Ben Johnston Colloquium/Concert, Tuning Practices since 1750 Colloquium

Call for Papers

American Innovators Series, 2009

Wright State Department of Music, March 13-14, 2010

Ben Johnston and the American Just Microtonal Tradition

Tuning Practices since 1750

Saturday, March 13

Master Class on Just Intonation by John Schneider

Colloquium #1: Ben Johnston and the American Just Microtonal Tradition

Colloquium #2: Tuning Practices since 1750,  in Honor of Owen
Jorgensen

Sunday, March 14

Lecture/Demonstration of Historical Keyboard Tunings,

Prof. Charles Larkowski

Concert of Music by Partch, Johnston, and Other Microtonalists

 featuring guitarist John Schneider and Wright State University
faculty and students

3 p.m.

The colloquium on Ben Johnston and the American Just Microtonal
Tradition seeks a  wide range of approaches to the music of Ben
Johnston and composers closely associated with him.  Analyses of
specific works, broader discussions of Johnston's career and output,
papers focusing on issues of performance practice, and
historical/philosophical discussions of the American just microtonal
tradition are all welcome areas of focus.

A second colloquium, Tuning Practices since 1750 will be held in honor
of Owen Jorgensen. Questions concerning tuning practices before 1750
have been carefully explored over the last generation of scholarship,
but tuning practices between about 1750 and the advent of recordings
have received little serious scholarly attention. This gap is all the
more puzzling, in that the core repertory of the Classical concert
tradition was created in this period. Owen Jorgensen's two major works
on historical piano tunings are core contributions to research into
tuning practices prior to 1900, but after some two decades his research
has still not been adequately discussed in the academic literature. 

This colloquium will welcome a wide variety of approaches. Possible
topics include:

– the comprehensiveness and reliability of existing research,
including

Jorgensen's

– tuning practices in different instrument families, performance
traditions, and

            geographical regions

– patterns and tendencies of historical change in tuning practices

– ramifications of recent research into historical tunings for
performance

practice, analysis, cognition, and aesthetics

– new avenues of research

Presenters are welcome to take part in both events, but are not required
to do so. All conference participants are invited as guests to the
Sunday afternoon concert and presentations by John Schneider and Prof.
Larkowski.

Papers presented at the Colloquia should in general last no longer than
30 minutes, followed by a 10-minute question/discussion session. When
submitting the paper or abstract, please indicate what media will be
used in the presentation (CD, projector, etc.).  All submissions
should include full contact information for the author and indicate the
author's academic position, if applicable. The deadline for submission
of paper or abstract is Feb. 10, 2010.

Some or all papers from the colloquia will be published in the "American
Innovators" book series.

Submissions can be sent electronically to franklincox@... or
mailed to:

Dr. Franklin Cox

Department of Music, Wright State University

3640 Col. Glenn Highway  Dayton, OH 45424-0001

(937) 767-1165

Extended Descriptions of Colloquia

Colloquium #1: Ben Johnston and the American Just Microtonal Tradition
March 13, 12-5 p.m.

Ben Johnston is widely recognized as one of the most significant
composers in the American just microtonal tradition.  After studying
and performing with the founder of this tradition, Harry Partch,
Johnston dramatically expanded the potentials of Partch's just
intonation system. Many American composers employing just intonation
have focused on the beauty of just intonation, using lower-limit
intervals and a limited group of notes, and have tended to adopt highly
conservative aesthetic justifications for their work. In contrast,
Johnston has throughout his career focused on the innovative potentials
of just intonation: he has developed a sophisticated harmonic system
allowing for an infinite number of notes and range of modulations, he
has explored higher-limit and often highly dissonant intervals, and he
has created a complex and original rhythmic language. This musical
language has been developed not to exemplify mathematical relations, but
rather for expressive ends, by a composer pondering issues of
significance to himself and, he feels, to his society.

Until now, most research on Johnston has focused on explications of his
tuning system, and relatively little in-depth analytical work has been
done on his music. This colloquium in particular welcomes analyses of
Johnston's music, discussions concerning Johnston's aesthetic goals and
the degree of his success in realizing them, investigations of the
relationship of Johnston's system to historical theoretical models (such
as Riemann's O- and U-tonality), speculative papers concerning
potentials for further development of just microtonality, and broader
discussions of the goals and achievements of composers in this
tradition. In addition, Johnston's notational approach opens interesting
avenues for specifying variations in tuning that historical performance
manuals have discussed, but for which no notation previously
existed.  Papers exploring the potential for performing older
repertoire with the notational resources Johnston has developed are
welcome.

Colloquium #2: Tuning Practices since 1750,

in Honor of Owen Jorgensen

 March 13, 6-10 p.m.

One of the mid-20th century's seemingly most self-evident truisms
concerning tuning was that equal temperament represented a high point of
musical progress, a solution simultaneously rational, practical, and
aesthetically pleasing after centuries' worth of dissatisfaction with
earlier temperaments.   This is a core assumption in J. Murray
Barbour's seminal history of tuning practices, is central to the
argument in important essays by the great musicologist Edward Lowinsky,
and was an article of faith for the project of Modernist composers such
as Stravinsky and Schoenberg.

Barbour, among others, assumed that performers since the Renaissance
have commonly used equal temperament. One mark of the influence of such
views is the fact that one still finds in introductory textbooks the
claim that Bach's Well-tempered Clavier was actually intended for equal
temperament, representing a milestone in the centuries-long struggle to
overcome the imperfections of earlier tuning systems. These assumptions
are still strong in our current culture: instrument design is still
focused on removing deviations from equal temperament, professional
musicians widely regard accurate performance in equal temperament as a
mark of professionality, and  generations of new-music performers
have been trained to regard  the assimilation of equal temperament as
a sort of moral imperative,

Over the last generation, some aspects of what one could call the
"Equal-Tempered Project" have begun to dissolve. Both the large volume
of research on Medieval through Baroque tuning practices and the wealth
of outstanding historically informed performances and recordings of this
music have demonstrated the unreliability of equal-tempered biases, 
at least as regards the pre-Classical repertoire.  In contrast to the
situation in the mid-20th century, very few Baroque experts now would
claim that performing Bach with equal temperament indicates a
progressive, morally correct, or historically informed approach. 

This sort of questioning of equal-tempered assumptions has, however, not
yet been widely applied to Classical and Romantic music. The vast
majority of performers consider the choice of equal temperament for this
music to be self-evident, and few who question this premise have solid
historical grounds for their choice.  As one example, when expressive
intonation is discussed, performers almost without exception assume the
heightened leading tones advocated by Casals, whereas the mid-eighteenth
century consensus overwhelmingly favored wide leading tones (diatonic
semitones) and small augmented unisons (chromatic semitones), precisely
the reverse of the current "expressive intonation" consensus.

Owen Jorgensen's two major works on historical piano tunings, Tuning the
Historical Temperaments by Ear  and Tuning, are core contributions to
this debate, but after some two decades have still not been adequately
discussed in the academic literature. Advocates such as Ross Duffin have
treated his research as authoritative and ratified Jorgensen's assertion
that true equal temperament was on a practical level not possible before
the 20th century. Numerous musicologists and expert piano tuners,
however, have questioned the reliability of Jorgensen's research and
conclusions. What is missing is a thorough scholarly exploration of the
issues Jorgensen has raised.   If Jorgensen's research is reliable
regarding the historical tunings of the piano, the central instrument of
the 19th century, then there are important implications for both
understanding and performing the music of this century.  Perhaps the
claims of Schumann and other composers to be able to identify specific
key colors were not simply illusions, as has often been claimed.  
Perhaps the equal-tempered tuning currently used to perform Classical
and Romantic music is not historically accurate.  Most importantly,
perhaps crucial expressive values in this music have been weakened or
eliminated through the use of equal temperament (as has been
demonstrated, for example with regard to the French clavecinistes of the
Baroque period),

The Colloquium on Tuning Practices since 1750 will explore these and
related issues.  Possible topics include:

– the comprehensiveness and reliability of existing research,
including

Jorgensen's

– tuning practices in different instrument families, performance
traditions, and

      geographical regions, including topics such as instrument
design, historical performance manuals,  and traditions of harmonic
practice.

– patterns and tendencies of historical change in tuning practices,
both prior to

      and during the era of recordings.

– ramifications of recent research into historical tunings for
performance

practice, analysis, cognition, and aesthetics

– new avenues of research