What is microtonal music: Difference between revisions

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J. Murray Barbour makes an important point because most historical tunings (well temperaments, meantone tunings, etc.) sound for all practical purposes identical to the conventional western tuning except in rare specialized cases. (If you play a piece of music transposed far out of its original key on a 1/4 comma meantone tuning, you will hear some sour intervals. However, most historical compositions did not modulate extensively through all 12 keys until meantone tunings had gone out of popular usage, so this embodies an unrealistic example. Exotic exceptions, such as John Bull's ''Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La'' can always be found, but they are the exceptions, and not typical.) Consequently discussion of historical tunings, while valuable in its own right, has nothing to do with microtonality. Likewise, retuning modern instruments like the piano to various flavors of meantone cannot in any sense be regarded as "microtonal" and such practices have nothing to do with microtonality.

One again, the use of ancient Greek genera like the chromatic and diatonic genera to play diatonic conventional music may prove musically tantalizing for a variety of reasons, but this has nothing to do with microtonality. Those two Greek genera sound for all practical purposes identical to modern diatonic 7-note scales played in a modern conventional tuning. Thus, once again, using ancient Greek tunings like the chromatic or diatonic genus is not "microtonal" and has nothing to do with microtonality. Using the Greek enharmonic genus, however, '''is''' microtonal, since this tuning differs audibly from any conventional western tuning.

One again, the use of ancient Greek [[genera]] like the chromatic and diatonic genera to play diatonic conventional music may prove musically tantalizing for a variety of reasons, but this has nothing to do with microtonality. Those two Greek genera sound for all practical purposes identical to modern diatonic 7-note scales played in a modern conventional tuning. Thus, once again, using ancient Greek tunings like the chromatic or diatonic genus is not "microtonal" and has nothing to do with microtonality. Using the Greek enharmonic genus, however, '''is''' microtonal, since this tuning differs audibly from any conventional western tuning.

One further complication arises in defining microtonal music. Namely, distinguishing random mass ensemble effects and extended performance techniques from genuine microtonality. X. J. Scott has clearly and vehemently reminded musicians that "microtonal" music is not the same as "micro-atonal" music. That is say, there is a huge difference between randomly hitting any pitch willy-nilly, such as you might get by blowing on a kazoo while randomly sliding the pitch around, or waving your hand randomly in the control volume of a theremin, and actual microtonality produced by repeatably and reliably sounding a specific set of distinctly audible non-Western pitches. Scott's point remains important because much of what gets misnamed in contemporary Western art music as "microtonal" is in fact "micro-atonal," or randomly pitched music. The overall effect of randomly pitches music is a sense of pitch movement -- without any sense of specific pitches. Excellent examples include much of the tape music and ''musique concrete'' produced during the 1940s through the 1970s. Such music, while in many cases excellent and worthwhile, fails to qualify as microtonal because it sound no specific set of repeatable pitches. Instead, such music uses whatever pitches happen to be found -- perhaps the randomly detuned pitch of a train whistle recorded and slowed down, or a recording of someone randomly glissing on a violin. (Indeed, another term for ''musique concrete'' is "found music.) These kinds of aimless incoherent pitch variances fail to qualify as microtonal because they exhibit no audible structure. The listener does not hear anything but a chaotic mass of intervals without rhyme or reason. As a result, the listener cannot tell whether some of the pitches are the same, or different from, those of conventional western music: it's a haze of apparently arbitrary pitches used primarily for the effect of "pitch difference," not to sound specifically xenharmonic melodies or harmonies.

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 J. Murray Barbour makes an important point because most historical tunings (well temperaments, meantone tunings, etc.) sound for all practical purposes identical to the conventional western tuning except in rare specialized cases. (If you play a piece of music transposed far out of its original key on a 1/4 comma meantone tuning, you will hear some sour intervals. However, most historical compositions did not modulate extensively through all 12 keys until meantone tunings had gone out of popular usage, so this embodies an unrealistic example. Exotic exceptions, such as John Bull's ''Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La'' can always be found, but they are the exceptions, and not typical.) Consequently discussion of historical tunings, while valuable in its own right, has nothing to do with microtonality. Likewise, retuning modern instruments like the piano to various flavors of meantone cannot in any sense be regarded as "microtonal" and such practices have nothing to do with microtonality.
-One again, the use of ancient Greek genera like the chromatic and diatonic genera to play diatonic conventional music may prove musically tantalizing for a variety of reasons, but this has nothing to do with microtonality. Those two Greek genera sound for all practical purposes identical to modern diatonic 7-note scales played in a modern conventional tuning. Thus, once again, using ancient Greek tunings like the chromatic or diatonic genus is not "microtonal" and has nothing to do with microtonality. Using the Greek enharmonic genus, however, '''is''' microtonal, since this tuning differs audibly from any conventional western tuning.
+One again, the use of ancient Greek [[genera]] like the chromatic and diatonic genera to play diatonic conventional music may prove musically tantalizing for a variety of reasons, but this has nothing to do with microtonality. Those two Greek genera sound for all practical purposes identical to modern diatonic 7-note scales played in a modern conventional tuning. Thus, once again, using ancient Greek tunings like the chromatic or diatonic genus is not "microtonal" and has nothing to do with microtonality. Using the Greek enharmonic genus, however, '''is''' microtonal, since this tuning differs audibly from any conventional western tuning.
 One further complication arises in defining microtonal music. Namely, distinguishing random mass ensemble effects and extended performance techniques from genuine microtonality. X. J. Scott has clearly and vehemently reminded musicians that "microtonal" music is not the same as "micro-atonal" music. That is say, there is a huge difference between randomly hitting any pitch willy-nilly, such as you might get by blowing on a kazoo while randomly sliding the pitch around, or waving your hand randomly in the control volume of a theremin, and actual microtonality produced by repeatably and reliably sounding a specific set of distinctly audible non-Western pitches. Scott's point remains important because much of what gets misnamed in contemporary Western art music as "microtonal" is in fact "micro-atonal," or randomly pitched music. The overall effect of randomly pitches music is a sense of pitch movement -- without any sense of specific pitches. Excellent examples include much of the tape music and ''musique concrete'' produced during the 1940s through the 1970s. Such music, while in many cases excellent and worthwhile, fails to qualify as microtonal because it sound no specific set of repeatable pitches. Instead, such music uses whatever pitches happen to be found -- perhaps the randomly detuned pitch of a train whistle recorded and slowed down, or a recording of someone randomly glissing on a violin. (Indeed, another term for ''musique concrete'' is "found music.) These kinds of aimless incoherent pitch variances fail to qualify as microtonal because they exhibit no audible structure. The listener does not hear anything but a chaotic mass of intervals without rhyme or reason. As a result, the listener cannot tell whether some of the pitches are the same, or different from, those of conventional western music: it's a haze of apparently arbitrary pitches used primarily for the effect of "pitch difference," not to sound specifically xenharmonic melodies or harmonies.