Ray and Keith, Well, music is in our future along with work and if you two enjoyable people are to increase the number of people who will make great music, we have to decrease the amount of time spent on Maintenance. That's another Classical Political Economy concept meaning the chores that must be done before you do what you really want to do. First you need to stay alive and if you can do it fairly easily, you pay attention to music - or to the World Series, or something. The choice is yours - if you can enjoy life.
Yet, Americans on average work two months a year more than the Germans and even work two weeks a year more than the Japanese. How lucky they are to enjoy such a high standard of living when they arrive home after an hour of commuting and collapse in a chair. My job - among others - is to continue to ask the question posed by Henry George in Progress and Poverty, which is 'why, in spite of enormous increases in productivity, is it so hard to make a living?' If my relatively untalented efforts are successful, you very talented people will be joined by millions who will compete and cooperate with you for the greater good of us all. You have been using words that have definite meanings to you both, and to others. Otherwise, instead of discussion, you would have a brawl. That's why, Ray, in my field it is important to have an agreed language that means the same to all of us. So, we come up with the rigorously defined basic concepts Land, Labor, Capital, and Wealth. Thanks for the discussion. I hope it continues. Harry ------------------------------------------------------------------ Ray Evans Harrell wrote: >Hi Keith, just a couple of points: > >KH >No, that is not my understanding. The 12 pitch was predominating by about >Bach's time, but there had been many other 5, 6, 7 and 8 pitch (white key >only) systems around in Europe. But, true, Bach inherited, rather than >invented, the 12-pitch scale. The point is, though, that the keyboard >instruments and/or the instruments had to be re-tuned every time music was >played in different keys. Bach's great contribution was to show that it was >possible to establish a 12-pitch scale (in which every pitch was a close, >but 'unnatural', compromise) which was acceptable enough for it to play in >all the different keys without re-tuning -- and thus be able to accompany >all the different fixed-scale instruments. > > >There has always been a twelve note scale just as there are others and >there have always been instruments like the Balkan woodwinds that play >those particular scales. The Fitzwilliam Virginal book is for a twelve >tone Keyboard and it was two hundred years before Bach. I didn't miss >your point about tuning and transposition but you did miss mine. The >non-Tempered Tuning is "in Tune" with on out of tune fifth. That means >that orchestral and instrumental timbre is stronger since the root of >diminishing sound is the crossing of sound waves that eliminate each >other. Sort of an acoustical star wars. They use the same principle >to create "White Noise" in factories that eliminates loud sounds. When >we hear brass played today on original instruments it is hard for them to >hold a tempered tuning which is in the ears of modern players so they tend >to play out of tune. However if they play with a true tuning they get >greater strength and resonance and instrumental and vocal textures show a >sound of unique strength and surprising beauty. True they can't >transpose but you lose something with everything you do. > >(REH) ><<<< >You should have run that article I wrote off and studied it since it has to >do with your business. What kind of furniture salesman wouldn't know >about joints? > >>>> > >You may be interested in the sources informing what I wrote: >"Essays on Music Theory: Pitch Tuning, and the Physics of Musical Tone", >Gilbert Hock van Dijke, Rotterdam 1997 > >"Pythagorean Tuning and Medieval Polyphony" by Margo Schulter, June 1998 >(maschulter @value.net) > > >I'll look them up but I have discovered in my forty three years of >practical work that much of history doesn't make practical sense and I >tend to attribute it to "winging it" when they don't have the data. You >really don't know how they tuned unless you can play the instruments and >recreate it yourself. The problem of resonance in singers with full >orchestras tends to make many of the stories simply academic. Also the >vocalise books are often ignored by these folks in favor of looking at >technology. People die Instruments just get left alone. But I won't >judge these books until I read them. One last point. A few years ago >I was making a video for teaching music history to children. The only >problem was that the music history was so ethnocentric that it was beyond >inaccurate and bordered on racism. We must never forget that the >beginning projections often arise not out of practice but out of intrinsic >metaphorical models that are not practical for explaining the >problem. Empiricism in this instance is a blessed cure. > >Good to talk, must now go to sleep. > >REH ****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 *******************************
