Modulating tunings

If one were composing a work in Just intonation and one wanted to
modulate to Pythagorean intonation, would one reflect the comma
change in a medial signature, or would one simply indicate
"Pythagorean" above the staff, and let the staff lines assume
the new diastemic values?

--Polychronios

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Message written at 11 Jun 1997 21:34:46 +0100
In-reply-to: <339E318C.168@dnvr.uswest.net> (message from Aline Surman on Wed,
11 Jun 1997 04:54:50 +0000)

I am not sure what to make of Haverstock's message about scary music.
We all receive audio input in different ways -- in the light of
experience and other things like genetics. I do not know to whom
H. referred as creating scary music, but I do know that when I am
stressed out I want to listen to angular music, mainly Birtwistle as
it happens, as it takes the anger away. Other people seem to get
angry at the same music and seem to think that it is a personal insult
to have discords.

So is the music "weird" or is it the listeners? Who is normal?
Without naming pieces or composers I have no idea how much weight to
place upon this message.


I have discovered talking to composer-friends that what I see as
emotionally charged, and deeply sensual, they describe as cold and
mathematical (and I have no idea how something can be both cold and
mathematical!)

So more details please.

ohn

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Haverstick's comments are deeply personal and should be respected as such.
My own tastes in music are probably very different from his, but the
variety of musical experience is one aspect of the intrinsic interest in
music. Sometimes I hit very heavy boundaries - pieces of music or
repertoires that simply don't work for me; some music that others treasure
is simply not usable as music for me.

And that reminds me of Gordon Mumma's culinary example: there are some
things that other people or peoples use for food that I am unable, be it
through biology or aculturation, to use for food myself. (Hostess
Snowballs, asefaetida, and bitter melon top my personal list of not-foods,
while lots of folks probably would be dismayed on what they might find inmy kitchen cabinets).

The challenge of becoming anthropologically aware is not to learn to use
what we taste or hear as non-foods or non-musics as foods or music, but
simply to appreciate and respect the diversity of tastes present within our
single species. (The previous discussion of neanderthal woodwinds had
aspects of a curious but charming variation on this theme).

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Neil's lament about music by a certain well-known microtonalist seem
pointlessly depressing or pointlessly strange struck a resonant chord with
me. As with Neil, I recognize the delicate balance involved, and agree
that the way to avoid expressing depressing or weird ideas is certainly not
by having it express nothing (i.e., "noodling" as Neil calls it).

That delicate balance comes with it another problem: Everybody's
balance scales come prebiased one way or another. Some people will find
depressing what others will find to be minimally challenging.

In analogy to semirecent news stories, I found the Lorena Bobbit story
unnewsworthy. For something to be newsworthy, it needs not only to have
happened and happened recently, but there must also be some sort of value
in others knowing about it. I saw none of the latter. There are others
though who live off that sort of thing. Perhaps they view anything short
of that as looking too much like a scene from Sesame Street or Ozzy and
Harriet. Perhaps they're the sort of people who have "Shit Happens" bumper
stickers on their cars, to which my response has always been "well alright,
but what's the point in reminding us?"

So taking that back to the musical realm, I personally think that
there's value in - voluntarily of course - limiting what we express in our
music. I believe that music ideally should express something, and that
something should be challenging and intriguing, or perhaps just mindless
and fun, but expressing defeatism or depression strikes me as pointless.
Day to day life is a challenge for most of us, so singing about problems
alone says little more than the obvious that "I'm a living organism" or
"the world still isn't ideal", and rarely does more than deepen our
outrage.

I believe that sad or painful feelings can be valuable to express
though, if there's some point of intrigue or insight to them. For example,
a sad melody presented in the context of an unusual or surprising
underlying harmonic progression, or using a curious "twist" on traditional
forms, evokes more than just unabated pain. The opening of Brahms' Requiem
is such a thing. Or similarly, lyrics about how sad you are to lose a
loved one, reminiscing about the things in her life you'll miss, has a lot
more value in it than singing about the details of the blood and gore of
her death.

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I don't want to start a bandwidth wasting "who's your favourite
composer?" thread. However, I feel drawn to point out that, to
my ears, Birtwistle's music is particularly restful, really.
Punch and Judy excepted, of course. I don't get this angularity
thing at all.



Right, now that's out of the way, can I speak up for Thai tuning?
It was mentioned sometime last week, I think, that this is
based on 7tet. The "Thailand" scale in Manuel's list doesn't
bear this out at all. Some 7tet intervals, yes, but some that
are way out. It is also, to my ears, exceptionally beautiful.
Here it is in cents (dread unit!) and octaves:

0 0
129 0.108
277 0.231
508 0.423
726 0.605
771 0.643
1029 0.858
1254 1.045

Accept no imitations!

Graham

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>So is the music "weird" or is it the listeners? Who is normal?

I think that a better line of questioning would be whether the music was
intended solely to shock people or had a bigger message behind.

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