More Margo for those that want it

[A440A@AOL.COM]

Greetings, 
    I would like to offer the following from Margo Schulter inre intonation 
and musical history.  I think it is instructive to observe how some current 
theorists are behaving amongst themselves!  (No,  I don't understand all of 
it, but am posting it in the hopes that it may help some of us "fill in the 
gaps" in our understanding of where we, intonationally, came from.  
Regards, 
Ed Foote RPT 

   From: "M. Schulter" <MSCHULTER@VALUE.NET>
Subject: Re: Canto Sacro -- Welcome to Maurizio Umberto Puxeddu

Hello, there, and in response to a question from Maurizio Umberto
Puxeddu, I would like to say, speaking only for myself although citing
also the musical efforts of various other contributors to this Tuning
List, that I regard just intonation or "JI" as a very diverse category
of tunings, and that I am also very involved with a range of
temperaments, including now and then 24-tone equal temperament
(24-tET).

Please know that you are not alone, as I'm sure that other contributors
here such as Dan Stearns with his many scales and temperaments, and Jacky
Ligon with his complex and subtle ratios, can reassure you. As John
deLaubenfels has remarked, there is a wide range of musical tastes on this
list, and his own innovative contributions in the area of variable
adaptive tuning have sparked admiration from people who may themselves be 
involved with quite different styles of music or tuning systems.

First of all, I regard "JI" as an approach to tuning based on integer
ratios, rather than a specific tuning or musical style: a "JI" major
third might be 81:64 (medieval Pythagorean), 5:4 (Renaissance), 9:7 or
14:11 or 21:17 or sometimes 13:10 (neo-Gothic), and so on. 

Various temperaments from Renaissance meantone to a 21st-century
neo-serialist 11-tET or 13-tET to Gary Morrison's 88-CET (88-cent
equal temperament) present variations on this spectrum -- not to omit
Paul Erlich's decatonic scale and tetradic harmony in 22-tET.

Here I've been mostly addressing European and derived music, but of course
the tuning systems of many world cultures offer a much greater range of
diversity, from the pelog and slendro of gamelan to the complex sonorities
of Japanese gagaku and the 17-note Pythagorean systems of Arabic or
Persian traditions at once curiously familiar to me from a
Gothic/neo-Gothic perspective, and yet quite different with their own
independent musical languages.

One very important point I might make about my own preferences, and
suspect that others might make about theirs, is that such preferences
are often intimately related to specific musical styles.

For example, John deLaubenfels and I might have very different views
about the best integer ratios for major thirds -- because these
intervals may have radically different roles in our respective
preferred styles.

Perotin or Landini does not sound like Vicentino, who in turn does not
sound like Bach or modern jazz or barbershop -- and if the music is
different, the most "just" or fitting tunings are likely to differ
also. The same statement applies for the temperaments which may be most
pleasingly tempered to a given style.

Personally I find 24-tET a fascinating system because it combines
near-just fifths and slightly subdued major thirds (400 cents, or
about 8 cents narrower than the usual Pythagorean 81:64) with very
close approximations of 13:10 (450 cents or 9/24 octave) and 15:13
(250 cents or 5/24 octave), and also 26:15 (950 cents or 19/24
octave). The 950-cent interval, for example, can serve as either a
wide major sixth or a narrow minor seventh.

Also, from a "JI-oriented" point of view, 24-tET has fine
approximations of 11:9 (350 cents, 7/24 octave) and 11:8 (550 cents,
11/24 octave).

As it happens, I tend mostly to lean either toward Pythagorean and
neo-Gothic tunings with fifths pure or wider than pure, or else
Renaissance meantones for late 15th to early 17th-century music.
However, 24-tET is for me a very welcome diversion, a curiously
"20th-century" way of looking at things with an elegant symmetry and
some very creative ambiguities.

Chromaticism is a fascinating theme in many tunings, and as one
especially interested in chromaticism in either a Renaissance meantone
setting (e.g. Vicentino) or in various neo-Gothic temperaments with
steps not too far from the 50 cents of 24-tET, I would guess that you
may be enjoying many creative opportunities.

Please let me welcome to you to this Tuning List, and emphasize that
pluralism both in JI systems and in temperaments is a very important
value here.

Most appreciatively,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@value.net