further reply to Carl Lumma re: serialism

I wrote [very recent post]:
> [Carl Lumma, TD 174.25]
>> ...nobody to my knowledge has ever come forward with any
>> reason why serializing things should be interesting.
>
> Are you kidding? (!!!)
> <snip>
> Webern's _The Path to the New Music_,
> taken from notes from his 1932-33 lectures
> <snip>
> Berry, Wallace. 1976. _Structural Functions in Music_
> [inexpensive reprint by Dover], especially p 171-179 and 408-417.
> <snip>
> S A T O R
> A R E P O
> T E N E T
> O P E R A
> R O T A S

RE: Webern, the subsequent serial tradition, and me:

On reflection now, it's probably not surprising that my interest
in tuning theory is so strong.

I was very interested in learning serial theory in my college
days (which was just as it was supposed to be - which was the
origin of this whole thread), but after my non-serial 'preliminary'
compositions the first year and a half, when it came time for me
to try my hand at a serial piece, I had so much difficulty that
I eventually gave up.

During the rest of that semester I wrote two major pieces in
the 'expanded tonality' I had evolved into using in college,
and I still think they are among my most successful.
('String Trio' and 'Springtime Meditation', and there was
also the 'Movie Opening' [plug alert] - MIDI files of the
first and last on my 'worklist' webpage).

It wasn't until after I had dropped out of school and read
(and digested) Partch's _Genesis_ that I realized: the reason
I couldn't write the 'atonal' serial piece was because I kept
thinking tonally, and there was no way I couldn't. No matter
what combination of pitches I had, there was no way around
'hearing' its tonal implications to me, and invariably in the
row, a note that I was 'obliged' to use next didn't fit.

I saw JI as a way out of this dilemma, and it didn't take
long before I began thinking that JI pitches could be
manipulated in the same kinds of ways that Babbitt &co. were
talking about.

After that, I got so deeply into the theory that I never got
around to writing those serial JI pieces, but I'm inspired now...

RE: Berry's book

After commenting on how widely divergent are theorist's views
on how pervasive tonality is - some, like myself, insisting
that there's always *some* kind of tonality embedded in
combinations of periodic tones, 'while others consider tonal
coherence obliterated in contexts of relatively mild complications'
- Berry provides an interesting list, what he calls a 'conjectural
set of classifications', ranking the different 'levels of
significance of tonal function', or what might be called 'degrees
of relevancy of tonality', which I'm going to present in reverse
order (I can't explain why - it just seems 'right'):

[Wallace Berry, _Structural Functions in Music_, p. 172]
>
> primitive ("pedal") tonality [i.e., drone]
> purely melodic tonality
> tonality of modal conventions
> tonality of ambivalent conventions
> conventional (major-minor) tonality
> tonality of quasi-functional manifestations
> extended (expanded) tonality
> tonal flux within broad, prevailing tonal unity
> tonal flux extinguishing, or severely attenuating, tonal function?
> multitonality? pantonality?
> irrelevant tonality?
> atonality as a relative tendency?
> "absolute" atonality?

Very interesting to me how he uses Partch's term, one time
in a category that I think describes Partch's technique well
(tonal flux within broad, prevailing tonal unity).

Berry's telling question marks are the initial indication that
he leans toward the first-mentioned camp of theorists.

Then he begins discussing specific examples of 'hierarchic
tonal order ... implicit ... in a twelve tone set itself',
one of which is Schoenberg's song _Tot_ (from op. 48).

In reading Berry's description of Schoenberg's tetrachordal
segmentation of the row in his 'tonal' treatment of the pitches,
I began thinking about your lattices of 12-tone JI scales designed
to maximize 7-limit tetradal harmony.

From that perspective, it surprises me that, given those
interests, you're not more inclined toward serialism yourself.
Seems to me like it would suit perfectly the manipulation of
tetrads in a 12-tone JI scale.

-monz

Joseph L. Monzo monz@juno.com
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html
|"...I had broken thru the lattice barrier..."|
| - Erv Wilson |
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