Re: Dear Jon Szanto

In a message dated 1/6/00 4:15:07 AM Eastern Standard Time, jszanto@adnc.com
writes:

<< And for godsake, Johnny: the meaning of the word microtone, like so many
billions of words, can be pretty well ascertained by looking at it's parts.
It would seem that every common use of the prefix "micro-" refers to small,
from the Greek mikros. After so much time spent researching and performing,
you too are weakening your work by barking up this ridiculous tree.
>>

Though I don't approve of your threatening to leave the list all the time, I
do want others on the list to contribute. To that end, intimidation is the
wrong end by you or any other. To characterize another's deep held beliefs
as "ridiculous" is demeaning and unnecessary. One's lifetime achievements
are not jeopardized by the serious examination of any term on this list.
Unless you want to be Marpurg to my Kirnberger...

Re: a Greek derivation of mikro: we do not speak Greek. My grandfather was
Greek by it has not influenced my life much since I never had the opportunity
to see him as died before I was born. Most of the musical terms used from
ancient Greece have totally different meanings today (e.g. enharmonic).
Besides, "micro" of microphone takes an already audible voice and raises its
amplitude so that there is are meaning to a "micro" that actually increases
sound level. In a similar way, one might define microtonality as a means to
enlarge the tonal vocabulary.

Re: "microtone" - though Ezra Sims did aid the Harvard Dictionary early on
with a definition of "an interval smaller than a semitone" while he was a
librarian at Harvard, Mark Lindley expanded upon the definition in the New
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians in his article "microtone." It
begins with the early Sims definition, but acknowledges that "others extend
it to all music with intervals markedly different from the (logarithmic) 12th
part of the octave and its multiples, including such scales with fewer than
12 pitches as are used for example in Southeast Asia (Lindley 1980:279)

Ates Orga in an article entitled "Alois Haba and Microtonality" wrote that
during the 19th century "folklorists were well aware of the microtonal
structures of traditional music." (Orga 1968:541). Orga must be wrong to
you, for there are no intervals smaller than a semitone in the folk music
being discussed. It is the larger intervals that are "maligned."

There are others on this list who hear and understand music similarly to the
way I do. I recall Danlee Mitchell declared himself "not a microtonalist" in
one of Jonathan Glasier's Interval roundtables, and maybe you do not consider
yourself as one. As director of the American Festival of Microtonal Music
since 1981, it is only natural to object to a "small-minded" definition of
"microtonal" so that it truly reflects the power that the music has,
distinguished primarily by its intonational variations.

Please, Jon, don't evoke the deity for fear of my damaging my own career. I
have always taken risks for the sake of Art.

Johnny Reinhard
AFMM