RE: [tuning-math] Digest Number 1240

Thank you Gene!

I agree that the bihexany-tuned version has much more colour
and life than the 12-equal version.

Monz,

I'm intrigued ... precisely how do you envisage retuning Sch�nberg
to get that "pantonal" feeling?

Regards,
Yahya

-----Original Message-----
________________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 22:18:08 -0000
From: "monz"
Subject: Re: Schoenberg in bihexany

hi Gene and Yahya,

--- In tuning-math@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...>
wrote:

> --- In tuning-math@yahoogroups.com, "Yahya Abdal-Aziz" <yahya@m...>
wrote:
> >
> > Gene,
> >
> > Never thought I'd say it, but I quite _enjoyed_
> > that piece of Schoenberg - at least in the bihexany
> > in C!
> >
> > For comparison, how does the original - presumably
> > in 12-tET - sound?
>
> Monz might disagree, but to me in 12-equal the life
> seems to be squeezed out of it, as if it was written
> originaly for JI. Which, of course, is entirely wrong,
> save for the fact that Schoenberg was thinking about
> possible 11-limit implications of 12-equal in a
> theoretical way.
>
> Original:
>
> /tuning-math/files/Gene/schoe19a.mid
>
> Bihexany:
>
> /tuning-math/files/Gene/schoe19a-
bihexany.mid

no, i don't disagree ... Schoenberg's music does often
sound pretty lifeless to me when it's played in precise
12-edo.

however, i also don't think that *any* 12-tone collection
of pitches accurately reflects what he had in his mind.
(yes, of course i'm speculating ... but it's based on
a quite detailed knowledge of his theories.)

i think Schoenberg was thinking of 12-edo as a kind of
"kaleidoscopic" tuning, in which a multitude of changing
JI implications were constantly "swirling around" the
fixed 12-edo notation. in other words, the "pantonality"
which he wrote about. now *that* would be the ideal
way to retune his music!

-monz
________________________________________________________________________

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hi Yahya,

--- In tuning-math@yahoogroups.com, "Yahya Abdal-Aziz" <yahya@m...>
wrote:

>
> Thank you Gene!
>
> I agree that the bihexany-tuned version has much more
> colour and life than the 12-equal version.
>
> Monz,
>
> I'm intrigued ... precisely how do you envisage retuning
> Schönberg to get that "pantonal" feeling?

i wish i could give you an answer to that question
right now. i've been studying Schoenberg's theory
for years (decades, even) so as to be in a good position
to figure that out. but it will also require an
extremely detailed harmonic and melodic analysis of
a particular composition.

so far, the only concrete ideas i have are what i
published in my 1st book, _JustMusic: A New Harmony_:

http://sonic-arts.org/monzo/book/book.htm

and what i have as a beginning for my 2nd book,
_Searching for Schoenberg's Pantonality_:

http://sonic-arts.org/monzo/schoenberg/harm/1911-1922.htm

(for those who will be reading this post a few months
from now, these links should instead be found thru
the Tonalsoft Encyclopedia)

you can read right now what i've put in the latter
webpage ... what i endeavor to do there is to find
a 12-tone periodicity-block which describes 12-edo
the way Schoenberg used it in the 1911 edition of his
_Harmonielehre_. the final resulting lattice diagrams
are at the bottom of the page.

as for my book ... i made a 5-limit lattice of his
"Chart of the Regions" which appears in _Structural
Functions of Harmony_ (a very late work, 1949), and
did an exhaustive analysis of a single chord from his
amazing piece _Erwartung_ ... a chord which, BTW, was
also subjected to a just intonation analysis by
Martin Vogel -- i didn't find out about that until
after i had done my own.

but much more work is required to actually come up with
a just intonation tuning of one of his compositions
which i'd be willing to defend.

by 1910, when he wrote _Harmonielehre_, and possibly even
by the time he reached the period of "free atonality" (1908),
Schoenberg was thinking of 12-edo as representing 11-limit JI.
we know that 12-edo does *not* represent the primary 11-limit
ratios very well, and Schoenberg knew it too -- that ambiguity
was something that he built into his compositions of that
time. so it's difficult to unravel exactly what he may have
had in mind.

but from all my years of research on this, it's clear to
me that he *did* have these "JI implications" in mind.
the fact that he and his circle of students kept their
ideas so secretive doesn't help any ... now that just
about all of them are dead, it's very difficult to dig
any deeper than i already have.

so the rest of the work is simply to do analysis of the
compositions ... and a lot of that has already been done
by others and sit on dusty univsersity library shelves
awaiting my discovery.

-monz