TUNING digest 941

All-
In response to Gary Morrison's post on the distinction between just and
pure, I thought I was reasonably careful in my steel guitar post, using
pure in reference to the tuning of beatless chords, and "just" in
quotes in reference to the tuning of the whole steel guitar, but
upon rereading it I noticed that the just in the title was without
quotes and "pure" had 'em. Switch the quotation marks between
those two and we're cool.
The two "standard" tunings of pedal steel necks are C6 (Nashville) and
E9, and neither determines an entire diatonic scale (there are many
exceptions, for instance Bobby Lee's diatonic tuning, check
http://www.wco.com:80/~quasar/tunings.htm for instance). Should
the string pitches of a tuning reduced to an octave be, for instance,
1/1, 9/8, 5/4, 4/3, 3/2, 5/3, 15/8, 2/1
I think it is reasonable to use the term just without quotes.
"Just" seems reasonable to me as a term describing a
conglomerate of purely tuned intervals linked by common tones, but still
short of a diatonic scale.

Perhaps I am missing a more subtle point Gary is trying to make.

John Starrett


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On Mon, 30 Dec 1996, John Starrett wrote:

> This morning I found myself moved to tears by the Bulgarian State
> Television Female Vocal Choir singing Ovdoviala Lissitchkata. This is a
> simple repetitive song for two voices and I was surprised at the intensity
> of the emotion it aroused. This is not the crying in your beer kind of
> emotion you'd expect when Merle sings about the same disaster you're going
> through--I don't speak Bulgarian and my life's great at the moment. This
> was a response of elation, and at the same time a little sadness. Do
> some pieces of music evoke a universal response within a musical
> subculture? Is there some underlying resonant structure in our brains
> that lets us recognize great music, or respond emotionally to "emotion
> invoking" music?
>

This is a quick response to John's comments about emotional response to
music. Interestingly, I too was moved by a CD recording a friend loaned
me several weeks ago entitled Bulgarian Folk Ensembles and Songs--plain
case, no cover notes, the only thing on the disc is Balkanton (the
producer, I presume) and names of the ensembles, "Pirin" Ensemble,
Blagoevgrad (1-6), "Philip Koutev" Ensemble, Sofia (7-10), Northern
Ensemble, Pleven (11,12), "Trakia" Ensemble, Plovdiv (13-16 ), Bulgarian
Television and Radio Folk Song Ensemble (17-20)--No names of individual
tracks and no other info at all. This disc contains simply the most
exquisite female a capella (sp?) music of a quality and energy I have ever
heard. I believe this music demonstrates the potential transcendence of
musical form and communicates something way beyond words. It appears that
these women communicate directly to our physiology, experiences which they
express, share, and embed within the tuning of their music , within the
frequency of the sound itself. If anyone has any further info on the
availability of this CD or others by this apparently rich tradition,
please post to the list or to me privately. Thank you.

Bruce Kanzelmeyer
hainline@unr.edu



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For whatever it's worth, the most emotional responses I've had to what
is conceptually simple music, various Mozart choral pieces. Good examples
include his "Ave Verum Corpus", and the "Agnus Dei" from his Requiem (which
by the way is one of the parts Mozart wrote).

They're mostly just plain ol' first-species counterpoint, SATB texture
from freshman harmony classes, and even without all that much modulation
either. But oooh they're soooo rich and powerful.

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> Are the realtions between musical structures comparable to
> the relations between mathematical structures? Is a great theme somehow a

> great musical theorem and the musical development of the theme its proof?


Musical math, to me, is a lot like any other form of applied math: It's
a model of how our ears hear (or a collection of models actually). That in
the sense that it's based upon experimental observation, and can be used to
predict structures that may prove musically useful - structures that would
have been hard to predict otherwise. And as with any other model, its
predictions must be tested experimentally in real music.

As for proofs though... That's probably be a pretty good analogy at the
level of musical form and, as John suggested, thematic development. Most
classical forms, are designed to make the unfolding of the music not only
interesting and emotionally exciting, but also to take on a sense of
inevitability, indeed somewhat like a mathematical proof.

I doubt, however, if there's much similarity between mathematical proofs
and, for example, the whole-number-ratio notion of consonance.

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Message written at 2 Jan 1997 12:33:42 +0000
In-reply-to: <199701011522_MC1-E20-3ABC@compuserve.com> (message from Gary
Morrison on Wed, 1 Jan 1997 12:45:42 -0800)

(A slightly off-topic rambling rave from John ff....)

I have been reading these posts on emotional response with increasing
personal confusion. Apart from the most obvious works that evoke
strong emotional responses in me (Brusckner's 9th symphony, and in
particular the climax in the 3rd movement; Tristan and Isolde,
especially Act2; etc) the works that have caused me the largest
response seem totally other to the ones peopel have quoted.

I remember listening to a Xenakis harpsicord piece based on group
transformations, and the effect of hearing the transformations,
following them as they unfolded, was deeply moving. I had a similar
response to hearing Xenaki's Ikhoor for the first time. For the kind
of emotional release that removes all stress, and internal tension,
nothing beats Birtwistle (Earth Dance or Secret Theatre).

I sometimes wonder if there are not two classes of people in this
respect. The Unknown Public CD no. 08 is all about sensuality, but to
be the majority of the pieces are trite and sentimental. I like
"spikey" music. I like discords. Can one really listen to barbershop
music for more than 5 minutes without feeling sick?

I have had a version of this discussion with a composer friend who was
comparing his music with my attempts. He asserted that his was
emotional and personal, while mine was mathematical and cold -- he
meant this as a discription rather than a critisism. My problem is
that to me my music is mathematical and intensely emotional. It moves
me and excites me; why else would I write it? Indeed the phrase
"mathematical and cold" seems to me an oxymoron. When I was a student
my reaction to the Schroder-Bernstein theorem was emotional
excitement. I would write out the proof for the pleasure of seeing
the result emerge. I am not suggesting that everyone sees the world
this way; but some of us do. This does of course beg the question as
to whether I have this response because I am a mathematician (if only
a mediocre one) or whether I am a mathematicaian because I have this
response.

I have a vague memory of some work on tunings or on consonnance which
seemed to divide the population into those who heard the beating and
disliked it, and those who heard the beating and wanted it.

Oh well, back to lurking....

ohn

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jpff@maths.bath.ac.uk wrote:
>
> "spikey" music. I like discords. Can one really listen to barbershop
> music for more than 5 minutes without feeling sick?--

Can one really listen to anything else for more than 5 minutes without
wanting a bbshop fix?(g)

Why tune discordance? Use 12 tet,that's perty *spikey*.

Ed Dotson
ldotson@sprynet.com


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