S. Commas and Quartertones

>I knew someone would pounce on my objection to general use of quartertone
>and say that syntonic comma should be restricted to 81:80.

Then again, I agree with you that "quartertone" should be limited to
specific pitch distance of 50 cents. But, as we've discussed before, I
believe that the term "syntonic comma" should be reserved for a specific
experimental result. Its use as a unit of measurement of temperament
(e.g., quarter-comma meantone) are too deeply engrained in musical history
to allow the term to be generalized into a generic tuning-error mechanism
that can have different results in different tuning systems.

Ivor Darreg and I also believe(d) that the fact that 81:80 provides such
an audibly-intuitive and historically-significant means of making an open
tuning system is an extremely important characteristic of that interval.
(By "open" tuning system I mean one that has an indefinite number of steps
per octave.) We believe to be so important a characteristic of the
syntonic comma that it doesn't make sense to generalize 81:80 in with a
general classification of intervals that don't also have that
characteristic.

That's kind of like trying to classify the F.horn as a woodwind just
because it's so commonly used in woodwind ensembles. The fact that varies
pitch through valves and harmonic overtones rather than toneholes, is just
too basic a difference to permit grouping them into the same
classification.



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