Simultaneous Tunings

Brian M. said:
> Theoretically, meantone tuning is a combination of tempered and
> just intervals--so theoretically it ought to be heard as a combination
> of two types of different tunings. But it never sounds that way to
> these old ears.

Brian said that Bill Alves' comment that spurred this comment was insightful,
but to me both comments are very insightful.

Perhaps it's all because of my composition-oriented perspective, but I would
never in a million years thought to view QC meantone as a combination of a
tempered tuning and a just tuning, on the grounds that it has a just major third
and a tempered fifth.

Especially since I'd be dead most of those million years!

From my composition-oriented perspective, I have long been boggled, if not
all-out scared, by what it would mean to compose in several tunings at the same
time. From that compositional perspective I think more in terms of the
relationships between the intervalic resources of a tuning. And to make
something simple sound overtechnical, the "systematology" of those resources.
That more than the resources themselves.

What on Earth could I possibly be trying to say here? I'll imagine myself
trying to compose something simultaneously in 12 and 19. I know exactly what an
authentic cadence in either tuning alone. I know what certain typical
modulation techniques would sound like in either tuning alone. I know what
certain "tricky" chromatic variants in 19 sound like, and I have a pretty good
ability to imagine what a chromatic variant in either tuning would sound like
without hearing it.

But suppose that the 19- and 12-toned instruments are tuned with a C in
common between them. Maybe my microtonal musicianship is lacking, but I'm
having a hard time imagining what the instruments would sound like together once
the ensemble modulates to each system's concept of an E. First of all, there
would be two microtonally different concepts of that tonal center. I can
certainly grind out the pitch relationships in dead ol' mathematical numbers.
But when I'm trying to keep a melody or harmony in my head as I'm committing
ideas to paper, there just ain't no way I'm going to be able to stop and grind
through assorted mathematical tuning theory, without losing my musical imagery!


Certainly carefully devising intricately intertwined counterpoint with two
voices in 12 and two in 19 on tonal centers other than one in which they have a
common pitch basis, is just plain beyond my musical imagery abilities. Perhaps
I'm underestimating the talent on the tuning list, but I suspect that I'm not
alone in that regard.

The trick, presumably, is to approach it from a far more wholistic level.
Ivor Darreg approached it from a perspective that might be described as "mood
painting". 12TET has a restless mood, and 22 has a calm mood, so mix the two
together and you get a painting where, at some spots on the canvas are restless
and calm in other spots. And presumably something all-new in other spots.


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