Squiggles

I always enjoy the squiggle debate, and I do have a question or two...ok, if the squigs are NOT a tuning, what are they? Was Bach just aimlessly doodling? Did he have squiggles on any of his other works, or was the WTC the only one? Was he a known squiggler? And, it seems to me to be a mighty interesting coincidence that random squiggles on a piece of paper could be converted into tuning info in the first place. It's also interesting that a brilliant musician like Egarr would be convinced enough to record with his axe tuned with them. And, yes, I lean towards the belief that Bach did play a little game here, and used the squigs for tuning info...it seems like just the sort of thing he would do. Of course, as always, Bach did not say, so it's all speculation...but fascinating nonetheless...Hstick myspace.com/microstick

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, <microstick@...> wrote:
>
> I always enjoy the squiggle debate, and I do have a
> question or two...ok, if the squigs are NOT a tuning, what
> are they?

Some of the more historically-informed members can fill
us in here, but I believe such cover art was common at
the time.

>Was Bach just aimlessly doodling? Did he have squiggles
>on any of his other works, or was the WTC the only one?
>Was he a known squiggler? And, it seems to me to be a
>mighty interesting coincidence that random squiggles on
>a piece of paper could be converted into tuning info in
>the first place.

The problem is, it can be converted into several different
tunings, depending on how you look at it. I have at least
three different Scala files that claim to derive from the
squiggles.

>It's also interesting that a brilliant musician like
>Egarr would be convinced enough to record with his axe
>tuned with them.

That's true. However, musicians don't always go deeply
into tuning theory issues.

>And, yes, I lean towards the belief that Bach did play a
>little game here, and used the squigs for tuning info...
>it seems like just the sort of thing he would do.

Yes, it does at that. And I must admit the squiggles
look pretty suspicious, even to me. But (I may have
posted this here before) consider Runamo...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runamo

Cracks in this famous road had generations of scholars
and kings thinking they were a runic inscription.

-Carl

Greetings,

Without wishing to wade in beyond my depth, the possibility of encrypted information being expressed visually and found in a book of this era must be considered because of tendencies of thinking at the time.

For example, and it is only one of many possible examples, in the New Science of Giambattista Vico (third edition 1744), the author provides a detailed a lengthy 'explanation' of the engraving used as the frontispiece. It is complex and significantly symbolic and very relevant to the subsequent theories of the book.

So here is an example of a picture being used to provide information about an intellectual subject. I would say various modern scholars are aware of the device and investigate the sources.

Further examples can be found, and a large group of speculators discuss the various engravings used in books of Freemasonry or related subjects (say Francis Bacon's New Atlantis). Long discussions of the 'meaning' of the picture of Shakespeare in the first Folio and its encrypted message on the 'true' authorship' can be found the the anti-Stratford corpus (see Ogburn, most notably) but that's more recent, of course. But they take the pictures seriously and as having meaning.

One famous book has woodcuts intended to reveal the whole process of alchemy. Attended by some text (and music) the woodcuts are crucial.

So, it is not beyond the ethos of the time to have a diagram that has information.

However, I don not know that Bach used any similar diagram anywhere else. But remember, all too many of his original manuscripts are lost or damaged (does Volume Two have its title page?)

Bach published numerous of his works. Has anyone examined the bindings of those works in the original?

On the contra side and this is VERY important, CPE Bach was adamant that his father was opposed to idle theoretical speculation. He further said, he and his father were anti-Rameau (which would mean anti EQ.)

But, does being opposed to idle speculation mean that he wouldn't have had a tuning method? Hardly.

On the other hand, the squiggles could be just that -- more information in the form of other examples (from Bach or other composers -- perhaps from his circle) would be a dream come true for this suggestion.

All best wishes,

Gordon Rumson

On 11-Sep-07, at 10:31 AM, <microstick@msn.com> <microstick@msn.com> wrote:

> I always enjoy the squiggle debate, and I do have a question or > two...ok, if the squigs are NOT a tuning, what are they? Was Bach > just aimlessly doodling? Did he have squiggles on any of his other > works, or was the WTC the only one? Was he a known squiggler? And, > it seems to me to be a mighty interesting coincidence that random > squiggles on a piece of paper could be converted into tuning info > in the first place. It's also interesting that a brilliant musician > like Egarr would be convinced enough to record with his axe tuned > with them. And, yes, I lean towards the belief that Bach did play a > little game here, and used the squigs for tuning info...it seems > like just the sort of thing he would do. Of course, as always, Bach > did not say, so it's all speculation...but fascinating > nonetheless...Hstick myspace.com/microstick
>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, <microstick@...> wrote:
>
> I always enjoy the squiggle debate, and I do have a question or
two...ok, if the squigs are NOT a tuning, what are they?

What are they? A parody of the naive hand-written imitation of
engraved 'cover art', made by a somewhat unoriginal Dresden organist
called Suppig in the same year (1722), to decorate his pantonal
composition and treatise on the 31-note scale.

http://www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg.de/~tdent/repository.html

As noted by Peter Williams in his new book, the resemblances are too
close to ignore. One easy explanation - not involving a complicated,
technical and highly ambiguous hypothesis - is that Bach was having a
joke on Suppig. The unusual nature of the title page can then be fully
explained without imagining connections between Bach's squiggles and
any tuning practice - let alone imagining that Bach had one
super-special tuning above all others...

> And, it seems to me to be a mighty interesting coincidence that
> random squiggles on a piece of paper could be converted into tuning
> info in the first place.

Depends on your definition of 'info'.

Since a dozen or two *different* tunings have resulted, in a strictly
information-theoretical sense, most 'info' has been supplied by the
'interpreters', rather than by Bach. The more ambiguous a message is,
the more possible different decodings there are, the less its
information content. (Bach could have been much more unambiguous, if
he had been intent on communicating one specific tuning!)

Any row or circle of about twelve things can be, with enough
determined ingenuity, interpreted as a tuning recipe - or indeed many
different ones. I don't think it is much of a coincidence that there
are about 12 squiggles - depending on how you decide to count! - a
result of the size of paper and typical hand/finger motions. The rest
of the 'information' is down to the analytical and synthetic efforts
of various late 20th century and early 21st century mathematicians.

> used the squigs for tuning info...

In the Bach household, who would need, or could possibly use, such
'info'? Who could Bach possibly have been trying to communicate with?
The work was not published by Bach or any of his family or pupils. On
the contrary, it was copied passed from hand to hand between
musicians. But none of the copies have any squiggles that remotely
resemble these. Why not - if they contained useful 'info'?

The basic problem is that, historically, good tuning (in whatever
musical tradition) could not have been about applying a magic formula;
it required first and last using your ears in a particular and very
sophisticated way, which cannot be communicated by formulae or books,
only learnt by long listening experience.

People don't realise how prejudiced they are by using electronic aids
that produce any number of cents they want, or calculate any ratio
they feel like investigating, at the touch of a button. Whereas I
would happily bet that none of the Bach family needed so much as a
sheet of paper, let alone any kind of arithmetic, to be able to set a
temperament. Tuning was (and is!) how you turn the pegs and what you
listen for.

You can't communicate the sound of (say) a third a bit narrower or
wider than 12-ET except by actually tuning it. The only possible
practical way anyone could learn from Bach what the thirds should
sound like was by listening directly. In this regard diagrams and
formulae which were supposed to tell you the chain of fifths - without
including any checks - were both useless and redundant. All competent
aural tuning recipes include multiple checks of major thirds - but the
squiggles don't tell you to check at all, let alone what to check for.

Having a diagram with such 'tuning info' is no use to someone who
doesn't already have extensive, strictly acoustic, experience of what
does or doesn't give good results (by whoever's standards). But if
Bach could already tune his harpsichord to his own taste by ear, he
had no need of 'tuning info'. If you were one of Bach's pupils, you
couldn't make use of the 'info' until you had already been taught a
hell of a lot about tuning by ear by direct personal tuition. Until,
in fact, you were able to tune a functionally good approximation to
12-ET by ear. (The point is that most 'squiggle' tunings require 1/6
and 1/12 comma divisions to be fairly accurate... but without giving
any way to check them.)

But if you were good enough to diagnose by ear and reproduce the
tempering of the fifths and thirds that Bach himself used, your
technique was already at the point where you DIDN'T NEED cryptic
diagrams telling you what to do.

In short, the supposedly encoded tuning recipe is too difficult to
decode and apply for anyone who doesn't already have enough knowledge
and experience to render it redundant.

In order to 'decode' it to his own taste and satisfaction, for
example, Brad already had to have been familiar with the works of
Neidhardt (mostly those published after 1722), and the theoretical
idea of dividing the Pythagorean comma into 6 or 12, and the technique
for applying such things to an instrument. (Nowadays he likes to say
one can just do it by aural guesswork - having the advantage of
already knowing what the result should be!)
Well, if someone had known all of that, they can invent and apply
dozens of good Bach temperaments, limited only by their imagination,
they don't need any squiggles.

Sparschuh is a professional mathematician, Zapf was a financial
analyst, Brad had already spent hundreds of man-hours on mathematical
analysis of theoretical temperaments, and so on. These people are not
normal musicians - they're not even normal keyboard players. (None of
us are, either!) It took possibly the most mathematically
sophisticated, not to say obsessed, keyboard experts in the world, to
even get started on the idea of 'tuning squiggles'. Prior to that, and
even after, the normal musicians said, if they said anything: 'who
cares, it's a decoration'; played their instruments tuned in the usual
way; and were quite happy!

~~~T~~~

> two...ok, if the squigs are NOT a tuning, what are they?
>
> What are they? A parody of the naive hand-written imitation of
> engraved 'cover art', made by a somewhat unoriginal Dresden
> organist called Suppig in the same year (1722), to decorate
> his pantonal composition and treatise on the 31-note scale.
>
> http://www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg.de/~tdent/repository.html
>
> As noted by Peter Williams in his new book, the resemblances
> are too close to ignore. One easy explanation - not involving
> a complicated, technical and highly ambiguous hypothesis - is
> that Bach was having a joke on Suppig. The unusual nature of
> the title page can then be fully explained without imagining
> connections between Bach's squiggles and any tuning practice -
> let alone imagining that Bach had one super-special tuning
> above all others...

That's very helpful info. I'd heard Andreas talk about
this before, but the photos really drive the point home.
Thanks Tom!

>Who could Bach possibly have been trying to communicate with?

In fairness, Bach did do things like publishing bits
of the Musical Offering as riddle canons.

> The work was not published by Bach or any of his family
> or pupils. On the contrary, it was copied passed from hand
> to hand between musicians. But none of the copies have any
> squiggles that remotely resemble these.

Do you have any citations on the history of the publication
of the WTC?

> Sparschuh is a professional mathematician, Zapf was a financial
> analyst, Brad had already spent hundreds of man-hours on
> mathematical analysis of theoretical temperaments, and so on.
> These people are not normal musicians - they're not even normal
> keyboard players. (None of us are, either!) It took possibly
> the most mathematically sophisticated, not to say obsessed,
> keyboard experts in the world, to even get started on the idea
> of 'tuning squiggles'. Prior to that, and even after, the normal
> musicians said, if they said anything: 'who cares, it's a
> decoration'; played their instruments tuned in the usual way;
> and were quite happy!

Indeed.

-Carl

I for one think the whole anti-squiggles position boils down to ad hominem attacks based on professional jealousy, it seems, and very few rational arguments based on probability.

I feel that the anti-squiggle argument that the 'squiggles' can be interpreted upside-down or right-side-up, and that more than one interpretation can be had is a bad red herring---not *every* such diagram can be interpreted as a tuning system of 12 notes. I find it *highly* improbable that the squiggles just so happen to, when interpreted, give fifth sizes that correspond to a typical well-temperament scheme, all the correct keys being closer to just thirds near C. The odds that there isn't some kind of embedded diagram seem enormously low. Add the fact that Bach *was* writing a work based on the idea of 'well temperament', and the odds are even smaller that there is no pattern.

Bach *did* in every other respect have a puzzle-like mind, enjoying forms and symmetry, etc....it seems consistant that he would enjoy the irony of such a squiggle glyph embedding a bearing plan.

Now, OTOH, I think it's a big leap to say for certain that Brad Lehman's can be the only way to interpret, or Andreas', etc.

I also find this argument really, really flawed:
> > Sparschuh is a professional mathematician, Zapf was a financial
> > analyst, Brad had already spent hundreds of man-hours on
> > mathematical analysis of theoretical temperaments, and so on.
> > These people are not normal musicians - they're not even normal
> > keyboard players. (None of us are, either!) It took possibly
> > the most mathematically sophisticated, not to say obsessed,
> > keyboard experts in the world, to even get started on the idea
> > of 'tuning squiggles'. Prior to that, and even after, the normal
> > musicians said, if they said anything: 'who cares, it's a
> > decoration'; played their instruments tuned in the usual way;
> > and were quite happy!
> What is a 'normal musician'?----and what makes you think Bach was a normal musician?! Certainly, one of the great geniuses of Western music's ways shouldn't be compared with the average Kapellmeister.

Also, this argument offers nothing enlightening in the way of the truth of the matter, just an opinion.

I still say the best argument is probability, and I say it's strongly in favor of the squiggles meaning something, based on what I said above.

Well said Aaron.

Oz.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Aaron K. Johnson" <aaron@akjmusic.com>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 12 Eyl�l 2007 �ar�amba 7:12
Subject: Re: [tuning] Re: Squiggles, why no earthly use to Bach or any pupil

>
> I for one think the whole anti-squiggles position boils down to ad
> hominem attacks based on professional jealousy, it seems, and very few
> rational arguments based on probability.
>
> I feel that the anti-squiggle argument that the 'squiggles' can be
> interpreted upside-down or right-side-up, and that more than one
> interpretation can be had is a bad red herring---not *every* such
> diagram can be interpreted as a tuning system of 12 notes. I find it
> *highly* improbable that the squiggles just so happen to, when
> interpreted, give fifth sizes that correspond to a typical
> well-temperament scheme, all the correct keys being closer to just
> thirds near C. The odds that there isn't some kind of embedded diagram
> seem enormously low. Add the fact that Bach *was* writing a work based
> on the idea of 'well temperament', and the odds are even smaller that
> there is no pattern.
>
> Bach *did* in every other respect have a puzzle-like mind, enjoying
> forms and symmetry, etc....it seems consistant that he would enjoy the
> irony of such a squiggle glyph embedding a bearing plan.
>
> Now, OTOH, I think it's a big leap to say for certain that Brad Lehman's
> can be the only way to interpret, or Andreas', etc.
>
> I also find this argument really, really flawed:
> > > Sparschuh is a professional mathematician, Zapf was a financial
> > > analyst, Brad had already spent hundreds of man-hours on
> > > mathematical analysis of theoretical temperaments, and so on.
> > > These people are not normal musicians - they're not even normal
> > > keyboard players. (None of us are, either!) It took possibly
> > > the most mathematically sophisticated, not to say obsessed,
> > > keyboard experts in the world, to even get started on the idea
> > > of 'tuning squiggles'. Prior to that, and even after, the normal
> > > musicians said, if they said anything: 'who cares, it's a
> > > decoration'; played their instruments tuned in the usual way;
> > > and were quite happy!
> >
> What is a 'normal musician'?----and what makes you think Bach was a
> normal musician?! Certainly, one of the great geniuses of Western
> music's ways shouldn't be compared with the average Kapellmeister.
>
> Also, this argument offers nothing enlightening in the way of the truth
> of the matter, just an opinion.
>
> I still say the best argument is probability, and I say it's strongly in
> favor of the squiggles meaning something, based on what I said above.
>
>
> You can configure your subscription by sending an empty email to one
> of these addresses (from the address at which you receive the list):
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>
>

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

> The rest
> of the 'information' is down to the analytical and synthetic efforts
> of various late 20th century and early 21st century
> mathematicians...
fully agreed

> Zapf was a financial
> analyst,....
but then he founded his own "clavichord-newsgroup"
http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/QCbpRqngoYFDviL7zQAcZkiD0CpI4XoLT1yRVxx0b0YVEoJCDUCLLlw4wi7NySh8M2wiR9JCz8JC0pEZ28H1ZFNOCLMwDg/Squiggled-on-Bach/The%20Beginning%20of%20the%20Discussion.pdf

Musical activities:
http://www.haendel-with-care.de/englisch/wir.html
" Michael Zapf Harpischord
Michael Zapf studied the harpsichord, clavichord, fortepiano and piano
at Folkwang Hochschule in Essen/Duisburg with Siegbert Rampe and at
the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt/Main with
Harald Hoeren. He published in music magazines like "Concerto", "Musik
und Kirche" and "Clavichord International" and attended master classes
with Colin Tilney and Kenneth Gilbert."

Here his reinterpretation of the loops:
http://keithbriggs.info/bach-wtc.html
'discoverd' in 2003.
Somebody asked about two-faced about that:
"Why hasn't that happened before ?"

maybe in order to prevent such catastrophes alike:
http://www.moonglow.net/seismo/data.html
"...earthquakes for comparison with the other events, even though they
happened before I had a seismometer.....
Now the Lehman responds much better to higher frequencies and
consequently records more local quakes. From the above chart..."
that plots the impacts of detuned continents,
not to mention harpsichords when out of tune
about in compareable interval - distances.....
"By 'distance' I mean the maximum distance at which the effects of the
quake can be seen by a standard Lehman-style seismometer in the middle
of a large city (in my case, San Diego). People in quieter locations,
or with better equipment, can expect to do better.
It is important to note that these are approximate positions. Various
factors will combine to cause some quakes outside the circles to be
detected, and others within the circles to be missed... "
http://psn.quake.net/lehmntxt.html
http://www.seismicnet.com/lehman.html
so far about alleged "Rosetta-Stone"d tuning-circles claims.

But joke/hoax aside:
Here an more scholar controversy about that among musicologists:
/bachcantatas/topicId_unknown.html#25111
"A
Bach temperament: a possible Rosetta Stone?" rather
than the one the editors (peer group) allowed to slip
through without criticism since there were other
previous 'Bach' temperaments quite similar to yours
and one or more of them even based upon the very same
Bach squiggles on the WTC1 title page that you have
attempted to interpret? There is nothing here to alert
or warn the reader that this is simply one out of a
number of similar hypotheses that have been propounded
in recent years.

The following claim is made as a fact later on without
any footnote or parenthetic explanation:

"Bach's WTC title-page...is a precise abstraction of
his preferred tuning method, in the form of a pen
stroke with 11 large loops."

This has led directly to other authors like Ross W.
Duffin in his book, "How Equal Temperament Ruined
Harmony" Norton, 2007, p. 148, to claim: "There is no
question that Lehman convincingly solved Bach's
puzzle....In fact, the "sample" irregular temperament
given back in figure 7 is Bach's own "well
temperament" as deciphered by Lehman. This was Bach's
ideal for keyboard music, not ET [Equal Temperament]."

/bachcantatas/topicId_unknown.html#25115

Nevertheless, just the same is up to you:
have a lot of fun in inventing your's own private version(s)
A.S.