisions of 12 so beloved of James Wood
and other continental European microtonalists.
The infinite realm of non-octave scales, non-just
non-equal-tempered scales, and high-limit extended
just intonation seems as unthinkable to the doyens
of contemporary 12-TET music theory today as
12-TET would have seemed to the doyens of
Pythagorean music theory in the late 1300s
and early 1400s.
However, the lesson of history is that intonation
constantly changes. Thus 12-TET is not permanent,
and is in fact in flux as we speak (though current
academics and curricula *refuse* to recognize this).
History shows us that technology drives intonation;
the reason for Pythagorean intonation from 600 A.D.
through the 1380s is that the organs of that period
(and yes, Frankish kings had great organs constructed,
they were common as early as 900 A.D.) did not use
modern secondary bellows. As a result the air pressure
through the pipes varied drastically, and thus the
pitch of the notes rose and fell in a hideous clamor
as the organ was pumped and as more or fewer
notes were played by hauling out the huge blocks
of lumber which sealed the airflow of each organ
pipe.
Once you realize that teams of bellows pumpers
had to tread up and down in exact time to the music
on vast rooms full of organ bellows while teams
of organ "players" yanked out and slammed back
the immense wooden tenons that controlled each
pipe, you instantly understand why only Pythagorean
intonation would be acceptable and why strictly
regular metre was an absolute necessity in playing
music on such terrifying contraptions.
Regular metre, since the organ players could not
risk getting out of step with the rhythmic pumping
of those who tread the bellows; and Pythagorean
intonation because as the pitches rose and fell
by whole semitones, subtler tunings with smaller
intervals than the diatessaron and diapente would
have fallen within the critical band as their
tuning varied wildly, producing a massive blast of
dissonances so unbearable as to make even the
most hard-core industrial music fan cringe.
Indeed, the popularity of the Pythagorean major
third of 407.8-some cents becomes instantly
comperhensible when you realize that on such an
early organ an 81/64 would have started at 407.8 cents
and dropped *through* 386 cents *down* even
*below* the just 5/4 as the bellows feeding
the pipe deflated completely (thus lowering
the air pressure through the pipe).
In exactly the same way, interest in radically
non-12 tunings is exploding nowadays because
of the recent advent of digital cheap retunable
synthesizers.
Technology drives tuning. It's that simple.
J.A.M. Salinas' complaint that "I just finished
a degree on music composition in the UK, which
is meant to be very experimental and avant garde...
and nothing was mentioned about any other tuning
system different than the 12-TET" is a familiar
one.
I've encountered this complaint many many times
from many many people. It's nothing new. The
yakademics have their heads stuck in the sand,
and they refuse to wake up and look around and
recognize the fact that music is changing.
Fortunately, this tuning forum provides the solution.
Anyone interested in a wide variety of information
about non-12 tunigs should contact John Chalmers
and give him your snail mail address. I will send
you enormous amounts of information not biased
in any particular way--articles on nj net tunings,
non-12 equal temperaments, ji and various
ethnic and meantone european tunings covering
a period of more than 100 years by authors of
every conceivable viewpoint. A number of
folks on the tuning forum have already asked
for and received such xeroxes; they've all been
shocked at the depth and breadth of material
which has been published on microtonality but
which is systematically ignored in the 12-TET musical
establishment because of the pervasive 12-only
mindset and the profound ignorance of the
yakademics.
In short, anyone who wants information need
only ask. You will be astonished at how much
has been published about microtonality over
the last 100 years--it does not accord at all
well with the false and restricted and artificially
limited picture of modern music painted in the
typical grad school "avant garde" music course.
--mclaren


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