12-tET in China

There is a CD with Chinese bell music called "The imperial bells of
China" of which booklet contends the following:

"In the summer of 1978, in China's central Hubei province,
archaeologists discovered a historically significant Warring States
period (475 - 221 B.C.) tomb. The tomb, which dates back more than
2400 years, belonged to a high ranking noble, a certain Marquis Yi, of
a small kingdom called Zeng. Among the early ten thousend relics
unearthed were more than 120 musical instruments. [...] The fully
intact set of 64 bronze bianzhong-chime bells was of special interest.
Not only was it a physically impressive, exquisite work of art, it
was, moreover, the earliest example in China of an instrument of such
broad range employing a chromatic scale with set pitch. The ancient
bells were delicately inlaid in gold filigree with intricate dragons
and inscriptions, documenting music theory and the precise
instrumentation of ancient orchestras over two thousand years ago.
Each bell is capable of producing two distinct musical notes. Their
design, with a fixed twelve tone scale and a tonal range beyond that
of most contemporary instruments, requires a theoretical grasp of
physics, engineering, and musical acoustics formerly thought to have
evolved only in the late 18th century."

I can't hear from the music if it's equal temperament, but perhaps it
was already known more than 2000 years ago?
The CD is from Fortuna Records/Kuckuck Schallplatten 17075-2.

Manuel Op de Coul coul@ezh.nl

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I don't think that John nor I interpreted Marion's comment as disparaging to
my 88CET compositions or postings.

John's point I think was that there's certainly no requirement to learn the
content of my 88CET postings before exploring 88CET. I think John got the
impression that Marion viewed my 88CET postings as prerequisite reading. John
sees my postings - appropriately I'd say - as potentially useful hints for his
own future exploration. I think he just wanted to make sure that nobody got the
wrong impression in that regard.

I'll resist the temptation to launch into a big philosophical discussion and
just say that I definitely admire the sheer volume of exploration Marion has
done. Playing (literally and figuratively) a large field of tunings is every
bit as important as exploring one in great detail as I'm currently doing with
88CET.

(By the way, I've written and recorded about 50 minutes of 88CET compositions
thus far, excluding musically mundane experiments in voice-leading and such.
But one 8-minute composition of those 50 minutes probably won't appear on the
CD, so I guess the rest comes to about half a CD's worth or thereabouts.)


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Oh, one other point I wanted to mention here:

Marion's comment, if I recall correctly, cited my 88CET postings -
essentially - as an illustration of the volume of prerequisite study needed to
explore equal-temperaments. That as opposed to his semi-automated techniques,
whereby he's produced what he estimated at 45 hours of music in 145 just
tunings.

I certainly don't claim to be an expert on Marion's techniques, other than to
say that I enjoyed hearing some of the results in a tape he sent me a while
back. But I haven't seen much reason to believe that exploring a new equal
temperament requires more preparatory work than exploring a new JI system of
similar complexity. Perhaps Marion can expound a little further on his
techniques for exploring a wide variety of tunings (perhaps comparing them to
algorithmic composition techniques?), and why he finds that JI systems are
easier to explore in that manner.


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