Re: Chant, resonanant spaces, medieval polyphony etc

David Finnamore wrote,

>In polyphony, yes. In plain chant, "harmonic," "stable,"
>and "quickly" are less relevant concepts to the abstract
>composition, though possibly not to the performance in a
>highly resonant environment. It's not at all uncommon in
>plain chant to have a phrase like:

>C C D E E D E F E D E D

>which would cause the Es to be sung over the reverb of the
>Cs. In such as case, the simple 5-limit tetrachord

>1/1 9/8 5/4 4/3

>would produce maximum consonance for the singers' ears, not
>Pythagorean, and certainly not a 9/7 between the C and E.
>It would surprise me less in such a case to hear a 10/9
>between the C and D (and 9/8 above) than to hear a stack of
>9/8s. Now if you get a short enough reverb that the Cs are
>almost inaudible by the time the Es arrive, then 5-limit
>probably has as little chance as Pythagorean.

I was talking about polyphony, but in the case of unaccompanied melody, you
may be forgetting that C was not one of the more common "tonics" in
plainchant. My strong suspicion is that your ears and theories are highly
attuned to the more modern phenomenon of "tonality" when the musical logic
of the time did not posess this logic, but rather a different one. For
example, I would think that, barring extreme amounts of reverb, the beauty
of the monophonic chant would be enhanced by having equal-sized whole steps
-- to me, alternating steps of 9:8 and 10:9 in melody has an insipid
character, and given that harmony was nonexistent in early chant times, the
sensitivity to melody may have been much greater than it is today (among
Western ears).

> David Finnamore wrote,
>
> >In polyphony, yes. In plain chant, "harmonic," "stable,"
> >and "quickly" are less relevant concepts to the abstract
> >composition, though possibly not to the performance in a
> >highly resonant environment. It's not at all uncommon in
> >plain chant to have a phrase like:
>
> >C C D E E D E F E D E D
>
> >which would cause the Es to be sung over the reverb of the
> >Cs. In such as case, the simple 5-limit tetrachord
>
> >1/1 9/8 5/4 4/3
>
> >would produce maximum consonance for the singers' ears, not
> >Pythagorean, and certainly not a 9/7 between the C and E.
> >It would surprise me less in such a case to hear a 10/9
> >between the C and D (and 9/8 above) than to hear a stack of
> >9/8s. Now if you get a short enough reverb that the Cs are
> >almost inaudible by the time the Es arrive, then 5-limit
> >probably has as little chance as Pythagorean.

Paul H. Erlich responded:

> I was talking about polyphony, but in the case of unaccompanied melody, you
> may be forgetting that C was not one of the more common "tonics" in
> plainchant. My strong suspicion is that your ears and theories are highly
> attuned to the more modern phenomenon of "tonality" when the musical logic
> of the time did not posess this logic, but rather a different one. For
> example, I would think that, barring extreme amounts of reverb, the beauty
> of the monophonic chant would be enhanced by having equal-sized whole steps
> -- to me, alternating steps of 9:8 and 10:9 in melody has an insipid
> character, and given that harmony was nonexistent in early chant times, the
> sensitivity to melody may have been much greater than it is today (among
> Western ears).

I believe now that you're right. I'll take this opportunity
to retract just about everything I previously said on the
subject.

David