Re: [tuning] Re: Mahler 10th chord

> From: <jpehrson@rcn.com>
> To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 7:27 PM
> Subject: [tuning] Re: Mahler 10th chord
>

> --- In tuning@y..., "monz" <joemonz@y...> wrote:
>
> > <http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/mahler/mah10th1-ch.mp3>.
> >
>
> This is absolutely fascinating, Monz! As I have repeatedly said, you
> do TERRIFIC work, and not a moment of time you spend on it is a
> waste.... You provide a valuable service to this entire community!

Hi Joe,

Thanks a bunch... glad you like it so much. Now *THAT'S* a chord!

(Ken Fasano, who wrote all of the functional JustMusic code so far,
wrote to me a couple of years ago about that chord, something
screamingly funny along the lines of "... so Mahler's music is
going along and... WHOA! what the !#$%^& was that?! Does he
think he's Lutoslawski?"...)

Now that I've found out that Mahler was a fan of meantone,
I'm *really* clueless as to what he was thinking when he wrote
*this*! Notice, tho, that the highest 4 notes of the chord
are a (8ve-equivalent) semitone higher than the diminished-7th
chord that is repeated in two of the lower registers. My "closest
rational approximation" of the 12-EDO hints that perhaps he was
thinking in terms of some form of stretched tuning.

Remember that this symphony was written during Summer 1910,
*after* Mahler had taken the score of Schoenberg's _2nd Quartet_
(whose last movement was the first piece written without being
in a key) with him to America, to "study ... from time to time".
So there's a very good chance that Schoenberg's early "atonal"
ideas were having quite an impact on Mahler at this point.
Mahler confessed as early as 1906 that he could no longer
follow Schoenberg's development, but he continued to support
Schoenberg artistically and financially until practically
his dying breath ("Who's going to take care of poor Schoenberg
now that I'm gone?").

See my "A Century of New Music in Vienna"
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/schoenberg/Vienna1905.htm
for all the fascinating details.

-monz
http://www.monz.org
"All roads lead to n^0"

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