Comments on PAUL GRIFFITHS' music review on this year's American Festival of Microtonal

PAUL GRIFFITHS wrote in his music review:

> which was held, regrettably, in St. Paul's Chapel
> on the Columbia University campus -- a space
> whose long reverberation fuzzed some of the
> subtlety of shape that made the music special.

I think it no accident that music based on anything other than the
just diatonic scale is "fuzzed" in an acoustic environment having a long
reverberation time. The prevalence of the diatonic scale (or close
approximations to it) in music having its roots in the European Classical
tradition is probably a direct consequence of the evolution of medieval
plainsong chants in structures (monasteries and cathedrals) having long
reverberation times. These chants only "work" in such an environment if all
of the notes of the scale are consonant with the reverberations of
previously sounded notes. Simply singing a just diatonic scale in such an
environment creates beautiful harmonies.

I was made aware of this during the pre-concert warmup of
Philomusica Chamber Choir singing in St Ignatius Church in Rome a few years
ago. As we began to sing our scales, we were pleasantly surprised by the
effect produced when our voices were joined by those of the "virtual" choir
created by the long reverberation time. In the concert we found that both
the Gregorian Chants and the Palestrina Mass worked extremely well, however,
more modern pieces had to be considerably slowed down to avoid turning into
meaningless noise.

It would probably be a good idea for those planning concerts of
microtonal music to consider the acoustic environment a bit more carefully.

Clif Ashcraft