Fearful angels :

Greetings,

David J. Finnamore writes;
>What I think (and this whole paragraph is to be regarded as an opinion in
>progress, not a statement of dogma) is that 12-tET led us practically to a
>dead end in less than 200 years. It did so because it is an ET. But it was
>arguably the best choice under the circumstances. Looking back, I kinda
wish
>they had abandoned keyboards and frets rather than JI. Should we now head
>for another dead end, or even a set of dead ends? Now is the time to pick
up
>where they left off and continue with the development of Western music on
the
>track they had to abandon for lack of technological prowess (or courage?).

Seems like every door I want to go through has a cluster of fearful
angels gathered round it.............
12TET, ya gotta love it. Either 12TET is a detour to an entropic
dead end, or it is a realized ideal. One person's Stairway to Heaven is
another's Highway to Hell.

It was not until deep exposure to the tunings of 1600-1850 that I was
aware of what 12 TET actually sounded like. This was after many years of
tuning pianos in as close a 12TET as possible. Several years ago, After a
weekend of Vallotti, (courtesy of my Sanderson and Owen Jorgensens big book),
I sat down at a freshly, (Equally) tuned Steinway D, and the realization of
what I was hearing struck me like the proverbial ton of bricks.
There is a distinct sound, a recognizable character to 12TET that I,( like
a fish NOT being told it is wet), had never really "grokked". In comparison
to earlier tunings, the 12TET has a very "buzzy" sound. It sounds sterile
to me, and that ain't all bad. That I was aware of a musical
character from this tuning, means, to me, that it is a valid aural
construction. It will do things that other tunings will not. This gives it
enough worth to keep it, and I wonder why some people are so opposed. This
temperament is required for much of our music composed in the last 150
years. This is an important temperament!
What I think lies at the hub of resistance to 12TET is the near total
domination of the musical scene by its convenience. Whores, all of us; we
pollute the thirds so that we need not call the tuner in when we modulate,
and excuse the lack of pure intervals by how artfully we display intellect
via the notes.
Well, there is more to music than intellect. The effects of pure
intevals, and the contrasts available from them with tempered intervals,
affect us emotionally, not intellectually. There are just some things that
cannot be said in 12TET. The problem is in finding an audience for the
alternatives. Is this not where the microtonal world is, at the moment? Is
this not where the HIP world limps along the road? Are we not all searching
for audience? ( preferably one with the price of a CD in their pocket!).
Neil mentions often the need for more than "microdoodling". I agree.
It is terrible when the same doodle infects a whole jazz scene; hours of
notes strung together, sustaining some sort of mood, but no real foundation
in there to take home as a new inspirational "puppy".
I would suggest that the chops a musican has are no more than
vocabulary. Whether it is really MUSIC depends on what that musician chooses
to SAY with this vocabulary. Some of the most elegant, timeless phrases are
built with simple words, (Remember Spiro Agnew? I don't remember what he
did, just that the press needed dictionaries to understand what he was
saying.....) If sound doesn't "say" anything to me, I don't buy it, I don't
remember it, and I wish it would go away.
So, how do we best move the greater mass of music consumers away from
the status quo of 12TET? By showing them that there are other things to
listen to, that don't require it,( or require something different). It
means that more than a display of chops is needed. There needs to be a
story, a structure.
I can't help the microtonalists directly, as the 18th century is
calling me, but I will suggest that anything that presents an alternative to
12TET in an attractive manner will help us all. I am hoping that a
reawakening of temperament awareness via the Classical composers will make
leaving 12tet a little easier. Perhaps the fearful will more readily take
the leap away from "home" if they are jumping for something familiar, like
Beethoven.
It may be too much to ask that the public embrace an "alien" tuning
that is used for music they have never heard, but God bless the multi-fret
and the zoom-wowie scalers and "math-monsters". There is a place for any
language that actually has something to say.

Regards to all,
Ed Foote
Precision Piano Works
Nashville, Tn.

( sure wish Brian M. would slash his way back in here, he might be surprised
by how much of his writing was parallelled in a course taught last year!)

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