Vertical Puns

Sorry! My typology was not complete.

The previously described puns must be found in a succession of chords in
order to project the various readings of a pun. Some single sonorities,
however, are self-sufficient puns.

3. Vertical puns:

(a) In temperaments, there are some collections of pitches which are going
to heard ambiguously (when heard ''tonally''). These are something like
those optical illusions which flip-flop between perceived images.

(b) A similar flip-flop may obtain in Just Intonation between chords that
are ambiguously harmonic or subharmonic.

I recall that somewhere in _Finnegans Wake_ (that wonderful book of puns)
is an appropriate phrase: ''My herrings, the surdity of it all!'' David
Antin has spoken/written about the centrality of puns to the work of Marcel
Duchamp ('' a pun is a pendulum oscillating between meanings, therefore
Duchamp was a futurist''). One key to Mozart's tonal charm was his use of
puns with surprising disambiguations; Stravinsky was constantly using
cadential puns to toy with the listeners' expectations. An element of
levity is certainly missing in much serious new music, but both Stravinsky
and Mozart could count on an audience immersed in tonality: I wonder if we
can expect an audience nowadays to listen closely enough to catch such
puns?

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