AW.: Re: Neanderthal Flute

In einer Nachricht vom 11/9/99 4:41:38 PM (MEZ) Mitteleurop�ische
Zeitschreibt jhchalmers@popmail.ucsd.edu:

<<
In any case, the tuning tablets make it clear that the Babylonians and
related civilizations used "Pythagorean" tuning by the late 3rd and
early 2nd millennia BCE and not 5-limit or proto-12-tet.
>>

To be even more exact, the tablets showed only that they tuned by a sequence
of fifths, the precise intonation of which was not specified. No matter how
much we would like to make the Babylonians into proto-pythagoreans -- an
attractive idea to be sure -- the evidence is just not there.

<<
I think it is premature to infer musical universals from such dubious
and fragmentary evidence, but I'm becoming curmudgeonly these days.
>>

John, I'd suggest we start a club for xenharmonic curmudgeons, but then
again, would we really want to join any club that would have us for members?

DJW

But seriously, folks:

The report on the chinese flute is a good example of old-fashioned
soviet-cum-nationalist music ethnology. The researchers sought to prove a
link between the artifact and the great chinese cultural tradition and did it
by playing a "ancient chinese melody" on the flute. By blowing harder or
softer, or adjusting the embouchure, one probably could play a folksong from
almost anywhere on said flute. A reasonable piece of scholarship would have
instead begun by attempting to record tones played in all of the possible
fingering, at each partial, and with a variety of embouchure approaches. Only
then could we begin to get a real idea of the character of the instrument.

DJW