Devie - Liberte, Inegalite, Musicalite...

This morning I received a copy of Devie, 'Le Temperament Musical' which if nothing else will help to sharpen my knowledge of French. It is certainly the only book on temperament to refer to the French Revolution as 'sinister' on the back cover. The author seems to be a wholehearted partisan of the ancien regime, even going so far as to endorse a defence of the Indian caste system (which I found quite by chance on turning to a random page of the appendices).

At some point I will probably also get round to seeing what he has to say about tuning ...
~~~T~~~

Hi Tom,

Please keep us posted! ... This is the sort of thing
that i eat up. :)

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

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Dent" <stringph@...> wrote:
>
> This morning I received a copy of Devie, 'Le Temperament Musical'
> <snip>

I've often thought that the revolutionary cry of the Republic

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité sounds like the rallying cry for twelve-tone music

Liberty to play any notes at any time you want
The equality of all tones
Fraternity of all tones - no combination is held more important than any other - the emancipation of dissonance

:-)

Mark

--- In tuning@...m, "Tom Dent" <stringph@...> wrote:
>
> This morning I received a copy of Devie, 'Le Temperament Musical' which if nothing else will help to sharpen my knowledge of French. It is certainly the only book on temperament to refer to the French Revolution as 'sinister' on the back cover. The author seems to be a wholehearted partisan of the ancien regime, even going so far as to endorse a defence of the Indian caste system (which I found quite by chance on turning to a random page of the appendices).
>
> At some point I will probably also get round to seeing what he has to say about tuning ...
> ~~~T~~~
>

Hm, in the case of social engineering we all know well how such
revolutions finished, in blood and gulags, and new hierarchy started.
Besides there's always some natural hierarchy in ability of
individuals, somebody is good in music and lost in sports...

And in music fortunately there always must be some hierarchy, even in
dodecaphony. If not, it would be terribly boring. I would hesitate to
call such construction a "music". No melody, no rhythm, no dynamics,
no expression, no change of timbre, only all-intervallic 12tone
series... BUT - what about all those poor microtones in between? They
must be included... So maybe some linear glissando from 20 to 20
would make it.

So, it looks now like the only polyphonic music which keeps all three
rules is white noise :-)

Daniel Forro

On 14 Aug 2009, at 5:08 PM, Mark wrote:

>
> I've often thought that the revolutionary cry of the Republic
>
> Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité sounds like the rallying cry for
> twelve-tone music
>
> Liberty to play any notes at any time you want
> The equality of all tones
> Fraternity of all tones - no combination is held more important
> than any other - the emancipation of dissonance
>
> :-)
>
> Mark
>