Re: Beethoven JI tuning experiment

[Monzo, TD 204.7:]
> I have been doing an experiment in 'justification', using the Scherzo
> of Beethoven's piano sonata #9 (op. 14 # 1).

Perhaps this could be a piece which, over time, several of us (or, at
least I) could also re-tune, allowing comparison of results. A kind of
"tune-off", if you will, with the rest of the list as potential judges.

Monz, I tried to pull your partial MIDI sequence from

http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/beethove/son9schz.htm

but got a proxy error; will try again later. Is the file incomplete, or
incompletely retuned?

[Monzo:]
> 12:15:18 is *NOT* an accurate analysis of a Dominant [V] chord.
> The (culturally-conditioned?) preference for a sharpened Pythagorean
> 'leading-tone' makes this chord sound flat, at least in this piece,
> and to my ears.

I know that feeling, but I think it's a matter of getting used to it,
as (in my opinion) to the 4:5:6:7 dominant 7th.

[Brett Barbaro/Paul Erlich, TD 206.3:]
> George Kahrimanis, who has (questionably) backed up his theories with
> experimental observations on preferences in synthesized performances,
> analyzes the dominant in minor as a utonal chord, the dominant seventh
> being tuned 1/9:1/7:1/6:1/5 and with its lowest note on the regular
> dominant. That gives a highly raised leading tone much in accord with
> the modern practice of a typical string quartet playing Beethoven.

Yecch!! That's got the "super-major" chord we discussed a while back,
which, as Gary Morrison pointed out, sounds more like a car horn than
consonance. At least the resolution to tonic minor would be a huge
relief!

Let me issue a general invitation for MIDI sequence files featuring a
single voice (probably piano?), that might be interesting and/or
challenging to be retuned in JI. I don't have my leisure retuning
program written yet, but hope to begin serious work on it soon. Monzo,
if you're retuning by hand, I'll be the steel-driving machine to your
"John Henry" (Mon'z Henry??).

JdL

[John A. deLaubenfels, TD 207.7]
> Monzo, if you're retuning by hand, I'll be the steel-driving
> machine to your "John Henry" (Mon'z Henry??).

Yep - mostly I'm retuning by hand, the brute-force approach,
starting with a 12-eq file and adding pitch-bend to every note,
simply because so much classical music has already been
sequenced by other people and it's easily available on the wwweb.

However, my 'micro.CAL' program makes it a lot easier,
so frequently I'll just start from scratch using that.
That's how I'm entering the MIDI file for John Dowland's
_Lachrymae_ in his tuning (eventually to go on my Dowland page).

It's still a good deal of work either way, but the latter
is frequently quicker and easier than the former.

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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[David J. Finnamore, TD 207.9]
>
> Renaissance compositions, even some Baroque ones, don't need
> that raised LT ['leading-tone'], to my ears, because there is
> more of a sense of simply hop-scotching around the lattice
> rather than of building and releasing harmonic tension.

Yes! I think that's a great characterization of the difference
in harmonic technique between Renaissance and later periods.

>
> I don't personally see the point of making a Beethoven piece
> 5-lim JI, other than the simply educational purpose of
> taking it apart and putting back together intentionally
> wrongly to see what will happen. It couldn't have been
> written that way, it wasn't intended to be, and it doesn't
> work well, anyway. It assumes the vanishing comma, among
> other things.

Well... I agree with you that a well-temperament is probably
the tuning that would be most suitable for Beethoven piano music.

But not for string quartets! And Beethoven *did* arrange this
sonata for string quartet.

Another reason I picked a Beethoven piece rather than one by
another composer is because Beethoven went deaf - he was
beginning to show the first signs of losing his hearing right
around the time he wrote this piece.

I think this is an important consideration, and would say that
it's probably more relevant for his later pieces, after he
long been totally deaf, than for this particular one.

After not having been able to hear anything for a few decades,
I would wager that there were sounds in his mind that were
quite a bit different from those he became acquainted with
audibly as a young man, especially since he himself, more
than any other composer of his time, was the one pushing the
envelope of what was possible compositionally.

My intention with this experiment, aside from its obvious
educational aspects, was not to find a tuning which I believe
*should* be used for Beethoven performance, but rather, just
to create *my own interpretation* of what I think Beethoven
may have had in his *mind*.

Admittedly, considering what I said in the above few paragraphs,
I could probably justify this better by choosing a piece written closer
to the end of his life, rather than this early one. But
I like this one and it's harmonically fairly straightforward,
which can't always be said for Beethoven's later music.

I've also been working for years on an analysis and MIDI sequence
of his _C#-minor quartet, op. 131_, which IMO is one of the most
profound pieces ever written.

But, as with my work on Mahler's _7th_ (also a very deep work),
there is a lot here that is open to a wide variety of
interpretations. The earlier piece is much easier to deal with.

-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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[David J. Finnamore, TD 207.9]

>> I don't personally see the point of making a Beethoven piece
>> 5-lim JI ...

Monz responded:

> Well... I agree with you that a well-temperament is probably
> the tuning that would be most suitable for Beethoven piano music.

> But not for string quartets! And Beethoven *did* arrange this
> sonata for string quartet.

While a string quartet can make "adaptive" compromises that
are less obtrusive than those a physical piano must make,
they still have to compromise something(s) to make the ends
of the lattice meet. The only ways (known to me) to make
this happen with a small set of fixed pitches, such as you
are doing with this piece (right?), are to insert commas in
more-or-less awkward places or to temper the intervals.

> After not having been able to hear anything for a few decades,
> I would wager that there were sounds in his mind that were
> quite a bit different from those he became acquainted with
> audibly as a young man [snip]

> My intention with this experiment, aside from its obvious
> educational aspects, was not to find a tuning which I believe
> *should* be used for Beethoven performance, but rather, just
> to create *my own interpretation* of what I think Beethoven
> may have had in his *mind*.

Now, _that_ is very interesting. Purely speculative, of
course, but visionary just the same. It like the idea!

David J. Finnamore
Just tune it!

[David J. Finnamore, TD 210.6]
>
> While a string quartet can make "adaptive" compromises that
> are less obtrusive than those a physical piano must make,
> they still have to compromise something(s) to make the ends
> of the lattice meet. The only ways (known to me) to make
> this happen with a small set of fixed pitches, such as you
> are doing with this piece (right?), are to insert commas in
> more-or-less awkward places or to temper the intervals.

Yes, what I did was what you characterize as 'to insert commas
in more-or-less awkward places'.

However - and I already know we have different opinions on how
this experiment sounds - to my ears, they are *not* awkward
places, but rather, places that make sense according to the
flow of harmonic tension and release in the context of
characteristically Beethovenian thematic/motivic gestures.

>> My intention with this experiment, aside from its obvious
>> educational aspects, was not to find a tuning which I believe
>> *should* be used for Beethoven performance, but rather, just
>> to create *my own interpretation* of what I think Beethoven
>> may have had in his *mind*.
>
> Now, _that_ is very interesting. Purely speculative, of
> course, but visionary just the same. It like the idea!

Ah... it's such a great feeling when it first appears there's a
disagreement, and then there's a 'meeting of the minds'!

Glad you came around to seeing it - and liking it - my way.
I suppose by now you see that I'm a big fan of pure speculation!

(Someday, if I live to ever complete it, there will be a
really fantastic microtonal version of Mahler's _7th_!
That's a brain I've been picking for a looooooooong time.
And working on the MIDI file for a long time, for that matter.)

-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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David J. Finnamore [TD210.6]

>While a string quartet can make "adaptive" compromises that
>are less obtrusive than those a physical piano must make,
>they still have to compromise something(s) to make the ends
>of the lattice meet.

Are you saying that the D- and the D must be wrapped around in the
diagram below to make a cylinder?

A- E- B- F#- C#- G#- D#- A# E# B#
F- C- G- D- A E B F# C# G# D#
Ab Eb Bb F C G D A+ E+ B+
Fb Cb Gb Db Ab+ Eb+ Bb+ F+ C+ G+ D+

If so then I disagree. Strings don't need to do that, they just need to
"know" which D to play when the music says D. That will generally be
dictated by the other notes (e.g D- with A and F, D with G and B).

I am ignoring some of the problems raised by Paul here, but they don't
seem that relevent to your statement.

-- Ray Tomes -- http://www.kcbbs.gen.nz/users/rtomes/rt-home.htm --
Cycles email list -- http://www.kcbbs.gen.nz/users/af/cyc.htm
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Ray Tomes wrote:

> Are you saying that the D- and the D must be wrapped around in the
> diagram below to make a cylinder?
>
> [snip nice diagram]
>
> If so then I disagree. Strings don't need to do that

True. In the context of Monz's Beethoven JI piano
experiment (see Subject line), I was talking about a
reasonably small number of fixed pitches per octave. In
that case, of course, the two D's will likely have to have
the same pitch unless you suitably expanded the palette.

More to the point, intonationally ambiguous chords became
increasingly common during the late Classical and Romantic
periods, thanks in measure to ol' Ludwig himself, until it
became part of the very vocabulary of the music. To rigidly
tune those up can sometimes compromise the spirit, or at
least reduce the impact, of a piece. You have to be careful
not to articulate a distinction between tones that are
intended to be musical homonyms. Another danger lies in
chords that have an ambiguity that the composition relies
on. Remove the ambiguity with JI and you'll damage the
composition.

I've tried going back to some of my 12t-ET stuff to look at
putting it in JI. More often than not it turns out to be a
step backward for the piece of music, though a step forward
for my understanding of the whole comma issue (which, as
Paul E. rightly pointed out, might not be quite complete
yet). ET was so ingrained in my thinking (I've got a
useless B. Mus., for cryin' out loud!) that even some of my
earliest "tuned" pieces sound better in 12t-ET! LOL!

You're right about strings, though, and choirs the same. I
wonder if what they essentially do is to distribute the
comma(s) chaotically? It's like, instead of sweeping the
comma under the rug somewhere, they're able to break it up
into dust and scatter it to the four winds. Any Chaos
theorists here?

David J. Finnamore
Just tune it anyway!

Hey guys, listen...

In a lot of ways I regret putting that experiment online
too soon, since it's such a small fragment. I only did it
because it seemed relevant to the ideas that have been flying
around on the List lately.

It's generated a lot of interest here, and I'd love to
work on it some more, but it's a *lot* of work - especially
the writing down of the analysis of what I did in the MIDI
file. That takes longer than inserting the pitch-bend itself.

I've got too many other things pressing on me right now,
and so I can't get back to Beethoven any time soon. Sorry.
Glad so many of you appreciate what I do have there.
I promise I'll finish it up as soon as I can.

-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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