at the edge of the art of space

Just a brief and somewhat difficult to easily express thought or two
in defense of equal temperaments and specifically closed system
tunings...

I'm currently in the midst of one of my periodic Art Tatum listening
binges, and while off in my reveries and raptures I was suddenly
struck by something: Tatum really worked with -- rather than any
negative connotation that might be attributed to "within" -- the
closed system nature of the tuning he knew; twelve-tone equal
temperament. And a lot of his peculiarities seem to me to be the
result of pushing at this, rather than punning in the classic
temperament sense. Tatum's music completely lacks a sense of the
"mysterious," or the "impressionistic," yet he often walks right into
shadows... into cracks... right on up to the bleary, ill-defined edges
of Yasser's "Raumkunst" (i.e., art of space). There's something at
work here that is more like a keen ability to size up proportion and
symmetry and the like; to take what you have (the instrument and its
tuning, the idiom and its repertoire) and what you know (music in the
prodigious, capital M natural talent sense) and really run with them.

Tatum's example aside, I think all closed system tunings of a simple
enough order, be they linear or logarithmic, have this type of
potential. From many angles these could be (and are) dismissed as
instances of musical "nonsense," or mere "accidents" of
circumstance... Whatever. Fundamentally, I just don't think that this
is the case. And Tatum, a precocious natural talent by anyone's
measure, offers more than a glimpse of what it is that I'm trying to
get at here.

ds

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "D.Stearns" <STEARNS@C...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/12389

> shadows... into cracks... right on up to the bleary, ill-defined
edges of Yasser's "Raumkunst" (i.e., art of space). There's something
at work here that is more like a keen ability to size up proportion
and symmetry and the like; to take what you have (the instrument and
its tuning, the idiom and its repertoire) and what you know (music in
the prodigious, capital M natural talent sense) and really run with
them.
>
> Tatum's example aside, I think all closed system tunings of a simple
> enough order, be they linear or logarithmic, have this type of
> potential.

But, might one also say that with the knowledge of an "open" or
irregular system, the same kind of results could pertain?? In other
words, REGARDLESS of the tuning materials, a talented and perceptive
individual is going to come up with some good music (??)
___________ ____ __ __
Joseph Pehrson

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "D.Stearns" <STEARNS@C...> wrote:
> http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/12389
>
> ... Tatum really worked with -- rather than any
> negative connotation that might be attributed to "within" -- the
> closed system nature of the tuning he knew; twelve-tone equal
> temperament. And a lot of his peculiarities seem to me to be the
> result of pushing at this, rather than punning in the classic
> temperament sense. Tatum's music completely lacks a sense of the
> "mysterious," or the "impressionistic," yet he often walks right
> into shadows... into cracks... right on up to the bleary, ill-
> defined edges of Yasser's "Raumkunst" (i.e., art of space).
> There's something at work here that is more like a keen ability
> to size up proportion and symmetry and the like; to take what you
> have (the instrument and its tuning, the idiom and its repertoire)
> and what you know (music in the prodigious, capital M natural
> talent sense) and really run with them.
>
> Tatum's example aside, I think all closed system tunings of a
> simple enough order, be they linear or logarithmic, have this
> type of potential. From many angles these could be (and are)
> dismissed as instances of musical "nonsense," or mere "accidents"
> of circumstance... Whatever. Fundamentally, I just don't think
> that this is the case. And Tatum, a precocious natural talent by
> anyone's measure, offers more than a glimpse of what it is that
> I'm trying to get at here.

Thanks for the great post on Art Tatum, Dan. I've always been
flabbergasted at his talent. I think I see at least a little
of what you're 'trying to get at here'. Often it seems that
Tatum is creating a wash of sound that is trying to transcend
12-tET altogether.

The one other artist whose work I react to like this is one
I've written about here often: Jimi Hendrix. Of course, Hendrix
actually *was* microtonal because he was a master of the
pitch-bend - one of the greatest, if you ask me. But he was
still to a large extent working 'with' (or is it 'within' ;-)
12-tET, since that was the basis of his instrument.

In a way, this comparison makes Tatum's achievement all the more
remarkable.

-monz
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html