Young's WTP, A Question concerning opinion

>> On a related note, does anyone know how to get Well-Tuned Piano on CD?
>
> I presume that the Just Intonation Network's JI Store still sells it.

Henry Rosenthal, whose apartment is "The Just Intonation Store," had one
copy left for sale as of last summer--I believe on lp, but possibly
cassette. No CDs. As far as I know, the recording has been completely
discontinued and LaMonte Young doesn't even have extra copies for sale.
------------------------------------
>The interview [with Johnston] that I read appeared in William Duckworth's
>book "Talking Music, Conversations with John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie
>Anderson, and >Five Generations of American Experimental Composers" (Schirmer Books, 199>5).

>..all the dissonant music of the twentieth century may well be very unhe>althy for us ... Not because it's dissonant. Not even because it's comple>x. But because it's irrationally dissonant. ... [we should] eliminate the> pollution. ... than just taking it for granted and ending up with a dama>ged world.

>My question is this. Do members of the Just Intonation community basicall>y agree or disagree, and to what degree, with Ben Johnson's opinion as >expressed in this interview?
>
>I await any discussion.

The old adage "you are what you eat" seems to be pertinent here. The
sounds that we surround ourselves with have strong affects on our moods,
and in the long-term must be considered to have "positive" or "negative"
influence. Tuning cannot be considered to be the only musical attribute
that affects our development in this manner, and Johnston realizes this.
In his music he has tried many approaches (which vary in their degrees of
abstraction and modernism) to express an orderly sound-world.

I don't agree with Johnston's appraisal of rock music as being irrational.
It seems to me that rock is overly rigid and simple. If I have any
complaint with rock in general, it is the machine-like rigidity of it; rock
jackhammers over our lives with gew moments of repose and a general
disregard for large-scale phrasing. In my mind, this has a tiring and
confusing effect (when I pay attention--and a boring effect when I don't).

Johnston doesn't deal with equal temperaments other than 12TET, and hasn't
composed in 12TET for years. His comments shouldn't be taken to express
disdain for equal temperaments which approximate Just Intonation except
that scales are judged against the yardstick of the overtone series, and
the roughness created from acoustic beating in equal temperaments
translates into roughness in our lives. Remember also the complexity is
not bad, it is "illogical complexity" that our minds do not follow. Maybe
if we listened to a "healthy" music made up of logical tunings, timbres,
rhythms, etc., we would be a little more relaxed. Then we can move onto
painting the walls earthtones...

Yours,
Adam

_________________
Adam B. Silverman
153 Cold Spring Street; A5
New Haven, CT 06511
(203) 782-1765

abs22@pantheon.yale.edu

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It's instructive to look at _Dark Brother_ as a source for Partch's
treatment of dissonance. This piece and _Even Wild Horses_ are the most
diamond oriented of his scores. In fact the score copy of DB with which Iam familar includes an added notation of a harmonic analysis in terms of
the diamond (16/9O, 11/8U etc.). However, the score includes frequent
dissonances in the form of passing tones or suspensions, and the
introduction features microtonal passagework on the chromelodeon
deliberately designed to get particular rates of beating. Partch's
conception of dissonance was early on a broad one, and included everything
from clusters and beating to more traditional uses of non-harmonic pitches.
Interestingly, on the last point, Partch appeared to have a contextual
conception of what constituted ''non-harmonic'' or ''inharmonic''. For
example, the 15 identity might be used on a slide guitar uniformly but
Partch considered it ''inharmonic'' because it was not available throughout
his ensemble, and although most listeners would probably find it more
consonant than the 11 identity. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
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