Hindemith, & a great Hendrix XG MIDI file

Last night I got this MIDI file of a Hindemith piece :

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963):
Well-Tempered Ragtime- 1921 ([sequenced by] David Siu)

It's at
<http://classicmidirsrc.simplenet.com/site/archpntr/german.htm>

(in a 147kb zipped file that includes a sequence of Carmina Burana,
a couple of Schoenberg & a Webern piece.)

Anyway, what I'm wondering is, does anyone know what
Well-Temperament Hindemith may have used/meant ?

From Prentice Hall's History of Music series,
"Twentieth Century Music : An Introduction" by Eric Salzman
I got the foll. about Hindemith that hints at his having
more than a casual interest in microtonality :-
___________________________________________________________________________
____

"Hindemith consciously attempted to formulate a new tonal system
which, growing out of certain acoustical principals and some
fundamental notions of linear counterpoint, was to include a complete
range of chromatic expression. The basic concept was that of
the weight & tension of individual intervals, determined by
an acoustic and psychological classification and revealed through
a system of harmonic and melodic necessity (derived in part from
the overtone series). Hindemith's music after the late 1920's was
increasingly based on such ideas."

___________________________________________________________________________
____

For anyone interested in the black art of sequencing electric guitar parts
(& Hendrix), there is an amazing sequence (for Yamaha XG compatible
synths only) of Voodoo Chile at
<http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/Alley/7514/Vchile.mid>

There are free XG software synths for Macs & Windows :
Quoting Manuel form a few digests back:

>You can even have real-time synthesis by the CPU. I have just downloaded
>Yamaha's S-YXG50 player. It needs MMX. Go to http://www.yamaha-xg.com/ and
>follow the links to MIDPLUG and S-YXG50.

- Drew

>From: Drew Skyfyre <skyfyre@usa.net>
>Last night I got this MIDI file of a Hindemith piece :
>Well-Tempered Ragtime- 1921 ([sequenced by] David Siu)

That's interesting. I can't find the piece mentioned in his list of works,
though he did have an interest in American popular music in the period
1921-22. Was it originally for piano?

>Anyway, what I'm wondering is, does anyone know what
>Well-Temperament Hindemith may have used/meant ?
>
>>From Prentice Hall's History of Music series,
>"Twentieth Century Music : An Introduction" by Eric Salzman
>I got the foll. about Hindemith that hints at his having
>more than a casual interest in microtonality :-

What Salzman is refering to is Hindemith's derivation of the 12 pitches of
the chromatic scale from the overtones and undertones of a single tonic as
set forth in his The Craft of Musical Composition. However, he goes on to
say that equal temperament is a necessity and gives some justifications for
stopping at 12. (I'm afraid this is from memory, as it's been a long time
since I've read it.)

In fact, I think Hindemith felt the necessity to defend the use of 12 tones
in an attempt to refute microtonalists (Carillo, Haba), while at the same
time relating the derived pitches to a single tonic in an attempt to refute
the possibility or desirability of atonality (Schoenberg, et al.). I seem
to remember that the necessity for temperament is mentioned almost in
passing.

The weights and tensions of intervals that Salzman mentions refers to
Hindemith's "series" that served as a harmonic basis for his tonal system.
The first of his series in a sense replaces the circle of fifths of
common-practice harmony while the second in a sense replaces the stacking
of thirds of common-practice harmonies with series of intervals of lesser
to greater tension. Each of these series, I think, assumes equal
temperament.

Hindemith was a pedant and saw the need (in his Germanic tradition) for
deriving everything in his system in a clear, logical manner. It was
important to him that his system be "natural" in the sense that it was
derived from acoustical properties (he thought) as opposed to the
"arbitrariness" he saw in the 12-tone method as well as further divisions
of the octave by the microtonalists. He was certainly not unaware of what
temperament was or its historical place (he was a great scholar of early
music of course), but as far as I know he never wanted to use anything but
12TET in his own compositions.

Bill

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^ Bill Alves email: alves@hmc.edu ^
^ Harvey Mudd College URL: http://www2.hmc.edu/~alves/ ^
^ 301 E. Twelfth St. (909)607-4170 (office) ^
^ Claremont CA 91711 USA (909)607-7600 (fax) ^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

To add a bit to Bill Alves excellent posting:

Hindemith's closest contact with the microtonal world was as a performing
musician in at least one work of Alois Haba. In one of Haba's books, it is
mentioned that Hindemith played viola in one of his quartets and was very
concerned to get the quarter-tone intonation correct to Haba's
satisfaction.

Partch's _Genesis of a Music_ has a fairly clear critique of Hindemith as
theorist.

For all the acoustical faults, Hindemith's theories concerning the relative
consonance and directional pull of intervals have remained quite
influential in compositional practice, particularly among commercial
musicians. Such a line of theorizing is closer to the work of many
contemporary tuning theorists than that of Haba, whose own theory had the
'deficit' (as G.F. Haas puts it) of rigorously cataloging all possible
harmonic combinations without putting forward neither a qualitative
analysis of the harmonies nor a suggestion of the syntactic utility of the
material.

Daniel Wolf
Frankfurt (Paul Hindemith slept here, too)