Re: "...axiomatic perorations"/D is for delete

"D. Stearns" wrote:

> From: "D. Stearns" <stearns@capecod.net>
>
> [Ray Tomes:]
> It seems that no-one is addressing the key point. Why have a compromise at
> all?
>
> Ray,
>
> These are a just few post from just the last few days... and while I can
> hardly claim: "Solutions to all the problems raised will be suggested and a
> grand structure erected," I believe that they do at least "address" the
> point.... But then again, as they agree with nearly nothing you say...
> perhaps they really don't address the point?
>
> Dan
>
> Kraig Grady wrote:
> >No ET can be tuned by ear which shows its own absurdity. This
> becomes really apparent once one has worked with the just intervals it
> approximates.
>
> While the first person precept and 'the incontestable way it is...' are
> often bothersome distinctions for the artist to make;- In the context of an
> open forum on tuning(S) and intonation(S), comments like the above always
> seem (to my oversensitive self anyway) like indefensible sarcasm's.
>
> Dan
>
> *Speaking of self-motivating tenets (which are obviously not the inconte
> stable way things are [for everyone...]); this (from Charles Ives "Memos")
> is one of my personal favorites... "Any art or habit of life, if it is
> limited chronically to a few processes that are the easiest to acquire (and
> for that reason are said to be some natural laws), must at some time, quite
> probably, become so weakened that it is neither a part of art nor a part of
> life. Nature has bigger things than even-vibration-ratios for man to learn
> how to use. Consonance is a relative thing (just a nice name for a nice
> habit).

I don't think anyone believes this any more. Behaviorist psychology has died.
(webern played everyday wouldn't work) In fact all this did was drive peoples
interest in music away. a repercussion we still have to deal with!

> It is a natural enough part of music, but not the whole, or the
> only one. The simplest ratios, often called perfect consonances, have been
> used for so long and so constantly that not only music, but also musicians
> and audiences, have become more or less soft. If they hear anything but
> do-me-soh or a near cousin, they have to be carried out on a stretcher."

By ignoring the fact of the acoustic properties of the fifth and the third
which would have lead them up the harmonic series (at least to the 23rd for
starter) they got side tracked into the use other ET intervals that were never
designed to do what they were being asked to do. ET was the habit that
couldn't be let loose of.!

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
www.anaphoria.com

[Kraig Grady:]
>I don't think anyone believes this any more.

Maybe not... I wouldn't know. (But if your interested - I personally didn't
believe it for a second... And yet in the context of my own personal
musical likes and dislikes, and beliefs and whatnot; I intuitively
understood a beneficial 'usefulness' in it's 'resolve...')

>In fact all this did was drive peoples interest in music away.

Not mine...

Dan

Dan, I wrote a long reply to you but have decided to can it in the
interests of not boring others with a squabble. Let me just say that I
agree with very many of the quotes that you posted (in contradiction to
what you claimed). I don't know whether you have missed my point or
something I did upset you but you seem excessively negative.
Anyway, I agree with the reply of Kraig Grady especially ...

>... they got side tracked into the use other ET intervals that were never
>designed to do what they were being asked to do. ET was the habit that
>couldn't be let loose of.!

Let me just add that I am not against composers using various irrational
ratios in chords. I am against instruments being totally unable to play
rational chords. Any departure from rationality should be by choice and
not by defect of the instrumental tuning.

-- Ray Tomes -- http://www.kcbbs.gen.nz/users/rtomes/rt-home.htm --
Cycles email list -- http://www.kcbbs.gen.nz/users/af/cyc.htm
Alexandria eGroup list -- http://www.kcbbs.gen.nz/users/af/alex.htm
Boundaries of Science http://www.kcbbs.gen.nz/users/af/scienceb.htm

[Ray Tomes:]
>I wrote a long reply to you but have decided to can it in the
interests of not boring others with a squabble.

Fair enough.

>I don't know whether you have missed my point

...I'd be more than willing to give your (aforementioned) long reply a look off list.

>but you seem excessively negative.

Could be...

Dan