Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Microtones from old New York Times

"Such fine nuances"! To think I dared go all the way to 79 notes.

Oz.

----- Original Message -----
From: "threesixesinarow" <CACCOLA@NET1PLUS.COM>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 24 Aï¿½ustos 2007 Cuma 21:03
Subject: [tuning] Microtones from old New York Times

> Harold Denny, "17-Note Octaves Used in New Piano - Moscow
> Musician Invents Keyboard to Permit Playing Eastern Music."
> Special Cable to the New York Times, February 8, 1936. Religious
> News, p.18
>
> "Berthold Neuer, vice president of William Knabe & Co., said
> yesterday there was no demand now that would justify
> marketing of a piano with a seventeen-interval octave. He
> said the 'keen ears of the modernist' are not yet attuned to
> 'split half notes.'
> "'Perhaps 100 years from now,' said Mr. Neuer, 'hearing will
> be developed to a point where people of this country will
> get pleasure out of such fine nuances.'"
>
> http://www.geocities.com/threesixesinarow/19360208nytogolevets17.pdf
>
>
>
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🔗Andreas Sparschuh <a_sparschuh@yahoo.com>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "threesixesinarow" <CACCOLA@...> wrote:
>
> Harold Denny, "17-Note Octaves Used in New Piano - Moscow
> Musician Invents Keyboard to Permit Playing Eastern Music."
> Special Cable to the New York Times, February 8, 1936. Religious
> News, p.18
>
> "Berthold Neuer, vice president of William Knabe & Co., said
> yesterday there was no demand now that would justify
> marketing of a piano with a seventeen-interval octave.
agreed,
because there are full-chromatic instruments with 19-tones:
http://www.denzilwraight.com/cs19phs3.jpg

> He
> said the 'keen ears of the modernist' are not yet attuned to
> 'split half notes.'
> "'Perhaps 100 years from now,' said Mr. Neuer, 'hearing will
> be developed to a point where people of this country will
> get pleasure out of such fine nuances.'"
>
> http://www.geocities.com/threesixesinarow/19360208nytogolevets17.pdf
appearently an reduced version without
Zarlino's enharmonic keys B#=Cb and E#=Fb:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Zarlinocembalo.png
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neunzehnstufige_Stimmung
(in german)

modern version:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Microtonal_Keyboard_19_Tones.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19_equal_temperament

A.S.
modern version
>

🔗threesixesinarow <CACCOLA@NET1PLUS.COM>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Andreas Sparschuh" <a_sparschuh@...>
wrote:

> > http://www.geocities.com/threesixesinarow/
19360208nytogolevets17.pdf

I wonder if there was anyone there from Moscow conservatory who
might have known about their 19 tone piano:
http://tinyurl.com/2w3yyf

> http://www.denzilwraight.com/cs19phs3.jpg

interesting articles there:
http://www.denzilwraight.com/24note.htm
and the checklist at http://www.denzilwraight.com/download.htm

Another one from New York Times - Barth's patent is US1,815,228
Weitz' obituary doesn't say anything about Baldwin.

http://www.geocities.com/threesixesinarow/
19290401nytaquartertonepiano.pdf

Clark

🔗Andreas Sparschuh <a_sparschuh@yahoo.com>

🔗Tom Dent <stringph@gmail.com>

I would bet the tuning of this piano was intended to be pythagorean,
with C# higher than Db - despite appearances - or with very slightly
stretched fifths. (Eg the regular tuning I mentioned where four fifths
produce a 19/15.)

Generally speaking, at least after the medieval period, meantone is
'Western' while pythagorean is 'Eastern'. Before meantone almost
everything was pythagorean. And some late medieval theorists, Ugolino
I think, call for doubled accidentals, leading to precisely a 17-note
octave where the alternative pitches do duty as a just fifth
(perfectio) and a schismatic third (coloratio) respectively.

Would the resulting keyboard also have some relation to the enharmonic
genus?...

~~~T~~~

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "threesixesinarow" <CACCOLA@...> wrote:
>
> Harold Denny, "17-Note Octaves Used in New Piano - Moscow
> Musician Invents Keyboard to Permit Playing Eastern Music."
> Special Cable to the New York Times, February 8, 1936. Religious
> News, p.18
>
> "Berthold Neuer, vice president of William Knabe & Co., said
> yesterday there was no demand now that would justify
> marketing of a piano with a seventeen-interval octave. He
> said the 'keen ears of the modernist' are not yet attuned to
> 'split half notes.'
> "'Perhaps 100 years from now,' said Mr. Neuer, 'hearing will
> be developed to a point where people of this country will
> get pleasure out of such fine nuances.'"
>
> http://www.geocities.com/threesixesinarow/19360208nytogolevets17.pdf
>

🔗monz <monz@tonalsoft.com>

Hi Tom,

I haven't really been following this thread so well,
but this post piqued my interest.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Dent" <stringph@...> wrote:

> Generally speaking, at least after the medieval period,
> meantone is 'Western' while pythagorean is 'Eastern'.
> Before meantone almost everything was pythagorean.

That's true for 'Western' music beginning sometime
between the German migrations c.470 and the Carolingian
era c.800. Isolated examples such as Isodore of Seville,
Cassiodorus, and Martianus Capella aside, the theorists
didn't describe a wholly pythagorean system until scholars
put into service by Charlemagne started writing about it.

Before that, the ancient Greeks and Graeco-Romans
recognized many other rational and irrational tunings
along with pythagorean. More on this below ...

> And some late medieval theorists, Ugolino I think,
> call for doubled accidentals, leading to precisely
> a 17-note octave where the alternative pitches do
> duty as a just fifth (perfectio) and a schismatic
> third (coloratio) respectively.

The 5th Treatise of the Berkeley manuscript (1375)
describes what is apparently an equal-temperament
in which it is clearly stated that the whole-tone
is divided into 3 parts. This may mean either 17-edo
or 19-edo, and it is not entirely clear from the
manuscript which tuning is meant. You'll have to
buy the book to get the 5th Treatise, but the
introductory commentary and 1st Treatise are here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=leJ1ckXPi18C&dq=&pg=PP1&ots=K6dOoR8umd&sig=mc-Zs0iK-LZknr8yAgmZoDPl9GM&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fq%3Dberkeley%2Bmanuscript%26ie%3Dutf-8%26oe%3Dutf-8%26aq%3Dt%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26client%3Dfirefox-a&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title

Also, Marchetto of Padua, in his _Lucidarium_ (1318)
gives an intriguing description of division of the
whole-tone into 5 "dieses" which compose 3 sizes of
semitones. There have been many attempts at explaining
exactly what Marchetto meant, including several by me
(and in fact i've just added some new ones on my webpage
in the past day):

http://tonalsoft.com/monzo/marchetto/marchetto.aspx

I plan to post more here about my latest ideas on
Marchetto's tuning, after i clean up the webpage.
But since you mentioned it ...

My newest discovery is that if Marchetto examined the
whole-tone between A and B in terms of the ancient
descriptions of the PIS -- that is, with a Bb between
them -- and also with an A# above the Bb, in accordance
with standard pythagorean tuning, the pythagorean
string-length proportions of A:Bb:A#:B very closely
resemble 81:77:76:72, which can be found by means of
an arithmetic 9-part division of the 9:8 ratio
(81:80:79:78:77:76:75:74:73:72).

If Marchetto's 5 diesis are composed of the 9 parts
as follows: 81:79, 79:77, 77:76, 76:74, 74:72, then
his small "enharmonic-semitone" (i.e., limma) is A:Bb
= 81:77 = ~87.7 cents or A#:B = 76:72 = ~93.6 cents, and
the larger "diatonic-semitone" (i.e., apotome) is A:A#
= 81:76 = ~110.3 cents or Bb:B = 77:72 = ~116.2 cents.

Then Marchetto also had the very large "chromatic-semitone".
I'm going to investigate my latest ideas on this further
before making any comment on that, but i'm just noting here
that there was still another variety of semitone in his
theory.

> Would the resulting keyboard also have some
> relation to the enharmonic genus?...

One thing that's interesting is that the ancient Greek
theorists always venerate the enharmonic genus above
the others, but whereas they provide tuning-by-concords
descriptions which result in pythagorean tuning for
both the diatonic and chromatic genera, they never
specify the enharmonic diesis ('quarter-tone' according
to Aristoxenos and his followers) by pythagorean
methods. Generally, they find some way to create an
arithmetic or geometric mean between the _pyknon_
notes.

The reason for this is somewhat obvious: to find the
quarter-tones using tuning-by-concords, the pythagorean
chain would have to be extended to 3^24 or 3^-29.
No ancient source that i know of ever specified that.
The ancient Indian system with its series of 22 4ths
and 5ths is the closest i know of to that, but it notably
stops short of finding quarter-tones.

-monz
http://tonalsoft.com
Tonescape microtonal music software

Microtones from old New York Times

🔗threesixesinarow <CACCOLA@NET1PLUS.COM>

🔗Ozan Yarman <ozanyarman@ozanyarman.com>

🔗Andreas Sparschuh <a_sparschuh@yahoo.com>

🔗threesixesinarow <CACCOLA@NET1PLUS.COM>

🔗Andreas Sparschuh <a_sparschuh@yahoo.com>

🔗Tom Dent <stringph@gmail.com>

🔗monz <monz@tonalsoft.com>

🔗threesixesinarow <CACCOLA@NET1PLUS.COM>

🔗threesixesinarow <CACCOLA@NET1PLUS.COM>