Aztec tunings

Hello everyone.

Jonathan Glasier is involved in an art project running from
mid-August to mid-December in Escondido, CA. It includes
3 hexagonal canons (as in Partch's harmonic canons,
or qanun), one each in Tang (Chinese), Tec (as in Aztec),
and Tarub (Arabic) tunings.

He asked me to help out with the Aztec tunings, and
need more information. Does anyone have any data on
pre-Columbian meso-American tuning systems?

Jonathan says that Susan Rawcliffe has studied
pre-Columbian flutes and has some information.
I haven't looked that up yet. Any help is appreciated.

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

Hi everyone, Jonathan here. Monz just signed me onto this group.

-Jonathan Glasier

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <joemonz@...> wrote:
>
> Hello everyone.
>
> Jonathan Glasier is involved in an art project running from
> mid-August to mid-December in Escondido, CA. It includes
> 3 hexagonal canons (as in Partch's harmonic canons,
> or qanun), one each in Tang (Chinese), Tec (as in Aztec),
> and Tarub (Arabic) tunings.
>
> He asked me to help out with the Aztec tunings, and
> need more information. Does anyone have any data on
> pre-Columbian meso-American tuning systems?
>
> Jonathan says that Susan Rawcliffe has studied
> pre-Columbian flutes and has some information.
> I haven't looked that up yet. Any help is appreciated.
>
>
> -monz
> http://tonalsoft.com/tonescape.aspx
> Tonescape microtonal music software
>

It is almost physically painful to think about this subject, because the conquistadores burned whole libraries of native books and only a few pages of precolumbian literature remain. :-( Given the sophistication and extent of other arts and technologies, especially astronomy, I think it must be almost certain that there were once the equivalents of Ptolomy's writings on music.

On the bright side, there are all those clay flutes and ocarinas, and they don't suffer from the problem of the Greek auloi, which is the uncertainty of length due to the perishable mouthpiece. So measuring holes is going to give you a lot of truly solid information and so I imagine that Susan Rawcliffe's work is as good as it gets.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "jonathan.sonicarts" <jonathan.sonicarts@...> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone, Jonathan here. Monz just signed me onto this group.
>
> -Jonathan Glasier
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <joemonz@> wrote:
> >
> > Hello everyone.
> >
> > Jonathan Glasier is involved in an art project running from
> > mid-August to mid-December in Escondido, CA. It includes
> > 3 hexagonal canons (as in Partch's harmonic canons,
> > or qanun), one each in Tang (Chinese), Tec (as in Aztec),
> > and Tarub (Arabic) tunings.
> >
> > He asked me to help out with the Aztec tunings, and
> > need more information. Does anyone have any data on
> > pre-Columbian meso-American tuning systems?
> >
> > Jonathan says that Susan Rawcliffe has studied
> > pre-Columbian flutes and has some information.
> > I haven't looked that up yet. Any help is appreciated.
> >
> >
> > -monz
> > http://tonalsoft.com/tonescape.aspx
> > Tonescape microtonal music software
> >
>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cameron" <misterbobro@...> wrote:
>
> It is almost physically painful to think about this subject,
> because the conquistadores burned whole libraries of native books

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_writing_systems

-Carl

Unfortunately we have almost only what's carved into stone- so tons (literally) of geneologies of kings, military victories, etc., but writings on music would have been on paper. I think it is obvious that the Mesoamericans wrote copiously and that writing was a common thing, for not only did the conquistadores document the burning of books, but the Atzec name for the land of the Maya was a description of the inks they used, "black and red". Mayan writing at least would have been ideal for even musical notation, as the writing is set up like Asian musical notation, Korean especially.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cameron" <misterbobro@> wrote:
> >
> > It is almost physically painful to think about this subject,
> > because the conquistadores burned whole libraries of native books
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_writing_systems
>
> -Carl
>

Oh I forgot to mention, I think it's great you're playing different musics for your son, he'll get plenty of mainstream crap all his life so now's the time! :-)

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cameron" <misterbobro@> wrote:
> >
> > It is almost physically painful to think about this subject,
> > because the conquistadores burned whole libraries of native books
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_writing_systems
>
> -Carl
>