Margie's oysters

Margaret The Outspoken (who dislikes the Egyptian)
has brought up the importance of cajones in a
refreshingly cosmopolitan context. She's
quite correct.

Partch's problem is -- I durst not say it here ...

Berio, appositely, yet also lacks these wonderful
toys of the gods. He is exquisite, superb, technically
profound, but -- ah, no cajones.

Shostakovich, on the other hand, that wimp, that
plaything of Stalin, that lily-livered, cream-faced
loon, still hangs like a clock and displays real feelings.

Nutty, isn't it ? It's not a technical matter at all,
merely spiritual.


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The term _Wolf_ and its plural _Woelfe_, were established tuning terms in
German in the early sixteenth century, and were rapidly imported to English
as _wolf_ and _wolves_. The fact is, the name was chosen because of a
perceived resemblance of certain intervals to the howling of wolves. As
wolves' calls do have a distinctive steady beating, and are often
dichordal, this is not an unreasonable metaphor. Any qualitative judgement
about this sound is a function of time and place, and we are now - given
our modern, urbanized reverence for animals - free to admire both sounds,
and recognize certain similarities, much as listeners in the past
apparently found both sounds disagreeable, while recognizing similarities.
Your regular ( -s) ending for a synechdoche form is without precent
grammatically and unnecessary, because the term _Wolf_ was used initially
as an unaccompanied noun, and not in the adjective-noun combinations (_wolf
interval_, _wolf tone_) found later (my earliest example is nineteenth
century - but Jonathan Walker may know an earlier source). As I indicated
before, the _wolf_ is a metaphor, and a metaphor must retain the declension
of the borrowed term.

Furthermore, English has so few surviving Germanic plural endings that it
certainly adds to the surface variety of our language to be able to use one
when we can!

Let�s get back to tuning...

Dr Daniel Wolf, Frankfurt

------------------------------

Topic No. 7

Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 15:40:11 -0500
From: Daniel Wolf <106232.3266@compuserve.com>
To: "INTERNET:tuning@eartha.m"
Subject: Ornaments and Intonation
Message-ID: <199612101540_MC1-CE2-BDC2@compuserve.com>

In passing, Jonathan Walker mentioned a feature often attributed to
European music, the use of ornamentation (from vibrato/_Bebung_ to trills,
etc.) as a means of obscuring intonational problems.

Since the tradition of performer-supplied ornamentation is not continuous
(having been broken by the tendency of composers to notate in ever more
detail - and the expectation that novelty in a new composition involved
departure from tradition, including traditional ornaments), I am interested
in learning how this use of ornamentation is attested to in the theoretical
literature.

I ask because my experience of continuous ornamental traditions,
particularly that of South Indian classical music, has exactly the opposite
use of ornaments: in the Karnatic tradition, the ornaments (_gamakas_) are
essential to getting the intonation right, not to obscuring bad intonation.
In the exercises one practices in order to lear a raga, simple scales are
not used, but rather ornamented melodic types that are typical of the raga
in question.

For example, the raga closest to Major is sung not S R G M P D N s and down
again but rather ascending (every four _notes_ is a single beat):

S - - - R S R S G - - - P G P - P - - - P s D - s N s N
s - - -

and descending:

s - - - s N s N bN DbN D P - - - M G M G M - - - R S R S S
- - -

When sung with a Sa= 1/1 Pa= 3/2 drone, the intonation

Sa 1/1
Ri 9/8
Ga 5/4
Ma 4/3 (Descending only)
Pa 3/2
Da Ascending 5/3 (but only following a high Sa) Descending 27/16
bNi 7/4 (Descending only, and only as gamaka for Da)
Ni 15/8

is quite easy to learn.

(I learned most of the above from T. Viswanathan and Jon Barlow).

Perhaps other list members have similar examples.

Daniel Wolf

------------------------------

End of TUNING Digest 921
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