Fred Sturm asked, "What exactly are you trying to say and why?" It is not on my authority, but that of Donald J. Grout, Claude V. Palisca, and Johann Nikolaus Forkel that I conclude: 1. The limitations of how accurately we can tune are not epistemological, but based on the instrument itself. Richard Strauss described orchestration just the same way in his revision of the Berlioz "Treatise on Instrumentation," and disparaged the capacity of a keyboard player to compose, due to his or her lack of familiarity with the orchestra. Not only tuning, but the music itself, is based on what the instrument you are using is capable of, not theory. 2. Equal temperament started in the 16th century. 3. People started compromising the tonic, subdominant, and dominant in the direction of equal temperament in the 15th century. Fred, your argument is with Grout, Palisca, and Forkel, not with me. Don Mannino asked: Is English not your first language? Asides from the heading of your message being German (unbound? the connection with your long post seems a bit tenuous), your writing syntax indicates that English has perhaps been recently learned. Is this correct? Hey whatda ya no, I type Don Mannino in Amazon books and get nuttin' you wrote. I would be happy to see a list of publications, out of print, of course, by Don Mannino. Let me see what I get with Fred Sturm, hmmmm... what a surprise, it looks like nothing you wrote even came up. There must be something wrong with Amazon, what kinda site is this???!!! You didn't happen to write "Changes Over Time, the Evolution of Jazz Arranging," did you Fred? Let me know when you get published yourself, and I will think of rescinding what I wrote. I'll even buy a copy. -----Original Message----- From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Fred Sturm Sent: Friday, April 24, 2009 10:12 AM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] Nichtgebunden On Apr 24, 2009, at 3:59 AM, Sloane, Benjamin (sloaneba) wrote: > Seeing that what I claim about keyboards, tuning, and maintenance > on my authority-whether or not acknowledging it as such guesswork- > now may or may not be true according to better authority, it is a > good time for me to make assertions yet on the authority of even > others that will bolster some of my firmer convictions stated, > authorities that cannot be disputed in the CAUT environment or on > the CAUT list, by anyone. Hi Benjamin, I am very puzzled. This extremely long and rambling post was a propos of what? In response to what? What exactly are you trying to say and why? I am guessing it has something to do with the history of tuning systems, but exactly what is beyond me. BTW, with respect to the Palisca/Grout textbook, it has been taken over by Peter Burkholder, a college mate of mine (I accompanied him in voice lessons). A new edition came out recently, I think Peter's second stab at it. I wouldn't take such a generalized textbook as being a "final authority" on anything, though such works do tend to "follow the commonly accepted path." If you want details on a specific area, like historical tuning, you need to look at specialized books and articles. The generalizations of a general textbook often miss the details that matter the most. Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu
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