South Dakota Microtones

Just back after a week lecturing on microtones at South Dakota Stae
University in Brookings. My 4 lectures (outlined in a previous post)
were written about in 2 papers and attended by the Freshman-Sophomore
music classes.

The students regularly surprised the faculty by their astute attention to
the issues discussed; by their willingness to "sing" aloud -
microtonally, of course; and expecially by the non-jazz improvisation by
8 students in their orchestral hall.

Reminding me somewhat of the openness I experienced in Denver during
MicroStock I, I found South Dakotans accepting microtonality at face
value. The _Shrine to Music_ in Vermillion, SD has a huge building
devoted to musical instruments, proud of its Stradivarious violin and 2
Strad guitars (10 string). It also has a Janko-keyed microtonal piano
and the cello-Termin, a theremin cello that specializes in the playing of
"quarter-tones and micro-tones" (as it says on the card next to it.

Professor Anthony Lis, director of the 9th Annual New Music Festival in
Brookings says "It is important for our students to see first hand what
is happening in music" and felt at the end that "people will be talking
about this for a long time to come." :)

Johnny Reinhard
Director
American Festival of Microtonal Music
318 East 70th Street, Suite 5FW
New York, New York 10021 USA
(212)517-3550/fax (212) 517-5495
reinhard@ios.com


Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 30 Sep 1996 00:43 +0200
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA05261; Sun, 29 Sep 1996 23:43:38 +0100
Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA01632
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id PAA12491; Sun, 29 Sep 1996 15:43:30 -0700
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 1996 15:43:30 -0700
Message-Id: <199609292243.PAA12491@eartha.mills.edu>
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu

South Dakota comment:

I grew up in S. Dak. -- it's all that singing with cows (during the day)
and coyotes (at night) that develop the microtonality in the northern
plains! (There's probably more truth to this than just another tale....)

Kudos to Anthony Lis for encouraging this with his students (we worked
together in the S.D. Composers Forum years back). Allen Strange and I
are likewise introducing so-called microtonal concepts to our 1st-semester
music systems class (no longer called "theory"); those students who are
aware of their world have no problem with these issues (alas, those
students who are among the walking comotose do not get it.....but then
they are not getting Mozart's sevenths resolving down by step either).

-- Brian Belet
(South Dakota raised, and proud of it -- now surfing in California)

Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 30 Sep 1996 21:19 +0200
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA06493; Mon, 30 Sep 1996 20:19:32 +0100
Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA06644
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id MAA12761; Mon, 30 Sep 1996 12:19:30 -0700
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 12:19:30 -0700
Message-Id: <55960930191755/0005695065PK5EM@MCIMAIL.COM>
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu