RE: [tuning] Soft on Seven

John wrote,

>Where do you put Brahms? Schubert? Beethoven?

5-limit.

>I guess if Wagner's in
>then Ravel could be.

I love Ravel, but I think it would depend on the piece. And it might also be
worth making a distinction between utonal and otonal chords -- as we've
heard Joseph Pehrson attest, 4:5:6:7 is far more clearly the "target" tuning
for a dominant seventh than 1/7:1/6:1/5:1/4 is for a half-diminished
seventh.

>Some 20th century pieces (12 tone row, for
>example) would seem to be intimately wedded to 12-tET, to my thinking.

Absolutely!

>I guess it comes back to the difference in our perception of the 7-limit
>dom 7th: I feel that its sense of needing resolution is strengthened
>by its tuning, you feel that the sense is weakened (again, correct me if
>I am misrepresenting you!).

Right -- and more importantly, the retune motions induced by targeting a
4:5:6:7 chord are absolutely musically unjustified, to my ears -- I'd rather
let melodic factors determine the tuning of the dominant seventh, as well as
what are known as "linear" chords in tonal music.

>Here's a thought: in distinguishing between consonance and concordance,
>you used the example of a perfect fourth being dissonant under some
>circumstances (and I do agree that a chord in second inversion is not
>stable; it pulls toward V in root position). If a perfect fourth can be
>dissonant and concordant at the same time, then surely the much more
>complex 4:5:6:7 chord can as well! And the ear can hear it just as
>strongly as needing resolution.

Again, I think it goes back to the scale and melodic considerations. There
have been a few cases pointed out on this list where, in the context of a
Western tonal progression, a fourth tuned 27:20 within a triad or larger
chord was not perceived as all that disturbing, when that tuning came out by
holding the pitches of the notes constant across neighboring chords. But I
wouldn't really want to include effects like this in the model -- I'd keep
octave-equivalence for convenience.

A more relevant example, I think, has been provided by Margo Schulter in
discussing Gothic music. The thirds and sixths in this music are dissonant
and resolve to 3-limit consonances. It is more appropriate, both melodically
and harmonically, to use Pythagorean tuning for these dissonant thirds and
sixths. 5-limit consonances are a very foreign, inappropriate sonority for
Gothic music. Similarly for 7-limit consonances in Baroque and Classical
music.

If one had to tune a dominant seventh chord in a piece of Baroque or
Classical music without any melodic considerations to guide one, the only
possibility would be to tune it as a just minor third stacked on top of a
major triad. If you had to incorporate a "fall-back" of this kind, I
wouldn't be unhappy about it.

>Also, to harken back to your point that the type of music being played
>alters the meaning of the word consonance (major triads are dissonant
>in old music, seventh chords are consonant in the Blues). This point
>can be taken to strengthen the argument for using 4:5:6:7 dom 7ths for
>a wide range of music for which the context already establishes that a
>7th chord needs to resolve (however it is tuned).

That sounds like a cop-out to me . . .

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Paul H. Erlich" <PERLICH@A...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/12815

> A more relevant example, I think, has been provided by Margo
Schulter in discussing Gothic music. The thirds and sixths in this
music are dissonant and resolve to 3-limit consonances. It is more
appropriate, both melodically and harmonically, to use Pythagorean
tuning for these dissonant thirds and sixths. 5-limit consonances are
a very foreign, inappropriate sonority for Gothic music. Similarly
for 7-limit consonances in Baroque and Classical music.
>

For what it's worth, I have mentioned the Heinrich Schenker quote
from his _Harmony_ before. Section I, 11, entitled: "No Overtone
beyond the Fifth in the Series Has Any Application to Our Tonal
System."

SCHENKER:

"In reality, the artistic relation between the overtone series and
our tonal system is as follows: The human ear can follow Nature as
manifested to us in the overtone series only up to the major third as
the ultimate limit; in other words, up to that overtone which results
from the fifth division. This means that those overtones resulting
from higher subdivisions are too complicated to be perceived by our
ear, except in those cases, wehre the number of divisions is a
composite which can be reduced to a number rempresenting the lowest,
perceivable, order of division by two, three or five. Thus six can
be recognized as two time three or three times two; nine as three
times three; ten as five times two, etc., wheras the overtones 7, 11,
13, 14, etc., remain totally extraneous to our ear." ...

Now, of course, Schenker was somewhat of a crank... and his ideas
about the "naturalness" or "perceivability" of higher partials have
surely been discounted... certainly in our more modern music, but his
system was designated to encompass "common practice perios" music...
i.e. Baroque, Classical and Romantic, of which he was very
familiar...
He probably is pretty much right about the 5 limit there... (??)

> >Also, to harken back to your point that the type of music being
played alters the meaning of the word consonance (major triads are
dissonant in old music, seventh chords are consonant in the Blues).
This point can be taken to strengthen the argument for using 4:5:6:7
dom 7ths for a wide range of music for which the context already
establishes that a 7th chord needs to resolve (however it is tuned).
>
> That sounds like a cop-out to me . . .

Um... I believe Paul Erlich has made several references along the way
in the list over the last year or so, about how the factor of
resolution is MUCH MORE clearly tied to 12-tET than to the "natural"
dominant seventh 4:5:6:7. Doesn't it have a lot to do with the
tritone dissonance in 12-tET and the resultant "leading tone" to the
tonic... or am I remembering something wrong (???)

_________ ____ __ __
Joseph Pehrson