Re: Monz on Webern, Kyle on Bartok

>I picked up a lot of useful things on the way to
>my doctorate--I'm thinking
>group theory and multilinear algebra in
>particular.

Music grad school may very well be different from math in that respect. There's always been a debate, ever since John Knowles Paine convinced Harvard to make him our first music professor in the 1870s, as to whether music is truly an academic subject. Actually, the biggest thing I got from grad school was that I took quite a few graduate philosophy courses, which I wouldn't have been good enough to do as a philosophy major. Perhaps the best approach to grad school for musicians is to take courses outside your major, where you can really learn something.

And I'll mention one more thing. I had an excellent, very thorough 15th-century course with Theodore Karp. We examined, among other things, the complete surviving works (there aren't many) of Johannes Ciconia, an obscure figure who, I became convinced, was the first great composer, the first to realize a lot of things you could do in music that you couldn't do in any other art form. (Also author of a theoretical treatise doubtless known to others here.) By comparison, Machaut was just a poet who knew a few counterpoint rules. (Oops - sorry Joe Pehrson, didn't mean to criticize a fellow composer.) :^)

Kyle

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Kyle Gann <kgann@e...> wrote:
> >I picked up a lot of useful things on the way to
> >my doctorate--I'm thinking
> >group theory and multilinear algebra in
> >particular.
>
> Music grad school may very well be different from math in that
> respect.

It was a joke of sorts--that's some of the math which gets used on tuning-math, and which finds its way into waqy into what I compose.

> And I'll mention one more thing. I had an excellent, very thorough
> 15th-century course with Theodore Karp. We examined, among other
> things, the complete surviving works (there aren't many) of Johannes
> Ciconia, an obscure figure who, I became convinced, was the first
> great composer, the first to realize a lot of things you could do in
> music that you couldn't do in any other art form. (Also author of a
> theoretical treatise doubtless known to others here.) By comparison,
> Machaut was just a poet who knew a few counterpoint rules. (Oops -
> sorry Joe Pehrson, didn't mean to criticize a fellow composer.) :^)

I'll try to find what I can re Ciconia, but do you dismiss Josquin and Dufay as great composers?
> Kyle

>I'll try to find what I can re Ciconia,
>but do you dismiss Josquin and Dufay as
>great composers?

Of course not. That's the thing - Ciconia (c. 1370-1412) was from the generation *before* Dufay, and used techniques in his music that didn't appear again until Josquin rediscovered them 100 years later. Of course, we didn't discuss his Nova Musica and De Proportionibus, which contain a few sections of interest to tuning theorists. (Just to keep this post on-topic.)

Kyle

On 2002-12-27, Gene Ward Smith <genewardsmith@juno.com> uttered to...:

>It was a joke of sorts--that's some of the math which gets used on
>tuning-math, and which finds its way into waqy into what I compose.

I can understand how groups might be used in the theory of tunings
(interval ratios as elements, composition as operator, maybe octave
equivalence as a reduction rule; naive and messy, but it's a group), but
the applications of multilinear algebra escape me. If it ain't all joke,
I'd like to hear about it; on tuning-math, of course.

Sadly it seems the mathematical side of the tuning business is largely
locked away in offline references.
--
Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:decoy@iki.fi, tel:+358-50-5756111
student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front
openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Kyle Gann <kgann@e...> wrote:
> >I'll try to find what I can re Ciconia,
> >but do you dismiss Josquin and Dufay as
> >great composers?
>
> Of course not. That's the thing - Ciconia (c. 1370-1412) was from the
> generation *before* Dufay, and used techniques in his music that
> didn't appear again until Josquin rediscovered them 100 years later.

Here's a url of interest:

http://www.newalbion.com/NA048/

I could find but one midi.

>Sadly it seems the mathematical side of the tuning business is
>largely locked away in offline references.

Nope, it's all there (and before that, here) in the archives.
But it might as well be encrypted with pgp.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma <clumma@y...>" <clumma@y...> wrote:

> Nope, it's all there (and before that, here) in the archives.
> But it might as well be encrypted with pgp.

It's hardly as bad as that!

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Kyle Gann <kgann@e...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_41685.html#41685

By comparison,
> Machaut was just a poet who knew a few counterpoint rules. (Oops -
> sorry Joe Pehrson, didn't mean to criticize a fellow composer.) :^)
>
> Kyle

***Ha, Ha! Good rule, Kyle! Frankly, I've always liked Josquin a
*lot* better, as well... :)

Happy Holidays again to all! Still in Michigan....

Joe Pehrson