Reply to Kris Peck, in Hopes of Converting Him to the True Faith

Kris Peck said:
> Every once in awhile I get
> gullible and respond to things that are so obviously ridiculous it should
> really be beneath me.

I really shouldn't reply to this, but on my vacation, what the hell...

You attempt to paint me as a fanatic or a crank with delusions of
paranoiac persecution. I have no objection; ad hominem attacks are the
first response of those who are afraid to deal in specifics, or who
honestly feel they are dealing with... a crank.

I have never much cared for the music of Partch. He apparently possessed
some talent, almost wholly vitiated by his perfectly absurd tuning. This
is, by the way, the response of the overwhelming majority of people who
have ever heard Partch's music. The album that I found at the local
library is laughably bad, but perhaps there are better performances. His
book Genesis of a Music is wonderful reading, although again, his
utonalities, enthusiastic disquisitions on 2-cent differences and the
like betray more the amateur than the savant. Partch's music does have
the merit of opening a few people's minds to new possibilities, which is
all to the good. But usually, his music closes minds tighter than ever
before. Partch, you know, was also a bit of a... crank.

You qualify my support of 19-tone equal as 'militant', and seem to imply
that most of what I say is already common knowledge. This is not
correct. Certainly no one to my knowledge has noticed that the 19-tone
equal, because of its characteristic tuning degree near the melodic
limen, is peculiarly apt to express virtually all (not _all_) melodies,
certainly a far greater number than other systems, or indeed, all other
systems combined. If I have repeated this a number of times, always with
additional information to explain why this is so, it is not because I am
a crank who rambles on, but because I am very conscious that the
statement sounds extreme, and indeed ridiculous to the uninformed
person. Five years ago, before my descent into Crankdom, I would have
been the first to laugh at such an assertion.

Salinas, one of the half-dozen greatest minds who have ever graced the
discipline of musical theory, briefly noticed the aptitude of the
19-tone equal (or rather, of the 1/3 comma mesotonic) to the expression
of the enharmonic, long before I did.

I do not believe that I referred to the "latest scientific research".
Your knowledge of what a crank sounds like, does not prove me to be one.

But really, those who imagine I am devoting my life to The Cause, are
very much mistaken. This is merely one of the matters to which we devote
Our Imperial Attention. (Cranks typically have many causes, don't they?)

I do hope that you take this in the spirit in which it was written, as
a bit of innocent fun with another Outraged Reader, and do not consider
this a 'flame' in any way.


SMTPOriginator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
From: Gregg Gibson
Subject: Mckyyy's LCMs
PostedDate: 20-12-97 07:14:24
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