88CET #14: Pragmatic Concerns 2

Concluding my comments on interesting pragmatic considerations with working
in a nonoctave environment...

Another complication comes with ear-training and sight-singing. I'm
convinced that semiformal ear training is even more important to xenharmonic
composition and performance than in traditional, and unfortunately isn't pursued
in depth except by a comparative few.

But editorialism aside, ear training exercises often require you to sing a
note at a particular pitch. If the intended pitch does not fit within your
vocal range, you will usually sing an octave equivalent of that pitch. If you
do this in a nonoctave tuning you would be singing an entirely different note
that does not even necessarily lie within the tuning system! As with the case
of tuning instruments to each other, this is one of those cases where we take
the existence of octaves for granted.

But it's important to realize that this is not necessarily a problem. Even
in the usual octave-based environment, you can't legitimately change octaves
frequently and still claim to be singing what you're supposed to be singing. So,
if you perform an entire exercise at the same octave offset from the desired
pitches, you're probably going to learn just as much as if you could sing them
at the exactly correct pitch.

Also, in a case where you are practicing interval singing, such as if you are
asked to sing an "answer" pitch that is thus-and-so interval above a root note.
Rather than only singing the answer pitch, you can sing the root pitch as well
just to establish the octave offset, and sing the answer pitch at the same
offset.

The key point here is that, in short, it's just an exercise. Still, without
a doubt, it is very desirable wherever possible to try to avoid substituting
octave equivalents in exercises, since it's clearly unacceptable in an actual
nonoctave performance or composition.


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I referred explicitly to Werckmeister III and
d'Alembert/Rousseau, not to non-ET in general, in my comment
about the divide between theoretical and practical writers on
temperament. I reject Kirnberger too - I have yet to find a
significant body of baroque music for which any of his tunings
work better than the ones I mention. In fact, his tunings
usually get phrasing stress backwards to my ears. And,
1/4-comma mean tone was almost certainly softened by most
harpsichordists (virginalists? but NOT organists) from the
earliest times. And, I thought we were talking about J.S.Bach,
not three generations later (e.g. Czerny) - I have no
experience at all that late.

My impression (my notes do not record statistics such as this, I
was just a kid in a candy shop then!) came from the music
section of the library at Cambridge England when I studied
there for 2 years in the 60's. It is all too true that the
vast majority of writing on temperament is by dilatants and
theoreticians, not by accomplished musicians.

I believe Scarlatti tuned his harpsichords in the standard
French temperament of the time, and will post a summary of the
paper Bill Sethares & I have written on this once it has been
accepted for publication. Bill is the mathematician (and a
good one) - I use my ears.

If you can't hear the difference between ET and WIII for Bach,
relax and use ET. There are thousands of ways to enjoy music -
you don't have to play the way I do!

--
John Sankey bf250@freenet.carleton.ca
Music is Beauty, Beauty is Truth, Truth is Freedom