Re: Wikipedia/Tuning List History

A small question about the tuning list history. The Wikipedia article on Ivor Darreg says that:

> Darreg's informal network of microtonal musicians writing letters to > each other later morphed into the more formal Xenharmonic Alliance, > and subsequently formed the core group which became the membership of > the internet tuning list, first based at Mills College and now hosted > by Yahoo.

With all due respect to Ivor Darreg, who I knew fairly well (he lived about a half hour away from my parents' house, and I visited him fairly regularly in Glendale from '77 and in San Diego through '88; he tuned our piano once, which is a long, funny story for another posting sometime), there was overlap between his circle of correspondents and the early tuning list, but describing one as morphing into the other via the Xenharmonic Alliance doesn't strike me as quite right, with the Mills connection (Polansky, Brown, Harrison, Horton etc.) perhaps more important than the Darreg connection, which may even convey a false impression of camaraderie.

It's possible that I've got this all wrong -- I do recall that after I.D. died, I received a letter asking me to join the "Alliance", and -- not being the type to join any club that would have me as a member -- I didn't respond, and didn't follow that venture any further, being more interested in infecting the art music world with the bug of more intonational variety than in establishing institutions in a parallel world of alternative tunings, and busy trying to make a living on a foreign shore. I read the Mills list early on, but did not contribute for at least two years (email access being spotty here then), so my memory may well be faulty there as well. In any case, it'd be nice to get this bit of history right.

Daniel Wolf

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Daniel Wolf <djwolf@...> wrote:
>
> A small question about the tuning list history. The Wikipedia
> article on Ivor Darreg says that:
>
> > Darreg's informal network of microtonal musicians writing
> > letters to each other later morphed into the more formal
> > Xenharmonic Alliance, and subsequently formed the core group
> > which became the membership of the internet tuning list, first
> > based at Mills College and now hosted by Yahoo.
>
> With all due respect to Ivor Darreg, who I knew fairly well (he
> lived about a half hour away from my parents' house, and I
> visited him fairly regularly in Glendale from '77 and in
> San Diego through '88; he tuned our piano once, which is a long,
> funny story for another posting sometime), there was overlap
> between his circle of correspondents and the early tuning list,
> but describing one as morphing into the other via the
> Xenharmonic Alliance doesn't strike me as quite right, with
> the Mills connection (Polansky, Brown, Harrison, Horton etc.)
> perhaps more important than the Darreg connection, which may
> even convey a false impression of camaraderie.

I agree. Why not give it an edit and soften the language
here a bit?

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...> wrote:

>
> I agree. Why not give it an edit and soften the language
> here a bit?

I'd be happy to, but I'd like to back it up, either with information
from someone who was around the list at the time it was started or a
pointer to an archive of the actual first postings.

DJW

Ivor had more to do with Xenharmonikon in the early days. When his output exceeded what that could handle , that is when he put out his xenharmonic bulletins.
By the time of the alliance, Ivor had stopped putting out most of this . by the time he was in Glendale, his resources were much more limited.
--
Kraig Grady
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