Limits: Well...

> Harmony is a recent development in music; a fixed set of pitches has
proved
> an extremely valuable basis for organizing compositions and
improvisations
> for much longer.

Sorry for, in my last reply, launching into one of my lectures about the
much more general topic of limits and systematization from this statement
by Paul E. I probably sidetracked the topic a bit, and may have (or may
not have) put some words into Paul's mouth.

But I think that Paul is certainly correct about this: Although at
first glance imposing an organization upon tuning would seem to limit your
freedom, limits of this sort can actually stimulate creativity.

But such a systematization, on my opinion anyway, doesn't necessarily
have to imply a fixed set of pitches, although it certainly could. As with
meantone or JI, it could equally well imply a certain size of major third
or fifth used consistently with an indefinite number of pitches per octave.


I'd probably better hush up before I start sounding like a fanatic!

Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 12 Jan 1997 20:22 +0100
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA32616; Sun, 12 Jan 1997 20:25:51 +0100
Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA32562
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id LAA21390; Sun, 12 Jan 1997 11:25:49 -0800
Date: Sun, 12 Jan 1997 11:25:49 -0800
Message-Id:
Errors-To: madole@mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu