From: Valuemetaphysics@aol.com
Date: Fri Jun 18 2004 - 00:45:31 BST
Dear forum,
Here is an extract from http://www.justintonation.net/whatisji.html in
response to some thoughts presented by Joe.
In light of its numerous virtues, why isn't Just Intonation currently in
general use? Like so many of our peculiar customs, it is largely an accident of
history. During the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, when Western harmonic music
and keyboard instruments were co-evolving, instrument technologies were
inadequate to the task of developing affordable, playable instruments that could
accommodate the intricacies of Just Intonation. As a result, various compromises
or temperaments were attempted. Twelve-tone equal temperament was ultimately
adopted because it provided the greatest facility for transposition and
modulation with the smallest number of tones, and because it made all of the
intervals of a given type equally out of tune, thus avoiding the contrast between
in-tune and out-of-tune intervals that characterized some earlier temperaments.
Equal temperament was not adopted because it sounded better (it didn't then,
and it still doesn't, despite 150 years of cultural conditioning) or because
composers and theorists were unaware of Just Intonation. The adoption of
twelve-tone equal temperament was strictly a matter of expediency. Equal temperament
allowed eighteenth- and nineteenth-century composers to explore increasingly
complex harmonies and abstruse modulations, but this benefit was short-lived.
By the beginning of this century, all of the meaningful harmonic combinations
in the equally-tempered scale had been thoroughly explored and exploited, and
many composers believed that consonance, tonality, and even pitch had been
exhausted as organizing principles. What was really exhausted was merely the
limited resources of the tempered scale. By substituting 12 equally-spaced tones
for a universe of subtle intervallic relationships, the composers and theorists
of the 18th and 19th centuries effectively painted western music into a
corner from which it has not yet succeeded in extricating itself.
If Coherence can be induced by the provision of a critically significant
repertoire of patterns, then we may be in for a new renaissance in music. Just
intonation may provide that repertoire.
Already there are synths which can be tuned for just intonation at the flick
of a switch, and there are composers using them.
MOQers may like to consider the link between the word 'just' and 'Quality'?
The old meaning of Just is more concerned with aesthetic appreciation than
Pythagorean Kosmos.
While the basic principles of Just Intonation are simple, they are static
patterns from which tension emerges. At a critical point which cannot be
predicted, DQ tips the scales in favour of greater freedom for aesthetic appreciation.
I had occasion to contemplate the scales of justice the other day. These
scales are always shown to be in balance. Proportion is implied. Order. But this
notion of order has gained a static orientation which was not originally
implied: The point where things not only have the greatest freedom, but where
freedom is aesthetically pleasing - coherence.
Freedom from patterns and yet freedom in patterns - this is the best state,
this is the sweet spot.
Any society or Human relationship which allows freedom within static patterns
is Just and well ordered - not in a static sense we assume for it today, but
in the best way for any patterned state to float at ease.
My reading of Noam Chomsky has me thinking that we need to tune society to a
new order - not the old way order is recognised, as a hierarchy of privilege,
but as a place where hierarchy doesn't really exist, because coherence does
not have a hierarchy, just an aesthetic sense which is very pleasing in all
respects.
I hope some find this to be of value, even if i have been a little rambling.
All the best,
Mark
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