Part 2 of McLaren's Biblio Post

Paul Rapoport's grossly deficient bibliographies,
part 2 of 2
--
The last post exposed in detail the deceptive nature
of Paul Rapoport's inadequate bibliographies. Bear
in mind that Paul is no exception here--YOU are also
to blame. Virtually *all* microtonal music theory
articles suffer from outrageously incomplete bibliographies,
and the net result is that when doctoral students try to
write theses about microtonality, they wind up parrotting
out-of-date sources like Yasser's "Theory of Evolving
Tonality."
This is a MAJOR problem for the progress of microtonality,
people.
Wake up!
If the information on the characteristics of various tunings
IS NOT AVAILABLE, then *every microtonalist will have to
re-invent the wheel.*
That's *insane.*
It's crazy!
It's as though, if you wanted to compose in 12, the only
references available were Tinctoris and Boethius and
Aristoxenos.
--
Here, once again, is Paul Rapoport's bibliography from the
article "The Structural Relationships of Fifths and Thirds
in Equal Temperaments," Journal of Music Theory, 1994,
pp. 351- 389:
"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Unpublished.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."
--
We saw last post that Paul Rapoport's bibliography was
grossly deceptive--now it's time to demonstrate
that it is also atrociously incomplete.
Consider, for a start, Easley Blackwood. He was Paul Rapoport's
teacher, and if anyone should be familiar with Blackwood's
articles and texts, you'd think Paul would be.
But not so. Paul Rapoport incomprehensibly leaves out
*the most important* of Blackwood's articles on
equal temperaments:
[1] Blackwood, Easley. "Modes and Chord Progressions in
Equal Tunings," Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 29,
No. 2, 1992, pp. 167-200.
[2] Blackwood, Easley. Research Notes: NEH Grant R0-29376
-78-0642. Privately circulated handwritten xerox. 1981.
[3] Blackwood, Easley. "Discovering the Microtonal Resources
of the Synthesizer," Keyboard, May 1982, pp. 26-38
[4] Blackwood, Easley. Liner notes for the LP "Twelve
Microtonal Etudes" 1980.
[5] Genovese, Denny. "Easley Blackwood--An Interview
by Denny Genovese, Part I," Interval, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring
1981, pp. 16-21
[6] Genovese, Denny. "Easley Blackwood--An Interview
by Denny Genovese, Part II," Interval, Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer
1981, pp. 18-20
[7] "A Trailblazer tunes in to a musical discovery," John
von Rhein, Chicago Tribune Arts & Fun section, July 20,
1980.
--
So let's see now...Paul Rapoport, who was taught by Easley
Blackwood, cites a grand total of 2 of Blackwood's texts.
Rapoport didn't bother to cite the *other* 7 sources.
2 sources out of 7.
Is this a reasonable percentage for the person who *taught*
Rapoport and stands as *the* major source on Paul's
attitude toward microtonality?
Paul leaves out the NEH Grant report, by *far* the most
important of all of Blackwood's texts--in fact Blackwood's
1992 PNM article represents a tiny condensation of a mere
4 of the 11 chapters of this giant work.
Anyone who reads Paul's bibliography will come away with
the impression that the book "Structure of Recognizable
Diatonic Tunings" is Blackwood's most important work
on notating ETs, and the only text available. This is so
obviously the *opposite* of the truth that it beggars
description.
To continue:
Paul Rapoport cites Viggo Brun's 1961 article, presumably
because Brun defines the properties of various classes
of equal temperaments using continued fractions. But Rapoport
*fails* to cite Brun's *english-language* article on the same
subject:
[1] Brun, Viggo,. "Euclidean Algorithms and music theory,"
L'esnseignement Mathematique Revue Internationale,
tome X, fasc. 1-2, 1964, pp. 125-137.
And because Paul Rapoport *fails* to cite this vital
article, he *also* neglects to cite the *other* important
articles which characterize equal temperaments using
continued fraction methods, all cited in the bibliography of
Brun's english-language 1964 article:
[2] Brun, Viggo. Mehrdimensionale Algorithmen, welche die
Eulersche Kettenbruchentwicklung der Zahle verallgemeinern,"
Leonard Euler zum 250. Geburtstag, 1959, Akademie-Verlag,
Berlin."
[3] Brun, Viggo. "Algorithmes euclidiens pour trois et quatre nombres,"
XIII Congr. Math. Scan. tenu a Helsinki, aout 1957
[4] brun, Viggo. "En Generalisation av kjedebro/ken I-II," Norske Vid.
Selk. Skr., 1919-20, Olso (avec des resumes en francais)
[5] Brun, Viggo. "Music and Ternary Continued Fractions," Nordisk
Matem. Tijdskrift, B.9, Oslo 1961
[6] Fokker, A. D. "Multiple Antanairesis," Koninkl. Nederl.
Akademie van Weteschappen, Amsterdam, Proc. Ser. A, 66,
communicated October 27, 1962
[7] van der Waerden. "Die Harmonielehre der Ptyahgoreer,"
Hermes, Vol. 78, pp. 163-199
And since Rapoport cites one of Brun's continued fraction
articles, why doesn't he cite James Murray Barbour's
article "Music and Ternary Continued Fractions," American
Mathematical Monthly, LV, 1948, pg. 545?
Brun himself cites the Barbour article in the biblio of his
(Brun's) 1964 article.
Barbour's article covers nearly exactly the same ground as
Brun's--and if Brun's article is necessary, why is not Barbour's
article also necessary?
On the subject of continued fractions, the article "Musical Scale
Construction: the Continued Fraction Compromise," Utilitas
Mathematica, Vol. 42, pp. 97-113, 1992, is an even more
important source. Yet Paul Rapoport blatantly ignores it.
Why?
Is there some good reason for doing so?
Moritz Drobisch's book "Uber Musikalische Tonbestimmung und
Temperatur," Leipzig, Widmannsche Buchhandlung, 1852,
covers much the same ground. Yet Paul Rapoport *also* fails
to cite this work.
Jacques Dudon's "La gamme doree: Un temperament inegal
issue du nombre d'or," in the collection "Nombre d'or
et Musique," 1987, pp. 147-157, uses similar continued
fraction methods of sieving scales to obtain results similar
to Douthett, Drobisch, Blackwood, Barbour, Fokker, Hall,
Kronerup, et al. Yet Paul Rapoport *fails* to cite *this*
important source as well.
Speaking of Kornerup--
Thorwald Kornerup used exactly the same methods as
Barbour, Brun and Douthett to classify tuning systems
in 4 different articles: "Acoustic Valuation of Intervals,"
Thorwald Kornerup, Translated by Jean Ferguson, Copenhagen,
Aschehoug Forlag, 1934; "Von der Urform 5-Toniger Skalen zu
den Golden Tonen Elekstrischer Instrumente," Kopenhagen,
1931; "Kornerup, Throwald, "Die Hochteilung der Oktave,"
Kopenhagen, 1930; "Die Vorlaufer der gleichschwebende
Temperaturen mit 19 oder 31 Tonen in der Oktave," Translated
from Danish to German by P. Friedrich Paulsen, Copenhagen,
J. Joergensen, 1930.
Why did Paul Rapoport fail to cite *these* equally important
sources on classifying equal temperaments?
Scanning Paul's bibliography, we find yet another GROSS
oversight--Donald Hall's name does not appear. Yet Hall
has written four *important* articles on the classification of
equal temperaments:
[1] Hall, Donald. "Acoustical Numerology and Lucky Equal
Temperaments," American Journal of Physics, Vol. 56, 1985
[2] Hall, Donald. "Quantitative Evaluation of Musical Scale Tuning,"
American Journal of Physics, Vol. 42, 1974. pp. 543-552
[3] Hall, Donald. "The Objective Measurement of Goodness-of-
Fit for Tunings and Temperaments," Journal of Music Theory,
Vol. 17, pp. 274-290, 1973
[4] Hall, Donald. "A Systematic Evaluation of Equal Tempermaents
Through N=612," Interface, Vol. 14, 1985, pp. 61-73
--
This is a *criminal* oversight, since it leads the unwary
reader to believe that Don Hall has nothing to say about
equal temperaments--when he in fact has a great deal
to say about 'em.
--
Since Paul Rapoport's article deals specifically with the notation
of equal temperaments, you'd expect that he'd cite other
basic texts on xenharmonic notation. For example, Ivor Darreg's
Xenharmonic Bulletin No. 6, 1975, devoted *entirely* to
non-12 notation.
Or "Notation for Non-Twelve," Ivor Darreg, Interval,
Spring-Summer 1980, Vol. 1, pg. 12 "Notation For
Non-Twelve - part 2," Ivor Darreg, Interval,
Fall 1980, pg. 7
At the very least, you'd expect Rapoport to cite Xenharmonic
Bulletin 5, 1975, by Ivor Darreg (the crucial bulletin in
which Ivor first wrote about the "moods" or "sounds" or
"sonic fingerprints" of each of the equal temperaments),
or Xenharmonic Bulletin 10, 1988, in which Ivor wrote
an exhaustive commentary on the advantages & disadvantages
of most of the tunings between 5t and 53 tones per octave.
--
And Paul Rapoport cites *not one single reference* by
Ivor Darreg. This is beyond belief. It's like writing an
article about visual art without mentioning painting.
It's incomprehensible.
And guess what?
It gets *worse*.
--
The veritable library of xenharmonic source
materials Paul Rapoport *should* have
cited and *didn't* include:
Joseph Wu"rschmidt, "Die Rationellen Tonsysteme
in Quinten-Terzengewebe," Zeitschrift fu"r Physik,
Vol. 2, 1920, pg. 89 (The first systematic discussion of
the very subject of Paul's article!--Equal temperaments
characterized by the "web of thirds and fifths.")
R.H.M. Bosanquet, "An Elementary Treatise on Musical
Intervals and Temperament," London, 1876 (this is
the origin of the "positive" and "negative" terminology
for temperaments, and the origin of the R measurement)
McLaren & Darreg, "Biases In Equal Tempered Scales,"
Xenharmonikon 13, 1990 (the first mention of scalar bias
either toward harmony or toward melody)
Wendy Carlos, "Tuning: At the Crossroads," Computer Music
Journal, 1987 (an important summing-up, with crucial
references to John R. Pierce's 1966 "Attaining Consonance in
Arbitrary Musical Scales" article, along with the first
musical examples of chords which produce this effect)
Sebastian von Hoerner, "Universal Music?" Psychology of
Music, 2(2), 1974, pp. 18-28 (2nd earliest categorization
of large numbers of equal temperaments)
Clarence Barlow, "Two Essays On Theory," Computer Music
Journal, 1987 (the first printed appearance of Barlow's
harmonicity index and its first printed use to classify
equal temperaments)
Canright, David. "Rational Notation," 1/1, Vol. 1, No. 1,
1985, pg. 8
Banta, Chris. "New Approaches to Pentatonic Notation,"
Interval. Vol. 3, No. 3, Winter 1981, pg. 9
G. A. Behrens-Senegalden. Die Vierteltoene in der Musik.
Begleitschrift zu der Erfingung eines achromatisches
Klaviers und Entwurk zur Darstellung der Viertelto"ne
als Notenschrift. Berlin: Sulzer, 1892
Berghmans, Jose. "A Music Stave for the Notation of
Different musics," Interface, Vol. 12, 1983, pp. 525-540
Darreg, Ivor. "Example of Julian Carrillo's Notation,"
Interval, Vol. 3, No. 2, Winter 1981, pg. 19
Fokker, A. D. "Les possibilies d'une notation musicale
de plus grande precision," Archives du Musee Teyler,
Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 161-171
Fokker, A. D. "De behoefte aan groete nauwkeurigheid
in de muzikale notatie der toonhoogte," Mens & Melodie,
Vol. 8, 1953, pp. 114-115
Fokker, A. D., H. Kox, J. Mandelbaum & R. H. Orton. "Report
of the Working COmmitte for Notation (IMS)," Report of
the Teneth Congress fo the Internationl Musicological
Society, Ljubljana, 1967. Kassel: Baerewnreiter, 1970, pp.
473-481
Fokker, A. D., H. Kox, J. Mandelbaum & R. H. Orton. "The
notation of 31 Dieses in the Octave," Sonorum Speculum,
Vol. 46, 1971, pp. 31-47
Harasek, Richard. "Unified Visualization and Notation of
Xenharmonic Systems," Xenharmonikon 2, unpaged.
Orton, Richard. First Report to the I.C.S. Committe on XXth
Century Notation of Micro-Intervals. London, 1965.
Partch, Harry. "Experiments in Notation," in Contemporary
Composers on Contemporary Music. Ed. Elliot Schwarts and
Barney Childs. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967,
pp. 209-220
Read, Gardner. 20th Century Microtonal Notation. Westport,
Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1990
Read, Gardner. Source Book of Proposed Music Notation
Reforms. Westport, Connectivut: Greenwood Press, 1967
Reed, Thomas S. "Microtonal Musaic, Notation and
Instruments," NACWPI Journal, Fall, 1979, pp. 9-14
Regener, E. Pitch Notation and Equal Temperaments.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973
Russolo, Luigi. Enharmonic Notation for the Futurist
Intonarumori. Self-published pamphlet, March 1, 1914
Sachs, Melchior. "Das Temperierte 19-Tonsysteme und
eien dafuer passende Schrift," Report of the Fourth
Congress of the International Musical Society, London,
1912, pp. 279-281
Sims, Ezra. "A Question of Microtonal Notation,"
Mimeographed. Cambridge Massachusetts, 1986
Terpstra, Siemen. "Reflections On An Improved Notation
System for 53-Tone Equal Temperament and Just
Intonation," Interface, Vol. 14, 1985
Warfield, Gerald. "The Notation of Quarter-Tones,"
Contemporary Music Newsletter, Vol. 7, No. 5, 1973,
pp. 3-5
Will, Rodney H. "A Proposed Graphic Notation for Harry
Partch's `Monophony,'" Mimeographed. Washington D.C.,
1983
Wilson, Ervin M. "On Linear Notation and the Bosanquet
Keyboad," Xenharmonikon 2, unpaged
Wohlgemuth, Gerhard. "Zeitgenoessiche Musik und ihre
Notation," Musik und Gesellschaft, Vol. 25, No. 4, 1975,
pp. 198-204
--
Along with the usual Yunik & Swift, "Tempered Music
Scales for Sound Synthesis, " Computer Music Journal,
Vol. 4, No. 4, Winter 1980, pp. 60-65; Stoney, William,
"Theoretical Possibilties for Equally Tempered Musical
Systems," Chapter 11 in "The Computer and Music," ed.
Harry B. Lincoln, 1970, pp. 163-171; Krantz, R. J., "A
Measure of the Reasonableness of equal-tempered
Musical Scales," J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 95, No. 6,
June 1994, pp. 3642-3650, Paul ought also at a bare
minimum to have cited such articles as: Hartmann, G. C. "A
Numerical Exercise in Musical Scales," Am. J. Physics,Vol.
55, No. 3, pg. 223, 1987; Douthett, J., R. Entringer and
A. Mullhaupt, "Musical Scale Construction: the Continued
Fraction Compromise," Utilitas Mathematica, Vol. 42,
pp. 97-113, 1992; Krahenbuehl, D. and C. Schmidt,
"On the Development of Musical Scales," Journal of
Music Theory, Vol. 6, 1962, pp. 32-65; McLaren, B. "Circles
of Fifths," Xenharmonikon 15, Autumn 1993; McLaren, B.
"The Microtonal Notation Mess," Unpublished manscuript,
1989.
So let's count up the total number of sources cited in
Paul Rapoport's so-called "bibliography:" the grand total
is 9.
Yes, count 'em...9.
Now let's count up the total number that *weren't* cited
but *should have been.*
THAT total comes to 67.
Let me repeat that: Paul Rapoport should have cited sixty-seven
more references than he did.
Predictably, Paul Rapoport will claim that "he didn't have time"
to do a full biblio. This is obviously false, since many of us
would have rapidly and efficently supplied the references to
him if he'd sent us a pre-print of the article.
Again, predictably, Paul Rapoport will claim that the Journal
of Music Theory doesn't allow extensive bibliographies. This
is provably incorrect, since many articles (viz., Lindley,
"Mersenne on Keyboard Tunings," 1980, etc.) cite lists of
bibliographic sources many pages in length.
Moreover, no journal ever turned down a music theory article
because the biblio was too long. That's nonsense. It just
doesn't happen. And even if did (which is preposterous), Paul
could simply stand by his guns and publish the article in a
journal will *does* allow extensive bibliographies--and
there are plenty of those.
No...the excuses don't wash. The only question now is whether
Paul Rapoport's bibliographies are so grossly inadequate because
(A) he just don't care, or (B) Paul deliberately wants to give
a false, inaccurate and slanted picture of microtonality to
his readers.
--
To call Paul's bibliography "incomplete" is like calling
what happened to the Titanic "a boating accident." And to
call Paul's virtually nonexistent list of sources "adequate,"
as Paul presumably does, requires a capacity for fabulation
so hallucinatory as to make Terence McKenna balk.
---
Why does all this matter...?
It's well to remember the importance of bibliographies.
Bright-eyed students receive their first impetus & much of
their sense of direction for future study from a bibliography.
Control the biblio & to a large extent you control the students'
education. A bibliography is the message in a bottle which
a wise music theory author sends out to readers not yet
born: a good bibliography can start an entire career, revolutionize
an entire field of study. Just think of Partch--turned on to
Helmholtz by a note in a bibliography. Just think of the many
composers and theorists turned on to Partch's "Genesis Of A
Music" because of a mention in a bibliography.
Here's why this issue matters, ladies and gentlemen:
A crassly inadequate bibliography is tantamount to censorship.
It gouges out the eyes of the prospective student and punches
icepicks into hi/r ears. An incomplete bibliography is a crime
against the future, a *savage chainsaw abortion* of nascent
microtonal composers while they're still in the womb.
Paul, don't you realize that people like Kami Rousseau and
Matthew Puzan read your bibliographies and search out the
references you cite? By refusing to cite sources of basic
importance, you prevent these up-and-coming microtonalists
from discovering their heritage. You drive them into the arms
of the likes of Paul Griffiths--who stated "If polytonality and
microtones offered limited extensions to musical possibility,
atonality opened vast new realms." [Griffiths, Paul, "A Concise
History of Avant Garde Music: from Debussy to Boulez,"
New York & Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1978, pg. 40]
Ye gods!
Since post-Webern atonality is now dead as a
steamrollered cockroach, and microtonality is
continuing to gather steam as a world-wide trend...
wow! Is it possible get any more foolishly WRONG than
good old Paul Griffiths???
And THIS guy (who, in a 1994 review, called the superb composer
Ivan Vyshnegradsky "almost insane") is STILL the "new music
reviewer" for the New Yorker!!!
--mclaren


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