Re: Steiner

Thank you John for the info--it is great to know you are still in contact with the list--we had communicated years ago. I am working myself up to taking the necessary time to write a piece or pieces for brass quartet/quintet based on the overtone series. I think I've worked out a way to adequately notate this kind of thing. The difficulty will be to get some players to actually hear and play the pure overtones and not temper the pitches as we are so used to doing. In my mind the whole problem with this "new tunings" thing is being able to get good live performances. Anyone involved in this music business understands the dimensional difference between recordings/electronic synthesis, etc. and good live performance--so the problem of actually writing good music that has something universal to communicate and then training enough good musicians to actually get into it and express it is monumental. I hope you don't mind me posting this to the tuning list as there may be some
interest in your post to me. Thanks,

Bruce

John Chalmers <jhchalmers@ucsd.edu> wrote:
Bruce: I saw your post to the tuning list. A few years ago, Brian Lee discovered
that Kathleen Schlesinger and her composer friend Elsie Hamilton were
Anthroposophists and that the headquarters in Dornach had a few of her scores as
autographs. Unfortunately, the pieces excerpted in The Greek Aulos were not
among them except for a Hymn to Ra from Sensa. Anyway, Hamilton wrote a short
essay which equivalenced KS's harmoniai to Steiner's planetary scales. So, if
you are interested in writing Anthroposophical music, you might consider her
system of 7 diatonic 7-tone scales derived from the subharmonic series.

--John

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On Monday 20 October 2003 01:17 pm, Bruce Kanzelmeyer wrote:
> In my mind the whole problem with
> this "new tunings" thing is being able to get good live performances.
> Anyone involved in this music business understands the dimensional
> difference between recordings/electronic synthesis, etc. and good live
> performance--so the problem of actually writing good music that has
> something universal to communicate and then training enough good musicians
> to actually get into it and express it is monumental.

I agree, and this is why, for now, I am sticking to writing for myself, or
electronically, or improvising with percussion, and one other Turkish
musician to whom this is not an alien business, who plays the oud, and is
familiar with 53 tones per octave music.

I don't want to even bother 'selling it' to those who don't 'get it'. Let
someone else fight that battle. Maybe in the future I'll come into contact
with people who are less indifferent about it.

Anyway, I like the idea that machines can be as precise as possible about both
pitch and rhythm, and the expressive element is what comes as a difficulty,
but I'm convinced that its not impossible to make an expressive midi file,
for example. And, with the right kind of music, 'inexpressive' is
'expressive'. (e.g. Nancarrow)

But yes, the immediacy and spontaneity is gone, and that's a loss, as is the
loss of the richness of acoustic sounds, which are a league above.

-AKJ

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron K. Johnson" <akjmicro@c...>

/tuning/topicId_48045.html#48058

>
> I don't want to even bother 'selling it' to those who don't 'get
it'. Let someone else fight that battle. Maybe in the future I'll
come into contact with people who are less indifferent about it.

***I'm really sorry to hear this, Aaron, since I, personally, believe
it is one of the most important battles to be fought...

Signed,

Caligula

No,

JP

Hi there !

It's not a battle, we are not at war !
It's simply a kind of decision as: do you want to find out how things precisely might sound before you get intrumentalists or singers to do your music ?
Or: do you wish to create sounds that can not be made on natural instruments / by voice, then you should need electronic.
It's only a question of different aesthetical approach.
Do you see me ?

Irie.

Mad Musicologist a.k.a. Wernerlinden@aol.com

Hi, tried to answer yesterday and hopefully I get every idea together.
Didn't know that Rudolf Steiner was involved into microtonality.
I attended a Rudolf Steiner school, so that's interesting for me though I do not quite adhere to his philosophical ecelcticism.
Anyway, a fellow from the same region (nowadays northern Croatia), had a quite similar idea of finding links between harmonics and the planets. His name was Josip Stolcer Slavenski, born Cakovec 1895, died Belgrade 1955, and among his music are some studies for the ancestor of our synths., the Trautonium.
Sounds, like all his music, very strange and beautyful, though his more traditional works seem to be something like "continuing Romantics with different means".
It must have been a topic of that time of dissolving tonality to search for new ordering principles, as if musicians were afraid of the dawning freedom of non-organized "atonality" as suggested by early Schoenberg in the times of "Der Blaue Reiter", expressionism etc.

Think that was it so far...
Bye
Werner

On Tuesday 21 October 2003 10:51 pm, Joseph Pehrson wrote:
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron K. Johnson" <akjmicro@c...>
>
> /tuning/topicId_48045.html#48058
>
> > I don't want to even bother 'selling it' to those who don't 'get
>
> it'. Let someone else fight that battle. Maybe in the future I'll
> come into contact with people who are less indifferent about it.
>
> ***I'm really sorry to hear this, Aaron, since I, personally, believe
> it is one of the most important battles to be fought...
>

I know you're right, of course, but my point is that I'd rather people become
naturally compelled to do altered tunings than force it upon them.

In translation, this means that I'd rather pay people to play a piece who
already knew how to do it, than to 'train' traditionalists...

Best,
AKJ.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron K. Johnson" <akjmicro@c...>

/tuning/topicId_48045.html#48124

> I know you're right, of course, but my point is that I'd rather
people become naturally compelled to do altered tunings than force it
upon them.
>

***Aren't you making this a bit of a "black or white" situation,
Aaron?? In other words, maybe some "traditional" players just
haven't been exposed to microtonality adequately as yet... that's
not exactly "forcing..."

> In translation, this means that I'd rather pay people to play a
piece who already knew how to do it, than to 'train'
traditionalists...
>

***I agree it could be *easier*... but does it really advance
the "cause...?" Besides, there are lots of great players who do a
lot of contemporary music who still have to be *trained* in the
specifics of microtonality...

JP