Re: Terms of Endearment

I do not think anything is broke. As the "English horn" is neither English
nor a horn (except perhaps in a Jazz terminology, tenuous at best), it is the
name for a concept of sound produced by a concept of instrument which no one
on this list would likely question.

Music is ineffable, or so I have always been told and have taught. If we, as
musicians, see value in continuing certain terminology, there may be good
reason. Linear literalness has value, too, and it may be able to co-occur,
just as different tunings share in our present musical universe.

Maybe there is a subconscious yearning for some of us to have a "unified
field theory" for the little critters. It's the whole reason that Husserl
developed phenomenology: he want to apply mathematical rigor to the process
of description. It does bring one closer, but it does not complete anything.
The description always continue to unravel.

I suggest it is more harmful to be intolerant to the distinctive groupings of
terminology as have been expressed on this list, than it is to attempt to
codify absolutely. There is no perfection in music as any musician knows.

Anyway, it is just the _sounds_ that the audience hears. You all might try
that perspective more often as the first perspective tied to the intellect.

If on a cross-cultural level, in search of the just-out-of-reach universals,
I can conceive of all music as microtonal, who is anyone to tell me
otherwise? If I hear intervals others don't hear, could I be convinced
otherwise?

Logic doesn't work here, neither would force, nor persistence. The genie is
out of the bottle and you can't put it back in.

Johnny Reinhard
AFMM