Microthon '00

Hi everybody, just a few notes on our recent Microthon in Manhattan...

Unfortunately, I missed everything prior to Pete Rose's _Medieval Nights_,
which, according to the program, consisted of...

Don Conreaux in _Outdoor Gonging_
David Eggar's _Four on the Floor_
Wim Hoogewerf's performance of _Preludes_ and _Mysteries_.
Pagano and Beardsley's _Ataraxya_
Joe Maneri's _Sharafuddin bin Yaya Maneri il Mulk_
Giacinto Scelsi's _L'ame Ailee_
Erik Nauman's _Refridgeration Segments_
Ron Kozak and Scott Lee's _Jazz_
John Negri's _Blue Guitar_

...so I can't commment on these, other than to say I was really looking
forward to Wim's and Pagano & Beardsley's segments, and I'm sorry I
missed them. Also, I've heard nothing but praise for the Scelsi, and
I regret missing that, too.

As far as what I did see, Pete Rose's recorder playing was both refreshing
and impressive. Marc Jones' _Mostly Electric String Quartet_ was very
interesting, but lost something due to the fact that only one voice was
performed live (the rest supplied from tape). The highlight of the first
half for me was Erlich and Sarkissian's segment -- especially their third
piece.

Likewise, a long dinner kept me out of Lou Harrison's _Sinfony in Free
Style_, which I had been looking forward to (damn!), and also Judith
Conrad's performance of the _Chromatic Fantasy & Fugue in Dmin_. What I
did see in the second half waxed a bit long, IMO, but Wim's premiere of
Joseph Pehrson's _Just in Time_ was cute, and Reinhard & Pierce's
Wyschnegradsky segment was *perfect*. To close, Alejandro Sanchez tickled
the Dinarra to some Jazz standards, which was most enjoyable, if it did
suffer from a poor amplification setup.

I gather recent talk of Judith Conrad's performance was about the Bach,
since _Ill Tempered_ seemed to come off without a hitch. Throughout
the concert, the basketball was annoying, but the acoustics and general
atmosphere of the venue were excellent. I can understand the classical
performer's quarrels with the way the event is organized, compared to
a normal "concert", but given the sheer variety of musical styles
being presented, and our usual microtonal situation, Reinhard's event
is nothing short of amazing.

I will say that I'm not sure I approved of the Partch, even though I
have been highly critical of the "Partch purists" on this list in the
past... In general, I feel the event could probably be more successful
if Reinhard's AFMM ensemble did fewer numbers, making the show shorter.

-Carl

Carl wrote,

>The highlight of the first
>half for me was Erlich and Sarkissian's segment -- especially their third
>piece.

Thanks Carl! The keyboard mapping for this piece was the one described in my
message of 10/23, reproduced below, and the two types of scales in this
mapping have been discussed more recently by David Finnamore, Dan Stearns
and myself . . . perhaps Manuel should include this mapping in Scala?:

*******************************************************************

In preparing for the Microthon, I tuned my keyboard to a "normal"
(i.e., octaves are still octaves) 12-tone mapping that includes the 7-
out-of-22 scale that we discussed recently, the quasi-equal
heptatonic (numbers indicate interval sizes in 22nds of an octave):

'D'(3)'E'(3)'F'(3)'G'(4)'A'(3)'B'(3)'C'(3)'D'

Again, this scale reminded Ara Sarkissian of the music of some Arabic
land (I forget which), and, as Dave Keenan pointed out, also happens
to have four excellent triads: 'D minor', 'E minor', 'F major',
and 'G major' (thus 'D minor 7' and 'E minor 7' are also excellent).
It's a great scale to play around with since it combines a very non-
Western melodic structure with some familiar, near-5-limit-JI
harmonies.

When I tuned this, I rather arbitrarily tuned the black keys to other
22-tET pitches.

I woke up today thinking it would be nice if there were some way to
use the black keys to allow a modulation to a hyper-Pythagorean
diatonic scale, whose Aeolian mode has nearly just 6:7:9 triads as
its i, iv, and v. Well, I figured out how to do this and, lo and
behold, my keyboard was already tuned that way! And, furthermore, not
one but _three_ hyper-Pythagorean diatonic scales were lurking there!
Behold:

D(2)D#(1)E(3)E#(1)F#(2)'G'(2)G#(2)'A'(2)A#(1)B(3)B#(1)C#(2)D

The hyper-Pythagorean Aeolian scales available are

G# A# B C# D# E F# G#
D# E# F# G# A# B C# D#

and

A# B# C# D# E# F# G# A#

One could play with this mapping forever (though I like to be able to
switch to the other two I've suggested here and programmed on my
keyboard, which are the hexachordal dodecatonic scale and the 12-tone
hyper-Pythagorean scale -- each multi-trick ponies as well)!

Paul wrote:
>Thanks Carl! The keyboard mapping for this piece was the one described in
my
>message of 10/23, reproduced below, and the two types of scales in this
>mapping have been discussed more recently by David Finnamore, Dan Stearns
>and myself . . . perhaps Manuel should include this mapping in Scala?

It's included in version 1.7. Use it with: LOAD/MAP erl22d

Manuel

Manuel wrote,

>It's included in version 1.7. Use it with: LOAD/MAP erl22d

Cool! I have to ask you something -- in
http://www.xs4all.nl/~huygensf/doc/scalesdir.txt, I see

INDIAN-ERLICH.SCL 22 Indian shrutis Paul Erlich proposal

Is this the same as S. Ramanathan's proposal? If so, his name might be
better to attach than mine. If not, it may be referring to an erroneous part
of my paper, which has been excised. In which case, we should probably
remove it from Scala.

Paul wrote:
>INDIAN-ERLICH.SCL 22 Indian shrutis Paul Erlich proposal
>Is this the same as S. Ramanathan's proposal? If so, his name might be
>better to attach than mine. If not, it may be referring to an erroneous
part
>of my paper, which has been excised. In which case, we should probably
>remove it from Scala.

No, it's from your paper (table 5). I will remove it if you want.

Manuel

Hi Manuel!

>No, it's from your paper (table 5). I will remove it if you want.

Yes, please do remove it. Thanks!

Presently in Wolfenbuttal, Germany researching Werckmeister. More later.
Meeting with Dr. Pfeiffer of Magdeburg, specialiston Werckmeister and host of
the 1998 conference on Werckmeister in Halberstadt. I hope to get to the
bottome of the controversy.

Johnny Reinhard