Last Long Post for a While

It is the part of a wise man to always maintain a small corner of his
mind open to some conception of art totally different from his own, or
to that of the general sense of mankind.

Past centuries have sometimes been very eager to condemn musical tunings
outside their own habits of thought, but not intrinsically fatal (or
gravely inimical) to the musical art. Still, we do the men of the past a
gross injustice to pretend that their minds were closed in matters of
intonation, or for that matter of diatonicism versus chromaticism or
enharmonicism. With all its crowds of artists more interested in
shocking than moving (nor do I find this love of flamboyance wholly an
unsympathetic attitude), the really closed-minded century has been our
own, with its Hitlerian insistence on the 12-tone equal temperament.

In reaction to this, we now suffer (a few of us) from the opposite error
to having a closed mind, which is to cherish a mind so flaccidly open
that one denies all universal principles, or the possibility of such
principles. To make (for once) a sweeping statement, such an attitude is
abhorrent to art, and would have been viewed with horror and disdain by
every Great Western (or Eastern) Composer who has ever lived. This
brings to mind Oscar Wilde's delicious remark (I quote from memory): "To
find all styles in art equally good is to betray the soul of an
auctioneer." People who fall into this error often compound their error
- human nature being what it is - by imagining that it is a viable
option for a musical culture to have _no_ universal tuning or even any
favored set of _similar_tunings. Each musical artist would then have to
reinvent his own musical language from scratch.

This is as if each poet had to invent his own language. We should then
perhaps have strange new poetries ? most of them pathetically valueless
and inept, a few
of them perhaps (within a narrow sphere) exquisitely beautiful. But the
latter class of languages and poetries would be precisely those that
most closely imitate some one (or several) of the 'natural' languages
and known cultures.

In the real world, poets ? sane, serious, level-headed, money-grubbing,
great poets ? do not invent their own language. The most they try to do,
is to bend a little to one side the great common possession of mankind,
language.

Though the analogy is not perfect of course, music is essentially in the
like case. The composer who announces that he has found a marvelous
tuning that, by the way... doesn't stoop so low as to give consonant
fifths and thirds within a single coherent system... is like the English
poet who announces that he is banning all words with more than four
letters from his verse. The thing might be possible ? but why bother? I
can state with _absolute_ finality, and with divine closed-mindedness,
that such poetry would be drivel.

On the list, I believe someone ? by no means devoid of understanding ?
said that "Gibson's preference for mean-tone temperaments is
well-established" as if there are any others worth discussing (for
long). Well, there is just intonation and Pythagoreanism, but they are
not temperaments. There are 22- 29- 41- & 53-tone equal, but I do hope
that by now I have explained why these 'temperaments' are valueless, for
they cast out the consonant thirds from their tonal fabric as soon as
one tries to preserve the consonant fifths.

When one knows nothing of the matter of tuning, the choice of a tuning
appears purely arbitrary, but the more one learns of the principles that
govern music ? all human music ? the more one realizes that, although
there is incredible tuning variation within human music, there is also a
very obvious and powerful tendency toward just intonation, or rather,
toward some system that shall preserve the advantages of just
intonation, while remedying its defects, and if possible even adding to
its available melodico-harmonic resources, especially in conjunct music
of very limited compass, where sheer dead-reckoning can be used to sing
and understand intervals outside the realm of just intonation. And note
that the variation in human tuning systems _is concentrated_ in
precisely this domain of conjunct music within limited compass. As soon
as cultures move out of this domain, and also as soon as they use
harmony, just intonation assumes a compelling r?le in their tuning
systems.

Some may imagine that ? falling into that habit of the human mind which
causes us to become passionately attached to whatever we much use, and
to which we ally our own vanity ? I advocate 19-tone equal as a kind of
obsession or quest for notoriety, etc. This is not so. I dislike
notoriety very much, and wish someone else would promote the most
essential ideas that I have presented, leaving me free to my poetry and
my music, only no one has, at least so far as I know, in the requisite
depth and with the suitable insistence. My own artistic vanity happens
to be more attached to poetry than to music, and it is a matter of
personal indifference to me whether anyone uses 19-tone equal or not. I
do rather pity those who do not.

But I have already presented some very strong evidence which suggests
that 19-tone equal is _uniquely_ close to the tendencies of human
intonation, and also far, far richer in real, usable, melodic ? and
therefore, granted the presence of consonances, in harmonic ? resources.
These are almost certainly facts, and will not be shaked. There are
exceptions, there are caveats... but the trend is as clear as the
daylight.

I have much more evidence, better suited for a book ? a 10,000 page book
? than for this forum.

I would like to suggest that no one, whether they happen to like my
personality or not, should deny himself the pleasure of carefully
exploring the 19-tone equal in a variety of musical styles. This surely
is bigger than matters of personality. BTW, I have a notion that
Schoenberg would have been fascinated with the 19-tone equal, had anyone
explained its potentialities to him.

Finally, I wish to state again that the masses, although seemingly
ignorant of and indifferent to tuning questions, are, like it or not,
our masters. The most imperious dictator who ever lived, the haughtiest
aristocrat who ever breathed, lives in nightmarish fear of popular
ridicule. The people ? our own, Western people especially ? exert a
potent influence, via popular melody and musical instrument makers (to
name just two influences) on the choice of tuning, and on all music.
Those who refuse to decide on a universal tuning, and consider the
notion tyrannical, closed-minded, limiting, etc will merely have the
choice of a universal tuning made _for_ them, most probably in favor of
12-tone equal, but one day, most probably, in favor of 19-tone equal.
The latter should prima facie interest microtonalists more than the
former.

I have already spent far too much time here ? it is rather addictive,
and I have corrected several errors or incompletions in my theories by
reading the list ? but I hope I have offered some ideas of value.


SMTPOriginator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
From: Gregg Gibson
Subject: Reply to Paul Ehrlich
PostedDate: 20-12-97 05:42:22
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