Standardization

Joseph Pehrson, who writes a lot, wrote:

"The standardization proposals, as I see them, were only directed
toward expanding the "acceptance" of xenharmonics in the musician
community at large, and were not meant, in any way, to
propose "limitations...""

May I differ and suggest that standardization should not be a central thrust in
any effort to bring alternative tunings into standard performance practice? The
central thrust should instead be in achieving more intonational accuracy and
flexibility. To obtain this accuracy and flexibility, there will probably be
some common skills, but notation need not be among them, and indeed, if the
history of intonational experiment is a good guide, composers will inevitably
find their own notational solutions. The question is then: will performers be
prepared to respond musically and intellectually to those solutions?

In the discussion that concluded a recent festival in Berlin, I made the claim
that musical training has been vague, if not speechless, when it comes to
tuning. Most teachers of vocalists and instrumentalists are limited in their
description of intonation to terms like: "off"; "flat"; "sharp"; "expressive".
In light of this speechlessness, I proposed that it would be useful if musical
training would include: (1) for voices and instruments with harmonic timbres,
learning to tune beatless intervals, intervals with fixed beating rates, and
intervals with audible difference tones; (2) learning to estimate interval sizes
in cents (and for western musicians, in terms of fractions of tones); and (3)
learning to play in at least two historical tuning systems other than 12tet; for
western musicians, I would suggest Pythagorean and meantone. I believe that
when these skills are internalized, the student musician will be prepared to at
least approach any new or historical intonational system with a degree of
confidence.

Daniel Wolf
Budapest