the harmonic series, tonality, equal temperament, math, etc

[Karl Henning]

Eine Linie ist eine Kraft (Line is a force).

[Cato]

Seems to me that one can respond emotionally to line.

One needs only to think of Albrecht Dürer's woodcuts!



If this does not evoke an emotional response of some sort, brother, you ain't alive!

And somewhere, Mahler is quoted as saying there should be no harmony per se, only counterpoint!

[aukhawk]

I listen to a lot of Bach instrumental music, and a lot of Indian music (where the instruments must be retuned for each raga - roughly equivalent to key signature) - and I don't find my ears rebelling or adjusting in any way when transitioning from one type of music to the other - both sound equally 'right' to me.

I would also note that microtonal adjustment is completely routine in musical performance - modern-day popular performers such as Adele and Duffy sing slightly sharp, to raise the emotional temperature.  Successive generations of blues performers play and sing more and more flat, just to maintain their 'blueness' rather in the manner of the red queen running just to maintain the status quo.

[Karl Henning]

I listen to a lot of Bach instrumental music, and a lot of Indian music (where the instruments must be retuned for each raga - roughly equivalent to key signature) - and I don't find my ears rebelling or adjusting in any way when transitioning from one type of music to the other - both sound equally 'right' to me.

As Monk and Zappa were severally wont to say, in effect: it's all music.

[snyprrr]

When I learned how to tune pianos, I also learned that human ears do not seem to desire mathematical perfection.  Of course, our system of equal temperament came about because you can only tune to one key perfectly; but there is also the phenomenon of "stretched" octaves: the lower notes of an octave are tuned just slightly flat, while the higher notes are a little sharp--very little, too small to hear audible "beats," but enough so our ears think they're on pitch.  If a piano (or other instrument) is tuned mathematically exactly, our ears tend to hear the lower notes as sharp and the upper notes as flat.  It would seem that, at least on this side of Heaven, there is no such thing as perfect intonation.

The Law in Scripture is like unto the perfect math that you speak of. One 'sin' (one error in math), and all of a sudden it is no longer 'perfect'.

But, the revelation of Grace (LJC) is that God 'allows' for our 'sin ravaged ears' (which can't 'handle' the truth (perfect ratios)) to lower the highs and raise the lows (...the poor that they are rich, the rich that they are poor...) so that we may hear the 'all in one'.

Yes, I can see the 'Christianity' is Bach now. hmmm... I certainly believe the Composer IS his music: an atheist will write 'atheistic' music, the hindu,... and so on,... certainly I can hear Schoenberg's beliefs in his music (and how his and Webern's music sounds so different)...

Keep in mind that Lucifer was the music minister in heaven!! He is described in... Isaiah(?) as having the musical instrument BUILT INTO HIM!! It says that the 'noise of thy viols' will accompany him to the Grave...

Not many people on GMG will admit to the... I'm gonna say it... RELIGIOUS (trigger word alert!) origins of music,... WHAT IS the 'real' purpose of music? As has been stated, 'entertainment' surely isn't it. (cue 'Jaws' theme!!)

The topic of harmony here has been confined mainly to microtonality and tuning, when IMH(?)O the fascination with harmony is what the great Joh. Seb. was demostrating in the Well Tempered Clavier: that by tempering the tones you could make sequences of notes and chords from distant keys make proximate sense in the tonic key. Thus potentially all chords and chord progressions in whatever key become at-home in the tonic key. As people say about freedom, this concept still seems revolutionary though it's over two centuries old. After Wagner, following this concept, broke harmony down chromatically and extended it laterally in all directions in Tristan, so that there was not even a home key anymore, the floodgates were open. But the phase he initiated, polytonality, where there were still fervent realtionships amoing the keys, was but a brief interlude as composers rushed through it, to get to atonality, which would be the grand destination. But for many listeners, a barren destination it has been. Has the concept which Bach and Wagner put forth really been exhausted, or only dropped by the wayside prematurely as not being intellectually worthy of being the purported grand destination? And do we live by the intellect or the emotions? (Not you, Duchamp!) 

what really is the mystical quality of music?... ah, these questions are a sweet savor...

[snyprrr]

I am not sure a scale ipso facto produces ennui!   


I do not believe these CD's would cause temporary or permanent ennui, but...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_53MgUDfGQI (the product, not the jingle)



ok, this is a bad example of what I'm shooting for. Tell me you could handle this 'music' for very long before you start feeling like you're on a bad trip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RcPoBwj9Po

[Karl Henning]

... I certainly believe the Composer IS his music: an atheist will write 'atheistic' music, the hindu,... and so on,...

How then to account for the agnostic Vaughan Williams, and the (let us say) irreligious Britten, writing such splendidly apt Anglican liturgical music, then?

[snyprrr]

[Edit: Nice* to see the "fault" thing coming up and pointing right at the composer. Usually people are whinging about the audience always being blamed. Nope. Not always. Nice blatant blaming of the composer. And wrong, of course. Not that "fault" is really the issue. But all one would have to do to test the blame game is find someone who does not find Ezra Sims to be dreary or static. Or at the very least, who does not find static to be a dreary thing. Shouldn't be too hard to do.

And we DO already know that snyprrr, for one, has serious problems with static-ness.]

*Schadenfreude

Yes, that WOULD be a test, haha!! C'mon, I dare ya!! Just like we couldn't find anyone who really had anything 'wonderful' to say about the LaMonte Young piece. Frankly, I'd like to see your Desert Island Discs: I get the feeling there will be more stuff that sounds like 'normal music' (and yes, I'm given you lots of 20th Century Latitude) than stuff that sounds like oscillators. Seriously, do you have that Sims disc (CRI)? Someone's got to,... I'm sure it's only pennies on Amazon. Ennui HAS a sound!! IT DOES... waaaaah!!!


...snyprrr... has serious problems with static-ness...

WAAAH!! NO I DO NOT!! I like Feldman just fine. Xenakis has a piece called Metastaseis ('About Stasis'; see?, 'stasis' doesn't really have to sound static...). Hey, when I reeeeeeally want to chill, the ONLY thing I have that will do are Cage's 'Number' pieces (Four for SQ, for example (waaay too short, btw)).

The only problem I run into is when these Composers start getting to the point where their music sounds like me opening the window and listening to nature. I'd rather just open the window and listen to nature (well... not around here, but, that's beside the point). Iffff... we're at the point of comparing music that sounds like non-music to the music produced by God's Creation (but, I don't think that's what we're talking about... is it???)?

ok, fine,... concerning that LaMonte Young... I'll accept it as 'whatever', AS LONG AS there's no lame '60s 'theory' behind it, like, 'Listening to this will raise your spiritual vibrations, man... we put a thousands of years of music theory into this oscillator piece and you better accept is as the greatest 'work or service' that musical mankind will ever hear. This oscillator piece IS doing 'God's Work'. We are wonderful spiritual beings for giving you this piece."

And, I say that with a Schoenbergian arrogance.

[Karl Henning]

And, I say that with a Schoenbergian arrogance.

You do Schoenberg a disservice. Even the odd instance I think of, is more a stagey cultural hauteur than the vice of arrogance.  A number of anecdotes demonstrate a selflessness, or a capacity for self-effacement, which belie your snark.

[snyprrr]

How then to account for the agnostic Vaughan Williams, and the (let us say) irreligious Britten, writing such splendidly apt Anglican liturgical music, then?

Because Anglican Churchianty is full of agnostics and pederasts? Even THEY have persecution complexes and can relate even on the most superficial level to the sufferings of Christ? Everyone's a whiner? I'm not sure general 'churchianity' (regardless of stripe) has ANYTHING to do with... uh... God. God is a 'feeling' to them (the religion of emotionality... part of the Thread Topic),... what IS 'apt' liturgical music? I'd say the harmonic series is apt, Bernstein... not so much!


What, exactly, is an agnostic again?

[snyprrr]

You do Schoenberg a disservice. Even the odd instance I think of, is more a stagey cultural hauteur than the vice of arrogance.  A number of anecdotes demonstrate a selflessness, or a capacity for self-effacement, which belie your snark.

I would need chapter and verse for that. I am more than willing to give Schoenberg the absolute proper credit. Currently, I'm laboring under what I read in a book about zionism and Schoenberg, Bloch, and Lenny. I WANT to hear some humble Schoenberg quotes!!

[Karl Henning]

Because Anglican Churchianty is full of agnostics and pederasts?

I was nearly forgetting that you suffer no abundance of reticence ; )

I would need chapter and verse for that. I am more than willing to give Schoenberg the absolute proper credit . . .

Well, all right; only you mustn't be in a rush for me to do the homework for you.

. . . Currently, I'm laboring under what I read in a book about zionism and Schoenberg, Bloch, and Lenny.

You seem to have a preference for the lurid in your sources; I wonder that you take these so readily for Gospel ; )

[snyprrr]

Well, all right; only you mustn't be in a rush for me to do the homework for you.

ok,... I Googled "Schoenberg Loves Puppies" and got nothing... I'll try again!!

You seem to have a preference for the lurid in your sources; I wonder that you take these so readily for Gospel ; )

It was at the library!! The library!! Again, they didn't have 'Schoenberg Loves Puppies'!! But... I will try harder!! I'm so misunderstood (hey!, Arney and I have something in common!!).

[some guy]

certainly I can hear Schoenberg's beliefs in his music

OK. You're on. What are Schoenberg's beliefs? How do you know them? Give us some examples of pieces that demonstrate those beliefs.

"'Listening to this will raise your spiritual vibrations, man... we put a thousands of years of music theory into this oscillator piece and you better accept is as the greatest 'work or service' that musical mankind will ever hear. This oscillator piece IS doing 'God's Work'. We are wonderful spiritual beings for giving you this piece."

Hmmm, why is it that the only time I see claims like this is when someone is trying to mock the people who supposedly make claims like this? I never hear actual composers talk like this.

[Cato]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_53MgUDfGQI (the product, not the jingle)



ok, this is a bad example of what I'm shooting for. Tell me you could handle this 'music' for very long before you start feeling like you're on a bad trip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RcPoBwj9Po

I cannot see or hear this right now - blocked at school -but note that my comment was about a specific scale, and not a style of music.

[Karl Henning]

(* chortle *)

[petrarch]

Tell me you could handle this 'music' for very long before you start feeling like you're on a bad trip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RcPoBwj9Po

Try this one (FWIW, I quite like Ryoji Ikeda):

http://www.youtube.com/v/g9Z6CWuxHZU

[some guy]

One of my favorites.

[xochitl]

God is a 'feeling' to them (the religion of emotionality... part of the Thread Topic)

hey hey now, im not sure where you got that from, but no.

my little atonal joke was about the obviously man-made nature of 12-ET [at least when compared with something like just intonation]

[snyprrr]

Try this one (FWIW, I quite like Ryoji Ikeda):

http://www.youtube.com/v/g9Z6CWuxHZU

Oh yea, THAT did the trick!! Remember the "music for prepared cd"?