RE: The world according to Rothenberg (re Kraig Grady); my cont.. .

Daniel Wolf wrote,

>(1) Paul Erlich:

>Have you been able to use your decatonics as meaningful scales in any
pieces?

The last piece I performed at the Microthon was decatonic, using all 10
tetrads in the standard pentachordal minor scale. The surface has barely
been scratched; fugues, etc. need to be written.

>I ask because a piece of mine, _Pequod, for Lou Harrison_ (1986) used
>complementary dekanies from the (1,3,5,7,9,11) and (1,3,7,9,11,15)
>eikosanies, for example, the dekany

>1*3*11, 1*5*11, 1*7*11, 1*9*11, 3*5*11, 3*7*11, 3*9*11, 5*7*11, 5*9*11,
>7*9*11 was contrasted
>with
>1*3*5, 1*3*7, 1*3*9, 1*5*7, 1*5*9, 1*7*9, 3*5*7, 3*5*9, 3*7*9, 5*7*9

>I found that each dekany collection was coherent, but not as a scale.
>Although each had a regular pattern of scale steps,

That's a stretch! Compare the regularity of having two identical pentachords
within all 10 octave species of the pentachordal decatonic scale, or the
distributional evenness of the symmetrical decatonic scale. What's the
neatest decription you can come up with for the "regularity" of the pattern
of scale steps in the dekanies?

>they were too dense to
>function akin to a diatonic or pentatonic scale or not dense and even
enough
>to function like a chromatic scale. Instead, subsets of each dekany seemed

>to form the most important local melodic units and the dekany as a whole
>formed the collection or pool of harmonic resources. I am fond of the
>ambiguous character of the dekanies, but just can't call them scales.

They're certainly not melodic entities.