Post 1 of 2 from McLaren

From: mclaren
Subject: Paul Rapoport's inadequate bibliographies
part 1 of 2
---
A month or so ago, Paul Rapoport complained about my
criticism of his inadequate bibliographies. He alleged
that "we need fewer hurricanes frm the Northwest."
Paul was presumably intent on demonstrating, sans
evidence (ex nihilio, as it were) that the bibliographies
at the end of his articles are by some convoluted twist of
logic useful and adequate, rather than criminally deficient,
atrociously deceptive, falling unpardonably short of even
the lowest standards of slipshod scholarship.
Of course, my posted statements stand.
They were, if anything, too mild. Paul's refusal to cite 90%
of the basically important articles on equal temperaments
can no longer be explained away as "oversights" or
"errors" or the result of being "just too busy." After
a number of letters on this point, Paul continues to
ignore references of fundamental importance. His
bibliographies continue to deceive and misdirect
generations of fledgling xenharmonists. Paul's
bibliographies are holding back the progress of
xenharmonics.
So it's time to go public.
Let me point out how *important* this issue is. At
least one forum subscriber has stated that he wished
he could go back and do his doctoral thesis all over
again. After studying the many hundreds of pages of
articles I xeroxed for him, this tuning forum subscriber
was *shocked* and *disgusted* at the *lack* of adequate
citation of microtonal articles and sources in current
bibliographies and current articles.
Paul Rapoport's bibliographies are among the very worst
offenders in this regard.
Paul is a fine researcher and a gifted composer and an
insightful theorist.
This doesn't change the fact that the bibliographies
in Paul's extremely insightful and valuable articles are
*artrociously* inadequate to the point of being overtly
deceptive.
In fact, if Paul Rapoport's articles (viz., "Some Equal
Temperaments are More Equal Than Others--and
Decidedly More Temperamental," MusicWorks 43, 1991)
weren't as *excellent* as they are it wouldn't matter nearly
as much that Paul's bibliographies are so incomplete.
If the article's crap, no one will pay much attention to it--
but Paul Rapoport's papers are *important* and destined to
garner many citations. Thus there is NO EXCUSE for Paul's
failure to cite *most of the essential papers and the most
important sources* on equal temperaments.
Clearly, neither Paul Rapoport nor any of you will be convinced
by a mere *statement* of these facts. Like mules, you've got to
be *beaten* with a *two-by-four* before you wake up and PAY
ATTENTION to this *vitally important issue.*
Want to play mule?
Fine.
As always, the members of this tuning forum refuse to listen
to reason. As always, I'm going to have beat you with a ton
of references before you wake up and recognize the truth. As
always, you've got to do it the hard way.
Fine, let's do it the hard way.
I've got a two-by-four the size of Texas. One blunt instrument,
coming up. You want to play the mule, you're going to get
an education.
Consider, as a first atrocious example, the grossly deceptive
bibliography at the end of Paul Rapoport's article "The
Structural Relationships of Fifths and Thirds in Equal
Temperaments," Journal of Music Theory, 1994, pp. 351-
389.
Here is Paul's bibliography:
"Blackwood, Easley. 1982. Twelve MIcrotonal Etudes for
Electronic Music Media, op. 28 [sore] New York: G. Schirmer."
"---- 1985. The Structure of Recognizable Diatonic
Tunings. Princeton: Princeton University Press."
"Brun, Viggo. 1961. Muikk og Euklidske algoitmer. Nordisk
matematisk tidskrift 9: 29-36"
"Fokker, Adriaan. 1987. Selected Musical Compostiions. Ed.
Rudolf Rasch. Utrecht: Diapason Press."
"Mandelbaum, Joel. 1961. Multiple Divisions of the Octave
and the Tonal Resources of 19-Tone Equal Temperament.
Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, no. 6104461."
"Rapoport, Paul. 1989. "Some Temperaments are More Equal
than Others...and Decidely More Temperamental. MusicWorks
43: 8-12."
"-------, 1991. The Notation of Equal Temperaments.
Unpublished. (Now published in Xenharmonikon 16, Autumn,
1995)"
"Rasch, Rudolf. 1985. Relations between Multiple Divisions
of the Octave and the Traditional Tonal System. Interface
(now Journal of New Music Research) 14: 75-108"
Regener, Eric. 1973. Pitch Notation and Equal Temperament:
A Formal Study. Berkeley: University of California Press."
--
That's it.
First, let's ask: "What impression of microtonality would
a naive reader come away with after reading Paul Rapoport's
article and glancing through his biblioraphy?"
The naive reader would conclude:
[1] Easley Blackwood is *the* major theorist of equal
temperaments.
[2] Rudolf Rasch and Adriaan Fokker were important theorists
on equal tempered tunings.
[3] The bulk of the existing literature on microtonalty
is heavily mathematical and theoretical.
[4] Mathematical calculations of the size of various kommas
in this or that equal-tempered system offer the primary means
by which equal tempered tunings can be understood, and are
the most important properties of equal-tempered tunings.
--
*Every one of these impressions is false.*
In actuality:
[1] Well over 40% of Easley Blackwood's statements about
equal-tempered tunings are verifiably false. Upward of a
third of his mathematical results do not apply, or are
irrelvant, or are taken so far out of their original Pythagorean
just intonation context as to be meaningless.
[2] Rudolf Rasch and Adriaan Fokker are minor theorists of
equal-tempered scales. Rasch is primarily a psychoacoustician
and music historian/musiclogist. Fokker was a major theorist of
31-TET, but he did not investigate, did not deal with, and
clearly did not understand, equal temperaments other than
31, 19 and 53. The reader who looks to Rudolf Rasch and
Adriaan Fokker to provide an understanding of 13-TET,
14-TET, 9-TET, 21-TET, 27-TET, 40-TET, ad infinitum,
is badly mistaken.
By contrast, Ivor Darreg was a major theorist of equal
temperaments. His Xenharmonic Bulletins 5 and 10
described the characteristics of dozens of equal-tempered
systems. Siemen Terpstra has also done important work
on classifying large numbers of equal temperaments, as
has Erv Wilson. John Chalmers has done important work
in describing the characteristics of some of the more
exotic equal temperaments (13-TET, etc). Not to blow my
own horn, it remains a fact that Your Humble E-Mail
Correspondent has also done some work in this
area.
[3] The bulk of the modern (post 1965) literature on equal
temperaments is descriptive and lucid. Mathematics do
not form the main basis of modern approaches to microtonality,
primarily because after 1965 synthesizers were available
and people could actually *hear* the various equal
temperaments. Thus modern xenharmonic theorists can
now speak about the "sound" of an equal temperament,
whereas this would have been impractical pre-1965 because
the theorist would have had to build 48+ acoustic instruments.
[4] It is universally acknowledged that the most important
characteristics of the various equal temperaments are their
different "sounds" or "moods" or "sonic fingerprints." A piece
of music which sounds thrilling in 19-TET is apt to go flat
and lose its punch in 31-TET; a piece of music which sounds
gorgeous in 31-TET will sound denatured and dull in 22-TET.
And so on. None of this has *anything* to do with arcane
mathematical measurements of abstract kommas, most of
which are illusory and inapplicable in the equal temperament
concerned. For example, while it's theoretically possible to
calculate the closest approach to the Pythagorean komma in
13-TET, doing so is an utter waste of time. 13-TET has no
perfect fifths and therefore the difference between a stack
of perfect fifths and a stack of major thirds is meaningless
in 13-TET, and calculating such a quantity is an exercise
in futility.
It is exactly as though you were to walk through a museum and
listen to a respected art critic explain that the paintings of
Picasso's Blue Period were inferior because the red in those
paintings was a very washed-out and muddy hue of red.
"Wait a minute," you'd say,"The paintings are *supposed* to
be mostly blue. They're basically blue. That's the whole *point*!"
If the art critic continued to explain that there was no such
color as blue, that blue was merely a muddy form of red, and
that blue had no place in painting, you'd give up on the guy
and walk away.
Yet this is what, in effect, Easley Blackwood and his mathematically-
inclined ilk are telling. All ET scales are essentially the same, they
can all be measured by their approximations to various just
kommas, and we can understand all the equal temperaments by
discussing the sizes of their perfect fifths, the most useful kinds
of quasi-Beethovenian 19th century harmonic triadic progressions,
etc., etc.
This is obviously false and clearly ridiculous. Many equal
temperaments do not have perfect fifths, cannot support
consonant triads, do not obey the conventional laws of
harmony and instead turn the "rules" voice-leading and
harmonic progression and melodic modes upside down
and inside out.
In many equal temperaments, we must throw Beethoven out
and learn from the Kwaiker Indians, the Javanese, or the
Thai xylophone tuners. Beethovenian 19th-
century triad harmonic progressions are a small sliver
of the world's music, and it is silly to try to force the
infinity of xenharmonic tunings into that tiny niche.
--
Thus, *all* the impressions which the naive reader gets
from Paul Rapoport's biblioraphy, quoted above, are
verifiably FALSE.
Every single idea planted in the mind of an impressionable
reader by Rapoport's biblio will be deceptive, incorrect,
useless, and will lead the naive microtonalist to try
to compose using 12-TET-type harmonic progressions
and standard diatonic modes in, say, 17-TET or 19-TET
or 14-TET.
*This is a recipe for disaster.*
The predictable result?
Any fledgling microtonalist who reads Rapoport's
bibliography and seeks out ONLY Rapoport's cited
sources will get such godawful results when he
composes microtonal music according to Blackwood's
and Brun's and Rasch's and Fokker's prescriptions
that s/he will give up on microtonality in disgust.
I contend that this is a serious problem.
This is cause for SERIOUS concern.
And so, it's time to end this vicious circle of silence regarding
the most useful and the most informative sources for
fledging microtonalists (Darreg's writings, Xenharmonikon,
the ideas of Balzano and Douthett and Clough, Erv Wilson's
writings, etc. ,etc) *MUST* be broken.
Otherwise microtonality will continue to be seen as an
impossibly difficult mathematical abstract niche, while
it is in fact the most wide-open, joyous, exciting and
musically vibrant area of late-20th-century music.
The next post will get into the nitty-gritty, blow by
blow, of the gross inadequacy of Paul's bibliography.
For the rest of you who read this, remember--Paul Rapoport
is no exception. YOU are just as culpable as he is. The
problem of inadequate, deceptive, willfully misleading
bibliographies is *endemic* throughout the microtonal
theory literature.
For the sake of the next generation of xenharmonists,
this *MUST* change.
--mclaren


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