Microtonal Hamlet

To beat, or not to beat: that is the question:
Whether 'tis the noble mediant better to use than to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous ratios,
Or to take arms against a horde of just intonationalists,
And by opposing end them? To compose: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That music is heir to, 'tis a consumer market
Devoutly to be exploited. To compose, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of music what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this horrible noise,
Must give us applause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long a composition;
For who would bear the wolves and phase of partials,
The composer's wrong, the mathematician's contumely,
The pangs of despised primes, the laws of significant digits,
The irrational ratios of the un-just and their spectrums
That patient merit of the unworthy song,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare ratio? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary tuning system,
But that the dread of something after the concert,
The undiscover'd performance from whose bourn
No audience member returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those intervals we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus pitch does make composers of us all;
And thus the native hue of cents resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And intervals of great pitch and complexity
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of justness.-- Soft you now!
I'm tuning out the beats
Be all my cents remember'd.

--- In tuning@egroups.com, ligonj@n... wrote:

> http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/16435
>
> To beat, or not to beat: that is the question
>
> <etc.>

Jacky, this is brilliant and HILARIOUS!

You've taken the most famous speech from my favorite play
and turned it into a wonderful satire on our recent discussion.
What a great way to deflate all the seriousness of this thread!

This time, I STAND UP and shout 'BRAVO'!

-monz
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html
'All roads lead to n^0'