Re: Digest Number 432

> From: "Jonathan M. Szanto" <jszanto@adnc.com>
> Subject: Hubris, Inc.
>
> I respond mainly because points were brought up directly regarding my last
> posting on the subject of 'interpretation'. As a short preface, I hope that
> everyone on the list can grasp the *extremely* wide variety of performing
> scenarios involved in the word "music"! What is appropriate to jazz may not
> be to classical, Sousa marches vs. Javanese gamelan. IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING
> (though I have to say it) that I *expect* a rendition of Mingus' "Goodbye,
> Pork Pie Hat" to include improvisation and arrangement;

And yet Chopin and Liszt piano works (excuse the repetition, it is to me
the most glaring example) are performed by orchestra all the time. Is this
not a radical reworking? Yet this is common practice. I don't like it, but
this is the way things *really are* in western classical music. People
reorchestrate, change tempo, add ornamentation, change keys, move
orchestral works to solo instruments, move solo works to orchestras, lose
entire sections, play the overture only, drop the last movement, and on
and on.

>I *don't* expect
> extended solos in a middle-period Beethoven quartet.

And you have never heard them. No one here is doing anything nearly that
radical. DeLaubenfel's 5 limit retuning is closer to 12tet than most of
Pablo Cassals' work. The evolution of musical instruments and their
tuning is, to a large degree, driven by the desire of the composer to have
a vehicle with which to accurately execute his compositional requirements.
Certainly the historical evolution of western tuning from Pythagorean and
just to equal temperament bears witness to this, and I daresay the tunings
lagged behind the composition. It seems quite reasonable that Bach would
have invited John in and played with his programs for a long time had he
the opportunity.

<snip>
> If the effort is made for the purpose
> of examining the composer's thrust of the piece, in a sincere and
> intelligent (and heartfelt) way, there can be great value. If pieces are
> operated on for ear candy, for raw material in service of some historically
> unsupportable hypothesis, I find that not of value and disrespectful. It
> may be impossible to know, but there are *lots* of evidential parameters
> that can be examined - if one cares to.

It seems to me that DeLaubenfels *is* making careful and informed choices,
constantly refining his algorithms to find the most pleasing and logical
choices. This is exactly what Bach would have done if the instrument of
his day had been a computer, assuming that tuning was important to him.
And all historical evidence suggests that it was.

<snip>
> I'm not saying that arrangements are invalid, but that they must be
> examined in a larger context, as well as stating that there are pieces that
> don't need your help. And having done a lot of composition AND
> arrangements, it is my feeling that pulling an entirely new musical life
> out of the aether is tougher than tweaking someone else's notes. Your
> mileage may vary.

It is indeed tougher, but that is not what John is trying to do. He is
building musical tools to overcome some inadequacies of the current ones.
He is using these tools to retune public domain music under the perfectly
reasonable assumption that these great composers might have liked his new
tool, and might have used them like this, had they the opportunity.

John Starrett

[Jon Szanto:]
> it is my feeling that pulling an entirely new musical life out of
the aether is tougher than tweaking someone else's notes. Your mileage
may vary.

[John Starrett:]
> It is indeed tougher, but that is not what John is trying to do. He
is building musical tools to overcome some inadequacies of the current
ones. He is using these tools to retune public domain music under the
perfectly reasonable assumption that these great composers might have
liked his new tool, and might have used them like this, had they the
opportunity.

I think that's the problem (or whatever you want to call it): "using
these tools to retune public domain music under the perfectly
reasonable assumption that these great composers might have liked his
new tool." The tools seem to me a really fine idea, as does using
these public domain pieces to get a handle on how the tools are
working (as the material is generally familiar enough for most people
to be able to have a chance at gauging what's be done, what's
different, etc.). But beyond that, "the perfectly reasonable
assumption that these great composers might have liked his new tool,"
seems to me no different than saying that it's a perfectly reasonable
assumption that they may not have...

And my own opinion is that if these are supposed to be taken as
striking "art" on it's own, then there is something distressingly akin
to "colorization" about the whole process... I mean these are not
rearrangements (or even arrangements outside of whatever's been done
before they got to JdL's program for that matter), they're just
retunings - one size fits all... and it just seems (to me anyway) that
it would be a much better (or prudent) idea to present the retunings
of the existing material as experiments in seeing what seems to work
and what could use some tweaking, rather than an impossible to say
(and obviously disagreeable to many) assumption that these great
composers might have liked this.

Dan

John Starrett wrote,

>Certainly the historical evolution of western tuning from Pythagorean and
>just to equal temperament bears witness to this

Sorry to pick this statement out of its context, but I simply want to make
the point that I see it as a bit of a misconception, and one that is
fostered by most books on musical acoustics. They usually mention these
three tuning systems and compare them with one another, showing that equal
temperament approximates the other two and explaining how "convenient" equal
temperament is. The major omission here is of course meantone temperament.
Western composers of the "early" (c.900-1680) and "common practice"
(c.1680-1900) eras did not write music in just intonation, with the possible
exception of a brief "schismatic" period in the 1400s. There were three
major tuning paradigms for Western music: Pythagorean, meantone, and 12-tone
circulating (ultimately ET), in that order. If one wishes to view this as an
"evolution", equal temperament should really be compared with meantone,
which is what it "evolved" from (although 12-equal had been present on lutes
since the Pythagorean era, so that's another somewhat relevant comparison).
One should, of course, compare each _consonant interval_ in ET with the JI
version of that interval, but to me what is usually done, comparing an
entire _scale_ of 7 or 12 tones in ET with one in JI, is musically
irrelevant and misleading.

See Margo's recent posts on _Modality, Tonality, Transpositions, and
Tunings_ for more info on historical tuning, and see Dan Stearns' recent
posts for an example of approximating JI _scales_ with ETs without regard of
what happens to the _consonant intervals_ (sorry if this seems underhanded
Dan, I mean no disrespect; I've made clear my objections to your approach
before).

>From: John Starrett <jstarret@math.cudenver.edu>
>
>> From: "Jonathan M. Szanto" <jszanto@adnc.com>
>>I *don't* expect
>> extended solos in a middle-period Beethoven quartet.
>
>And you have never heard them. No one here is doing anything nearly that
>radical.

Well, I have plans for extended solos in the middle of some Chopin
nocturnes that I've arranged for soprano and guitar or SATB and guitar. I
believe that they'll be great Chopin. I bet that NO one will be expecting
to hear what I plan to do, and I hope that they will be pleasantly
surprised. Maybe some people will even say: "That's the way Chopin ought to
be played!". (That's what *I* think.)

John Link

********************************************************************************

Watch for the CD "Live at Saint Peter's" by John Link's vocal quintet,
featuring original compositions as well as arrangements of instrumental
music by Brahe and Taylor, Chick Corea, Miles Davis, Claude Debussy, Bill
Evans, Ennio and Andrea Morricone, Modeste Mussorgsky, Erik Satie, and Earl
Zindars.

****************************************************************************
****

On Fri, 10 Dec 1999, John Link wrote:
>>> I *don't* expect
>>> extended solos in a middle-period Beethoven quartet.
>>
>> And you have never heard them. No one here is doing anything nearly that
>> radical.
>
> Well, I have plans for extended solos in the middle of some Chopin
> nocturnes that I've arranged for soprano and guitar or SATB and guitar.

See also Keith Jarrett, who has done renditions of classical standards
that incorporate jazz improvisations into otherwise "straight"
performances.

--pH <manynote@library.wustl.edu> http://library.wustl.edu/~manynote
O
/\ "Churchill? Can he run a hundred balls?"
-\-\-- o

[Paul H. Erlich:]
>and see Dan Stearns' recent posts for an example of approximating JI
_scales_ with ETs without regard of what happens to the _consonant
intervals_

The "1/20=28/27" interpretation of 20e stemmed from a nagging feeling
that a 0 3 6 8 12 15 16 20 (somehow) wanted to be a V.
5/4
/ \
/ \
/ 7/4 \
/ \
4/3-------1/1-------3/2-------9/8------27/16

So I tried to give "somehow" a chance, and went about trying to see if
I could illustrate how that could (perhaps, just perhaps...) be seen.
It's a "reckless" whim for sure, but I'm very glad to do such things
when I feel as though there's the chance of something there... and if
someone else wants to tell me there ain't, I'm (usually anyway) happy
to listen why... and if there ain't - there ain't! But an EDO like 20
(consistent through the 3-limit) isn't going to give you much if all
concerns are centered on what happens (in a JI comparative sense) to
the _consonant intervals_.

>(sorry if this seems underhanded Dan, I mean no disrespect;

None taken either... To my mind the TD is well served by reinforcing
ones points (or at least that's how I think I personally glean the
most from the back and forth).

>I've made clear my objections to your approach before).

Yes you have, and I always appreciate the particulars, but I think
that even when I agree with you, I perhaps have a natural tendency to
see a little more flexibility, a little more elbowroom... I really
don't see much of a one to one exchange in musical relevancy (or
irrelevancy) and theoretical relevancy (or irrelevancy)... it all
seems somewhat dependent on what one's trying to accomplish, or say...
But I think I'm starting to drift off into some completely different
thread best saved for another day... so I'll shut up!

Dan

Dan Stearns wrote,

>But an EDO like 20
>(consistent through the 3-limit) isn't going to give you much if all
>concerns are centered on what happens (in a JI comparative sense) to
>the _consonant intervals_.

It is true that I see no point in comparing scales to JI if the consonant
intervals are not well-represented. The ratios are not going to be conveyed
unless they can be constructed from simpler ratios which are audibly
appreciated as such. On the other hand, many tempered scales will be able to
imply more simple ratios than any JI representations, as we've seen over and
over.

>I really
>don't see much of a one to one exchange in musical relevancy (or
>irrelevancy) and theoretical relevancy (or irrelevancy)...

Hmm . . . I might say that everything you're doing is fine from a purely
theoretical, amusical point of view but much of it fails from a musical
perspective . . . would you agree or say the opposite? I'm sure that someone
(especially in the field of 'experimental' music) could make great music
from any of the scales you're proposing, but it would have little to do with
sensing frequency ratios, except in the very indirect sense that you may be
approximating some culturally familiar intervals which are constructed from
intervals which are themselves approximations to simple ratios.

[Paul Erlich:]
>It is true that I see no point in comparing scales to JI if the
consonant intervals are not well-represented. The ratios are not going
to be conveyed unless they can be constructed from simpler ratios
which are audibly appreciated as such.

Well that's the rub with the 0 3 6 8 12 15 16 20 scale I gave, as I
found it by ear by repeatedly stumbling into it (or bits of it) when I
was first trying to get a feel for what seemed pleasing (to my ear) on
my 20e guitar... so in other words it demonstrated some repeated
"pull," and that pull seemed most (or much) like that of simpler
ratios.

>Hmm . . . I might say that everything you're doing is fine from a
purely theoretical, amusical point of view but much of it fails from a
musical perspective . . . would you agree or say the opposite?

I'd say they go hand in hand... as it's often the case that they are
more of an after the fact (after the music that is) attempt to give
what's going on a "name," and some degree of analytical compassion...
but often times they're an extrapolated step or five down the road
from that, and at that point they may or may not have all that much to
do with whatever it was of the music that I was originally interested
in "explaining." However, most all of these things do have their way
of coming back around and "influencing" the music... and on and on it
goes, round and round in these half-adumbrated fits and starts of
experimenting doing and explaining...

Sorry -- but you did ask(!),
Dan