Re: [tuning] Digest Number 2002

On 4/5/02 5:48 PM, "tuning@yahoogroups.com" <tuning@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

> Message: 20
> Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 16:52:38 -0800 (PST)
> From: "M. Schulter" <MSCHULTER@VALUE.NET>
> Subject: "High third": Peace, musicmaking, and merriment
>
> Hello, there Jerry and Bob and Paul and Francois and everyone, and
> please let me comment briefly on this "high third" question from my
> own perspective.

Welcome to the thread, Margo. Your insights are always of value to me.
>
> Mainly I would like to advocate a bit of "harmonic empathy" theory: an
> assumption that people's intonational perspectives, and possibly also
> perceptions, might differ, and that analyzing these differences might
> call for a lot of patience and mutual support.

Although patience may have appeared scarce here, I think frankness has been
of much value to both Bob and I. Perhaps of some surprise to bystanders, Bob
and I are on a healthy wave length and have "leveled" with each other,
mainly because we both persisted through a number of misunderstanding that
got in the way of productive sharing of ideas.
>
> Curiously, I found myself reflecting on this a bit while playing
> around a bit with a more-or-less "regal organ" kind of timbre in
> Zarlino's 5-limit JI tuning (or actually 15 out its full 16 notes -- I
> had two versions of D, Bb, and F#, while Zarlino also has a second Eb).
>
> In a Renaissance setting, I find that 5:4 or 4:5:6 sounds "just
> right," and that if I try 2:3:5 (which Zarlino himself prefers as
> closer to the "natural order of the sonorous numbers"), the pitch of
> the just 5:4 third does not seem to change if I remove the fifth, or
> both lower notes.

Thanks for weighing in on the subject. Did you listen to Paul's sound
samples?
>
> Playing this is an opportunity to renew my appreciation in action of
> the perfection of 16th-century music. For this music, a cadential
> semitone of 16:15 (~112 cents) sounds "just right": the elements fit
> together in beautiful proportion, and some patience with the comma
> complications seems well rewarded. Of course, Zarlino didn't say that
> this kind of keyboard would be easy to play; but it's fascinating, and
> wonderful, to play an actual syntonic diatonic kind of keyboard
> instrument following Zarlino's plan, albeit with "split manuals" (one
> version of D, Bb, F# on each 12-note keyboard) rather than split keys.
>
> Shift the style, and something 81:80 or 56:55 higher than a 5:4 can
> sound equally "just right" and beautiful; since I can hear versions of
> an interval differently depending on the context, why shouldn't
> different people have a range of views and experiences also?

I believe Paul and others have agree that this sort of "personal artistic
pitch deviation" is often encountered. In fact, he suggested last year that
this might explain the "high third."

However, responses to his jerry0 and jerry00 have raised the notion that the
effect may be psychoacoustic for some musicians in regard to continual
experience with JI triads. In such a case, your "range of views" may have to
include this phenomenon.
>
> Bob and Jerry, as someone known to have been excluded from my high
> school choir because of an inability accurately to match pitches, what
> I'd mainly urge might be a more relaxed approach to this important
> question -- and anything I say might carry the caution: "Such lips,
> such lettuce" (said by a Roman of a donkey eating thistles, and quoted
> by Thomas Morley in 1597 in his _A Plain and Easy Introduction to
> Practical Music_).

I'm afraid to ask for a clarification here? :-)
>
> It's humorous, Francois: when you suggested that the choir was singing
> a major sixth at around 906 cents, and I noticed this number in some
> of the posts, my reaction was: "That's a perfect 27:16!" -- or would
> be, if the reading with its 5-cent error margin happened to be
> precisely what was happening.
>
> If the group were performing 13th-14th century European music, that
> would be an ideal Pythagorean sixth, and quite an accomplishment --
> not necessarily to endorse all of the surrounding events including the
> pitch drift and an "unhistorical" type of keyboard sound, of course
> <grin> -- if it had been a synthesizer simulating the Halberstadt
> Organ, I'd count that as more "authentic."

In this regard, we concluded last year that the Pythagorean third as well as
the 7:9 third was not equal to (or similar to) the high third in question
here.
>
> Anyway, I should add that the Renaissance was my first great love when
> I took a course in music appreciation/history in high school, and that
> I still regard it as _one_ of the most perfect eras from my point of
> view.

Shared. I think Bob would join us on that.
>
> Musing a bit on this "high third" discussion yesterday, I read a bit
> of Carl Dahlhaus. What he says about the music of Monteverdi and
> others around 1600 is really fascinating, and maybe captures at least
> part of how I go about improvising in this kind of style, as well as
> what I hear in the music of this epoch that I play on keyboard.
>
> One of his conclusions is that music of this kind is based on a
> "society" of hexachord degrees which are "coordinate," rather than in
> some kind of hierarchical relationship, whether defined by the
> traditional modal system or the key system of the later 17th century.
>
> The flow of 5-limit consonance, with smooth progressions and few
> arbitrary limitations, is one of the real charms of this music; I must
> admit to making the usual period compromise of meantone most of the
> time, but it's nice to play now and then in real JI and take that in
> also.

I suspect that Monteverdi's "free chromaticism" is what broke it open for
the seventeenth century composers to develop what we now call the
major/minor system, with it's "dominating" tritone energy. Wouldn't it be
fun to drop in on that era with a good tape recording and hear what they
*really* were playing and hearing?
>
> Of course, Gothic/neo-Gothic and Renaissance/neo-Renaissance, along
> with their very different approaches to concord/discord contrasts and
> intonational styles, has some common assumptions that may knit
> together these sides of my musical life.
>
> Reading Dahlhaus, and getting in touch again with both sides of this
> equation, makes me ask, for example, "Why is it that the progression
> from major third to fifth can be so beautiful not only a Gothic kind
> of setting where it represents a resolution from instability to
> stability, but also in a Renaissance setting where it guides a
> progression between two 5-limit sonorities?"
>
> Maybe that's a special charm of the 16th century: a kind of special
> musical gravitation producing an orbital freefall of sorts as thirds
> and sixths are moving in old and familiar patterns -- but to new
> sonorities also with thirds or sixths. It's a kind of "5-limit jazz."

Interesting thought!
>
> An open question: might a Renaissance style invite something at or
> near adaptive 5-limit JI, and 17th-19th century tonality with its
> higher level of dissonance and tension something with narrower
> cadential semitones?

An even *more* interesting thought.
>
> Maybe this is a bit like the old philosophical question: Is Bach
> played in a 31-note meantone cycle, or even say adaptive 5-limit JI,
> preferable to Bach in Werckmeister III say, or the Kellner tuning?

Being a singer and choral person, I guess I'm jaded toward adaptive JI (but
7-limit for all those luscious secondary dominants.
>
> Anyway, Bob and Jerry, the least I can do is to appreciate the talents
> and effort you exert in your work with vocal ensembles.

I trust you heard Bob's sound post the other day. Wonderful work!
>
> Music history reveals that passionate dialogues are often the source,
> if not the occasion, for much vital theory;

I trust you're right, Margo. At this point, I think we've got considerable
theory. What we're looking for now is some indication as to what "theory" is
closer to reality. :-)

> the recognition of this
> potential, even in the throes of controversy, might encourage
> passionate advocacy and enthusiastic friendship on all sides as the
> colloquies proceed.

It would appear that you are right. Thanks for the verification.
>
> Most appreciatively,
>
> Margo Schulter
> mschulter@value.net

And even *more* appreciation,

Gerald Eskelin