Meantone revival

Daniel Wolf wrote,

>By all means, let's keep up the meantone revival. And not only for
>historical repertoire but for new compositions as well.

If we need to choose a single tuning for this "revival", I'd like to
suggest 31-tET. The advantages of a closed system proved strong enough
to elevate 12-tET to the only tuning our culture has really known for
150 years. Now that Fokker's organ, Catler's guitar, and the advent of
electronics have proven the practicability of a 31-tone system, we
have the opportunity to institute an alternative which can both
redress the damage that has been done to the performance of 16th-18th
century music, and open the floodgates for future possibilities
involving 7-11-limit harmonies, Arabian scales, microtonal effects,
etc. etc. The difference, to my ears, between any of the "optimal"
meantone temperaments and 31-tET in the historical repertoire is
negligible.

From: Paul Erlich <PERLICH@ACADIAN-ASSET.COM>
> If we need to choose a single tuning for this "revival", I'd like to
> suggest 31-tET.
....
> The difference, to my ears, between any of the "optimal"
> meantone temperaments and 31-tET in the historical repertoire is
> negligible.
>

If I wanted unlimited transposition 31tet would indeed be tempting, but I go
with Douglas Leedy on the subject of temperament and modulation. Leedy said
"invention becomes the mother of necessity... once you have the possibility
of modulating then you have to modulate."

I find that the 31tet major thirds are audibly tempered from just. If you're
working in any of the typical midi set ups, this may be a negligible
difference, but I like very accurate synthesis(DSP or Rayna) and "real"
instruments and there I prefer to have at least one interval (in addition to
the octave) just.

31-tone was intended by Daniel Adriaan Fokker to do exactly what Paul
suggests. It hasn't worked out.

In Holland, the 31-tone ET movement has just about died out. Young people
were never brought in.

Jon Catler long left 31-TET for JI believing there is no need for temperament
with advanced JI. Unlike Werckmeister, you can ask him yourselves about his
change of views.

On the other hand I believe 31-TET has much charm and its own particular
territory to plumb. With any instrument outside of keyboards (even guitars)
notes can be humored to JI when wanted. It's just one more good reason to
avoid doubling the thirds in chords.

The flat fifth (696 cents) is quite beautiful (clearly outlined in the
opening bass riff played by Brad Catler in "Hey Sailor") and unmistakable in
the continuum of sensible intervals. It helps me understand the
Harrison/Lucy Pi ideas for tuning. The 696 cent fifth sounds "natural"
enough to me, though it is not of nature. Art is "artificial" it would seem.

The real advantages surround the availability of the 7th harmonic in 31-tone.

Johnny Reinhard
AFMM

[Paul Erlich, TD 547.23:]
>Daniel Wolf wrote,
>>By all means, let's keep up the meantone revival. And not only for
>>historical repertoire but for new compositions as well.

>If we need to choose a single tuning for this "revival", I'd like to
>suggest 31-tET. The advantages of a closed system proved strong enough
>to elevate 12-tET to the only tuning our culture has really known for
>150 years. Now that Fokker's organ, Catler's guitar, and the advent of
>electronics have proven the practicability of a 31-tone system, we
>have the opportunity to institute an alternative which can both
>redress the damage that has been done to the performance of 16th-18th
>century music, and open the floodgates for future possibilities
>involving 7-11-limit harmonies, Arabian scales, microtonal effects,
>etc. etc. The difference, to my ears, between any of the "optimal"
>meantone temperaments and 31-tET in the historical repertoire is
>negligible.

I agree that 31-tET makes for an excellent closed meantone system (the
major thirds, at 387.1 cents, are surely close enough to perfect for the
most critical listener), but, to my ears, the fifths thus formed (696.8
cents) are painfully flat. As long as we're taking the trouble to break
out of a 12-note system, why not go JI? I understand the reluctance of
many list members (both visceral and intellectual) to take JI up to
7-limit, particularly with music of the past, but I've never heard
anybody claim that compromised 3:2's add any musical value to a piece.
Why have them, when we no longer have to?

JdL

[Paul Erlich:]
>The difference, to my ears, between any of the "optimal" meantone
temperaments and 31-tET in the historical repertoire is negligible.

[Daniel Wolf:]
>I find that the 31tet major thirds are audibly tempered from just.

[Johnny Reinhard:]
>The flat fifth (696 cents) is quite beautiful (clearly outlined in
the opening bass riff played by Brad Catler in "Hey Sailor") and
unmistakable in the continuum of sensible intervals.

[John A. deLaubenfels:]
>I agree that 31-tET makes for an excellent closed meantone system
(the major thirds, at 387.1 cents, are surely close enough to perfect
for the most critical listener), but, to my ears, the fifths thus
formed (696.8 cents) are painfully flat.

Fascinating! These were the first three posts I read this morning, and
(aside from a loose agreement that perhaps at that point JI would be a
better leap to take) it's striking how different these comments and
observations are from each other...

I'm not sure I understand Daniel Wolf's observation that:

"If you're working in any of the typical midi set ups, this may be a
negligible difference, but I like very accurate synthesis(DSP or
Rayna) and "real" instruments"

though. As it would seem to me that the slightly less than 1�
theoretical error of the 31-tET major thirds would often be lost in
naturally occurring performance errors and say instrument design
(guitars for instance would tend to have more than a few +/- fret
placement errors that would eclipse a less than 1� range precision
demand). Maybe Daniel means something more specified to his own music?
Anyway, I find this kind of diversity of intonational observation to
be very interesting, and line up very well with my own experiences...
but I don't ever recall seeing it so strikingly emphasized here at the
TD before.

Dan

Amazing how this post of mine took 4 days to make it to the list. What's
going on?

Johnny Reinhard wrote,

>The flat fifth (696 cents)

696.8 cents, a good enough fifth for most purposes.

Daniel Wolf wrote,

>Leedy said
>"invention becomes the mother of necessity... once you have the possibility
>of modulating then you have to modulate."

My understanding of the history of Western music is that unlimited
modulation was felt so strongly to be a necessity by the leading composers
that all other considerations in tuning, though valued very highly, became
subservient. Only very reluctantly did musicians give up the near-just
thirds of meantone as they gave in to the necessities of performing
Beethoven and the like on 12-pitch instruments.

John deLaubenfels wrote,

>I agree that 31-tET makes for an excellent closed meantone system (the
>major thirds, at 387.1 cents, are surely close enough to perfect for the
>most critical listener), but, to my ears, the fifths thus formed (696.8
>cents) are painfully flat. As long as we're taking the trouble to break
>out of a 12-note system, why not go JI? I understand the reluctance of
>many list members (both visceral and intellectual) to take JI up to
>7-limit, particularly with music of the past, but I've never heard
>anybody claim that compromised 3:2's add any musical value to a piece.
>Why have them, when we no longer have to?

As long as you mean _adaptive_ JI (as I know you do), I totally agree. I
simply meant that, as a single, closed tuning system for fixed-pitch
instruments that both revives the intended tuning for three centuries of
music and provides stunning new possibilities, 31-equal is an excellent
choice. Even for a repertoire of a few simple pieces, a set of adaptive JI
renditions may involve far more than 31 distinct pitches.

Dan!
Well I think Leedys (who I cannot say i enough good!) comment is a bit
exagerrated. It one has only apples and someone offers you an orange yes, most
of us will take it! But that doesn't mean we were not wishing we had one in the
first place, or anything other than another darn apple. As you know , The
ancient greeks modulated despite there musically system not being particularly
modulation friendly. It has its musical use and satisfies a real musical
desire. Ptolemy titled some chapters "How the modulations of attunement
resemble those of souls in crises of life" also "That the modulations between
tonoi correspond to the lateral movement of the stars". . The impulse to
modulate changed the music, not the other way around. What atonality did was
end modulation (transposition being something different) or at least postpone
it.The early minimalist avoided it. Modulation had become a dirty word. It has
become "anti-spiritial" or "anti-healing" as if changing keys would upset the
balance of the "Chakras". Frankly the changing of keys might "resemble those of
souls in crises of life", and maybe we can only heal these crises by the
confrontation of the problem. Orpheus likewise would take one into the
underworld and out safely. The transendentalist raising above and away (via
some economic cushion) by the offering of musical escapes resembles to me just
another form of suppression. I think this has regretably become the function of
music at large. It is why people don't listen to "harsh" music when they can
shelter and block out the world with pleasantness. I for one cannot think of
another time where the crises facing us from within have not been so great.
Also we live in an world where the the stars change quicker than before.
Modulation is part of musicial magic!
Daniel Wolf wrote:

>
> If I wanted unlimited transposition 31tet would indeed be tempting, but I go
> with Douglas Leedy on the subject of temperament and modulation. Leedy said
> "invention becomes the mother of necessity... once you have the possibility
> of modulating then you have to modulate."
>
> I find that the 31tet major thirds are audibly tempered from just. If you're
> working in any of the typical midi set ups, this may be a negligible
> difference, but I like very accurate synthesis(DSP or Rayna) and "real"
> instruments and there I prefer to have at least one interval (in addition to
> the octave) just.

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
www.anaphoria.com

Kraig Grady wrote,

>The impulse to modulate changed the music, not the other way around.

Wow, Kraig, you were the last person I expected to agree with me on this
point, and yet you did. Clearly modulation was the "key" (NPI) to the
development of musical form in common-practice art music, and so had a
predominant influence in the evolution of its tuning. Why would Leedy think
otherwise?

Kraig!

Modulation for the Greeks (or for Ervin Wilson) has very little to do with what modulation became in the 19th century: an imperative for continuous, restless transposition. And it was that 19th century form of modulation that Leedy was indicting. (Klarenz Barlo parodies this, grandly, in his symphonic masterpiece "Orchidae Ordinariae or the 12th Root of Truth", where a grand piano solo modulates up a half step for a Vegas/Nashville/Indian-Film-Music finale).

You wrote:

"What atonality did was end modulation (transposition being something different) or at least postpone it.The early minimalist avoided it."

In twelve-tone technique, transposition is a fundamental form of modulation, by transposing particular tri-, tetra- or hexachords, one is able to recombine them in order to get varied row orders. I could hardly imagine another musical technique so heavily invested in continuous modulation.

Douglas Leedy, like his UCB classmates Young and Riley, rejected this imperative and turned to a deep study of early music and Karnatic vocal music, which became the basis of his own variant of the minimal tradition. In going back to historical tunings, he rediscovered a static alternative to the restlessness of equal temperament. (Much as Young and Riley did from the combination of similar jazz backgrounds, hearing a static dimension in Webern's repetition of PCs at fixed registers, and from the study of Hindustani music).

Daniel Wolf

Dan!
I was neither asking return to 19th century practice nor to
temperment. As you know, my use of modulation has never been along these
lines and am surprised that you would think that this is what i meant.
Wilson on the other hand has always based his modulations upon this
common period practice and it is remarkable how innovative his work is
venturing along such conservative lines. The Purvi and Marwa Modulation
being one of few examples where scales where not modulated in sequence
outside your basic cycle of fifths. These methods though are variations
on this tradition, not a break.Only the CPS structures venture into
completely new ways of modulating. Only wish that there is natural (
maybe archetypical might be a better word) human tendency for humans
being to modulate. As you know Indonesian Gamelan also Modulates. I do
not hear tranposition of rows being the same thing as modulation. Nor do
i think anyone else did. that professors can point to it in the score
means little to what we hear. Such practices by the institutions had
lead to a situation where their judgements of music are no longer
concidered
by the populus or even most of musicans the practicing western musical
world.

Daniel Wolf wrote:

> From: "Daniel Wolf" <djwolf@snafu.de>
> Kraig! Modulation for the Greeks (or for Ervin Wilson) has very
> little to do with what modulation became in the 19th century: And it
> was that 19th century form of modulation that Leedy was indicting.
> (Klarenz Barlo parodies this, grandly, in his symphonic masterpiece
> "Orchidae Ordinariae or the 12th Root of Truth", where a grand piano
> solo modulates up a half step for a Vegas/Nashville/Indian-Film-Music
> finale). You wrote: "What atonality did was end modulation
> (transposition being something different) or at least postpone it.The
> early minimalist avoided it." In twelve-tone technique, transposition
> is a fundamental form of modulation, by transposing particular tri-,
> tetra- or hexachords, one is able to recombine them in order to get
> varied row orders. I could hardly imagine another musical technique so
> heavily invested in continuous modulation. Daniel Wolf
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
www.anaphoria.com

On Fri, 25 Feb 2000 07:58:02 -0700, "John A. deLaubenfels"
<jadl@idcomm.com> wrote:

>I agree that 31-tET makes for an excellent closed meantone system (the
>major thirds, at 387.1 cents, are surely close enough to perfect for the
>most critical listener), but, to my ears, the fifths thus formed (696.8
>cents) are painfully flat. As long as we're taking the trouble to break
>out of a 12-note system, why not go JI?

JI can be cumbersome to use, and simpler scales may sound almost as good.
(Personally, I think near approximations to JI sound better than pure JI
due to the mild beating effects.)

> I understand the reluctance of
>many list members (both visceral and intellectual) to take JI up to
>7-limit, particularly with music of the past, but I've never heard
>anybody claim that compromised 3:2's add any musical value to a piece.
>Why have them, when we no longer have to?

Meantone fifths *can* be ugly, with a particular timbre and register. But a
certain amount of beating can be pleasant, and fifths in low registers
don't sound that bad. Non-adaptive JI is stuck with the syntonic comma
problem, which meantone avoids. But even in the cases when I'm willing to
live with the syntonic comma, I'd prefer a schismatic temperament to strict
5-limit JI. In the case of 7-limit JI, distributing the 224:225 septimal
kleisma results in a more economical scale that's within 2 cents of JI
(Carl Lumma's scale). For higher limits, 72-TET is a pretty good
approximation, and even 41-TET isn't bad.

--
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