a gentleman and... an academic

In the TUNING digest 1607 (topic No. 16), Carl Lumma wrote:

"�Partch would have been greatful for the DX7. He who says otherwise
is a gentleman and... an academic."

While I'm certainly not an academic (or can I claim to be the �gentleman� so
depicted in this context), I am reasonably certain that I don�t really know
much about this or that intent of someone I never knew� so this may very
well be true; 'Partch would have been grateful for the DX7'... I can�t
say�But I will offer a personal point of view or two, to which (I am fairly
certain) someone is bound to have some heartfelt objections.

I do not own a copy of Partch�s �GENESIS OF A MUSIC�. But I have taken it
out of the library (a couple of times), and seem to recall a passage in
which he talks about (new?) instruments and how music has always grow around
and out of them... Though I�ve no doubt butchered the judicious literatim of
what he wrote, hopefully I�ve conveyed something of it as well (?).

It is my humble opinion that the more unforgettable characteristics of
Partch�s music (assuming that the actual music one creates carries with it
something distinct from the ideologies that buttress it) are tied a lot
tighter to the creation and implementation of new instruments, than they are
the advancement of a tuning that happened to resolutely embrace aural
causation� And though the tuning the instruments the ideologies and the man
and the music all seem inseparable to me now... I for one am pretty darn
thankful someone was seduced by carpentry!

Would the �inimical leer� that permeates much of his writing on the subject
tuning have lost a bit of its punch (or charm) had his radical, spirited
MUSIC not shined so brilliantly? I (for whatever that�s worth) certainly
would have found the shrillness of the intonation reform minded rhetoric
unendurable had the music been some underwhelming, imaginatively anemic
quotidian�'Natural, reasonable, and inherently pleasing...' or not.

Would one with alternative tuning inclinations truly find an unanticipated
audio encounter with an instrument such as Ivor Darreg�s Megalyra any less
�impressive� or �interesting� were it tuned to (and played in) 12TET? Would
the same go for a DX7... Does a compilation like EMI�s 1st �GRAVICHORDS,
WHIRLIES AND PYROPHONES� make a better �argument� for the design and
implementation of interesting new instruments than a compilation like the
tuning forums �A MICROTONAL MUSIC EXPERIENCE� does for the design and
implementation of interesting new tunings?

In the end I would suppose that the divination's either in the work, or it
ain�t, regardless of whether it is in the gross tactical bone and marrow of
the procedure (or it ain�t), and ultimately that it�s more or less for each
to say�

As if its not clear by now�I profoundly disagree with the [arch] remedial
minded �intonationalist�� I tend to see the systemic components of music
(and be those components the beneficial mediation of de-occulting
literatim... �where natural phenomena obeys blind necessity�, or be they
some detachments from the physically exact� �at what cross-purpose the world
is dreamt�), as a varied lot of inspiriting, and metaphorically
speaking�enclitic understandings, put into their determinant position by the
successful (and influential) realization of their MUSIC�

But this is not exactly why I wrote, so I guess I�ve run out my "personal
point of view or two�" Intonation and music are not the same� Having said as
much I would hope not to hie to my grave having said, "therefore; mutually
exclusive�"

Respectfully, D�Stearns