emotional response

Recent posts on the deeper emotional and spiritual meaning of tuning
and music have brought up some interesting ideas, and I hope the thread
of dicussion of these issues will continue.
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?
I have had deep emotional responses to mathematics when I saw for
the first time some deep connection, but mathematics is somehow
different. There is more cross cultural agreement as to what is beautiful
or deep mathematics than there is to music. In mathematics a theorem is
considered true, and therefore worthy of attention, when it can be proven.
A proof can show the place of a theorem in the larger structure of
mathematics of some type, and sometimes the structure and tools of a
proof shows the deep connection between different branches of
mathematics.
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?

Gettin' all philosophical on ya,
John Starrett

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Haverstick wrote:

''... I think the points raised lately concerning the
connection between tunings, music, and larger "Metaphysical" issues are
very important, and should be pursued.''

A response:

In the end, what drives a passion for music is not a set of numbers or a
piece of technology (no matter how ''elegant'' in construction), but some
very deep psychological response to the sound of a music, the way it is
articulated in time, and the way in which it resonates with an individual's
memory and imagination.. What is attractive about tuning theory is that it
is a way of getting fairly concrete handles on extremely subjective
matters. A description of a tuning system may appear to be a cold and
indirect approach to musics we respond to emotionally, but it is perhaps
the only approach that may be tested objectively and communicated
universally. If we wish to speak or write directly of emotional responses
we are forced into an adjectival deadend and communication is virtually
impossible. If however, we are driven to communicate our emotional response
to Music directly, why do we need to resort to words at all? Isn't the most
appropriate response to a piece of music a new piece of music? (This last
was something I learned from Charles Seeger).

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I believe the use of "just" is reference to honest as being explicit to
nature's overtone series. It is first used by Thomas Morley in his
treatise on music _A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke_
(1597), the first of its kind.

Incidentally, the introduction of just intervals into the Mediterranean
appears to stem from England. John Dunstable is credited with being the
inspiration for Dutch speakers Dufay and Binchois to travel south and
share their "just" wares (c.1450). The Dutch speaker Tinctoris tried to
explain the new developments by largely dismissing all that had came
before it, and, ironically, by attempting to fit the new consonances into
dated Pythagorean theory.

There is a selection in Strunk regarding the Northumberland area of
England (c.1200) where it was witnessed that there was an independent part
sung by each singer singing. Ther further north one went, the more
indepenedent part sung. This would seem to foretell the Renaissance
interest in vertical listening.

Happy New Year everyone!

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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J. Reinhard wrote:

''I believe the use of "just" is reference to honest as being explicit to
nature's overtone series. It is first used by Thomas Morley in his
treatise on music _A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke_
(1597), the first of its kind.''

''Just'' could not have been defined by anyone in the sixteenth century
with reference to an overtone series, as that concept had yet to be
developed. One of the now obsolete meanings for ''Just'' is ''exact'', and
it used in this sense to distinguish Just intervals from tempered, which
were used as approximations.

I find it not very useful to define Just with any appeal to nature, as
real, existing nature is frustratingly free of exact overtone series as
anyone who has ever tuned a stretched string or a metal bar or played a
brass instrument (I'm a trombonist by training) has experienced. It is
safer to define Just intonation in terms of whole number ratios, and then
to distinguish between varieties of JI on the basis of the genus (a la
Euler) or limit (a la Partch). So Pythagorean tuning is a type of (3^n) or
three limit JI; much tonal music can be performed in (3^n,5^n) or five
limit JI; the Partchian Diamond is a species of (3^4,5^2,7^2,11^2) or
eleven limit JI etc.

The Morley text (1596) - excellent for rhythmic modes and diminution but
decidedly deficient for intonation - is the first of what kind? An earlier
(if inferior) treastise was published in English in 1584, and Morley's debt
to previous non-English publications is everywhere in evidence (e.g. the
monumental _Dodecachordon_ of Glareanus (1547) and Trigini's _Compendium_
of 1588 - from which Morley plagiarized his examples of cadential
treatment).

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The early nod to the English use of just harmonies, implying at the very
least a decidedly smaller third than the ditone on the continent, is here
quoted from the Strunk collection of first hand accounts on music of the
Middle Ages.

The English Origin of Polyphonic Music, attributed to Giraldus Cambrensis:
"Descriptio Cambriae" (12th Century)

"The Britons do not sing in unison, like the inhabitants of other
countries, but in many different parts. So that when a company of singers
among the common people meets to sing as is usual in this country, as many
different parts are heard as there are performers, who all at length unite
in consonance, with organic sweetness."


What do you think, sound just to y'all?

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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> If however, we are driven to communicate our emotional response
> to Music directly, why do we need to resort to words at all?

I for one agree wholeheartedly.

There is however an annoying little technical obstacle that humans only
now are beginning to get around: It's not easy to put sounds into written
communication.

Perhaps one could argue that it's difficult or even foolhardy to discuss
purely musical sensations in words, or perhaps even that it should not be
attempted.

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Gary Morrison wrote:

> There is however an annoying little technical obstacle that humans only
> now are beginning to get around: It's not easy to put sounds into written
> communication.

You can attach files to email.

Matt Nathan


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Message written at 2 Jan 1997 12:00:45 +0000
In-reply-to: <32CAEE06.C46@ix.netcom.com> (message from Matt Nathan on Wed, 1
Jan 1997 15:14:29 -0800)

>>>>> "Matt" Matt Nathan writes:

Matt> You can attach files to email.

but that does not mean that they can be heard. And there is the
bandwidth problem, and the telephone time......
ohn

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