pre-millenarian mysticism

Since a good portion of the list is enjoying pre- millenarian exstasis and
unashamed speculation, I join in with my two bits worth:

The integer series has shown itself again and again to be, as Eugene Wigner
put it in an analogous context, ''unreasonably effective'' with regard to
its descriptive power for ''real, existing'' musics. (Even Charles Lucy's
schemata make comparison with just intervals). I do have difficulty with
locating the series as a kind of reality, however: Is it a platonic reality
which the physical/psychophysical/culture worlds of music reflect to
varying degrees of accuracy, or is our perception of the acoustic reality
the seed for our construction of the integers? Personally, I enjoy
composing from the platonic position with an ideal in mind, but listening
from the constructive, or intuitive viewpoint (hearing a universe unfold).

The distance between the integer model and real music defines a range of
tolerance that seems to be defineable to some degree of accuracy and across
some cultural boundaries and this phenomenom is rich in musical potential
(both the mental correction of intonational errors and the construction of
intonational puns, for example, are a (by?)product of this tolerance).
Nevertheless, some tuning systems have been devised for which an integer
model is less useful - I eagerly await music composed in such systems where
the tonal basis is not readily mappable onto a just lattice.


Daniel Wolf
Frankfurt

Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sat, 22 Feb 1997 16:00 +0100
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA13454; Sat, 22 Feb 1997 16:00:03 +0100
Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA14613
Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
id GAA10153; Sat, 22 Feb 1997 06:58:01 -0800
Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 06:58:01 -0800
Message-Id: <330DB368.1FC6@ix.netcom.com>
Errors-To: madole@mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu