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RE: fearful angels

🔗DFinnamore@aol.com

5/16/1997 9:57:28 PM
Hi, all! Just a quick clarification. (Yeah, right.)

Ed Foote wrote:

> [12-tET] 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!

Perhaps I overlooked something crucial in making my point. I would never ask
that 12-tET be banned or forsaken en total. After all, I was talking about
alternate scale studies, contrasting JI only with ETs other than our beloved
12t. All Western musicians should, of course, continue to be taught it for
as long as our civilization lasts - that's another good decade anyway. :-)
Personally, I love a great deal of the music composed and (sometimes
ostensibly) performed with it.

My point is directed exclusively to those of us who are dedicated to
advancing music. I mean "advancing" in the same sense that Einstein built on
Newton, Planc on Einstein, Bohr and others on Planc and Einstein, Heisenberg
and the Uncertainty crowd on them, and so on. (Sorry, that will only make
sense to those who know a little physics history, but it's the only really
good example I can think of at the moment.) That same sort of thing was
happening in Western music until sometime (arguably) in the 17th or 18th
century, possibly a little later. We could lift the banner high again and
march on. I am determined to try.

12-tET is dead - long live 12-tET!

wings still trembling slightly,

David J. Finnamore
Just tune it!

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