AW.: RE: Re: Response to Dave Hill on JI and European com po...

In einer Nachricht vom 12/16/99 11:31:04 PM (MEZ) Mitteleurop�ische
Zeitschreibt PErlich@Acadian-Asset.com:

<<
I don't see any puns or tuning problems here. Does identifying f as the
second chord's tonic imply a different set of ratios?
>>

Yes. Here are only _some_ possible versions with f (the top note) as chord
fundamental and eb as (key) tonic:

>8/7 or 10/9 or 9/8
>1/1 1/1 1/1
>8/5 14/9 63/40
>48/35 4/3 27/20

An important part of the magic of the piece is that you don't yet know if
that f in the second chord is (a) a 7th subharmonic on an eb guiding tone or
(b) the chordal root of a half diminished 7th chord on the V of V or (c) on a
ii chord in a subdominant function. Brahms does indeed disambiguate this pun
in the course of the composition, but wouldn't resolving the ambiguity
intonationally at this point remove one of the important driving forces in
the piece?

As I mentioned in my previous post, Partch uses similar progressions. But
his is a musical rhetoric that is very different to that of Brahms, and one
in which this kind of punning plays no role.