WedPod: Halloween

Special Halloween edition of FriPod (the kids were a witch and a pirate, had a great time trick-or-treating). Go back and read the witch's Halloween story again. For this playlist I skipped the Dies Irae's and Funeral music that others have included, sticking with monsters.

1) "In the Devil's Snare and the Flying Keys" by John Williams on the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone soundtrack.

2) "The Devil's Dance" and "The Devil's Triumphant March" from L'Histoire du Soldat by Stravinsky, performed by Gerard Schwarz and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. Amazon MP3, Amazon MP3.

3) "The Magic of Halloween" by John Williams on the E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial soundtrack.

4) The Noon Witch by Antonin Dvorak, performed by Seiji Ozawa and the Wiener Philharmoniker.

5) "The Witch, Baba Yaga" from Fairy Tale Characters by Oleg Oblov, performed by the Aries Brass Quintet.

6) "Zombie" by the Cranberries on No Need to Argue. Amazon MP3.

7) "Ghost Dance" from Ancient Voices of Children by George Crumb, performed by Jan DeGaetani, Machael Dash, the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble. Amazon MP3.

8) "(I don't stand a) Ghost of a Chance" by Victor Young, performed by Clifford Brown on Jazz 'Round Midnight.

9) Triskelion (Andante (with a ghostly quality)) by Bruce Adolphe, performed by the American Brass Quintet. Amazon MP3.

10) "The Superstitious Ghost" by Fred Himebaugh.

11) The Six Realms (1999-2000) For Amplified Cello And Orchestra: 3. The Hungry Ghost Realm, by Peter Lieberson, performed by Michaela Fukacova, Odense Symphony Orchestra, Justin Brown.

Pythagoras Revisited

I wrote a brief post on a study of Pythagorean ratio rules and brain function, based solely upon the abstract of the article. Now I've read the article, and can answer some of the questions posed by me and others. Most importantly, the authors did not really test for Pythagorean ratio rules. Here is their justification:

For centuries after Pythagoras, his tuning system based on exact perfect consonances predominated. As Western music increased in complexity and range, however, slight modifications to the Pythagorean scale became necessary to preserve consistently tuned intervals across extremely large intervals (greater than one or two octaves) and small ones (half steps and intervals that are difficult to standardize using Pythagorean tuning). The difficulty arising from the increased range is apparent when one goes through 12 perfect fifths, for example, from the note C to a C seven octaves higher: the ratio of the harmonic to the fundamental starting tone is (3/2)^12=129.746. Going from a C to one seven octaves higher via the octave route, however, produces a tone with a frequency that has a ratio (2/1)^7 = 128 times higher than the starting tone. This small difference ultimately requires some temperament or modification of pure harmonic intervals to construct and tune instruments that can play pieces written with tones that span multiple octaves. Numerous fixes or temperaments for this problem have been devised over the centuries[1]. The one used almost universally today is known as equal temperament, inwhich the discrepancy of 1.746 is divided by narrowing each of the 12 previously perfect fifths in the seven-octave span, resulting in the 12 notes of the chromatic scale. Thus in equal temperament the fifths are no longer perfect, only close.

With this caveat of equal tempering – the temperament in which Western listeners are accustomed to hearing music – informing our search for neural correlates to the Pythagorean rules, we chose to study the neural activation pattern associated with hearing the perfect [sic] fifth (1.498:1), major sixth (1.682:1) and major seventh (1.888:1).

(The footnote cites Helmholtz. They couldn't find something a little more contemporary?) In addition, all of the "musician" participants were piano performance majors, which could bias certain brain responses to muscle memory activity. The purpose of this study was hidden from the participants, by throwing the intervals in after another listening test on sentences and progressions (probably like Steinbeis and Koelsch's experiment.) Overall, I believe the authors over-reached by claiming to test Pythagorean ratio rules. I believe they did find something about consonance and dissonance, but not specific to frequency ratios. Yet again, scientists really need to consult with theorists, so they don't make this kind of mistake. I think Tenney's A History of Consonance and Dissonance would be a great source of hypotheses to test.

Foss, AL. "Neural correlates of the Pythagorean ratio rules." Neuroreport 18/15 (October 2007) 1521-1525.

FriPod: Empty Sleep

I'm feeling very empty and tired right now.

1. "Empty" by The Cranberries on No Need to Argue. Amazon MP3.
2. "Empty Bed Blues" performed by Bessie Smith.
3. "Empty Chairs At Empty Tables" by Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil, and Herbert Kretzmer from the Les Miserables Original Broadway Cast recording. Amazon MP3.
4. "Come, Heavy Sleep" by John Dowland, performed by Sting on Songs From the Labyrinth. Amazon MP3.
5. "Dreaming While You Sleep" by Genesis on We Can't Dance.
6. "Nowell, Nowell: Out of your Sleep" performed by the Indianapolis Christ Church Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys. Amazon MP3.
7. "Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty" by Maurice Ravel, performed by Christopher Parkening. Amazon MP3.
8. "Sleeping with the Television On" by Billy Joel.
9. "When It's Sleepy Time Down South" by Leon Rene, Otis Rene, and Clarence Muse; performed by Louis Armstrong. Amazon MP3.

Meme: Find me

Chad shares a new meme, finding 5 search items that produce your own blog as the first result. Here are mine:

1. Musical Perceptions (duh!)
2. Eighteen Days till Halloween (I've gotten a surprising number of hits from the MySpace News link on this story)
3. Purpose of Music
4. Quietest place on earth
5. Solfege battles

Scores just want to be free

Slashdot reports that Project Gutenberg has volunteered to host IMSLP's catalog. What isn't clear is who will vet the legality of the scores, since Project Gutenberg has said it will host "as much [...] as is legally possible" and says that many of the scores mentioned in Universal Edition's cease and desist letter could also be hosted. The quote ends with "when the legalities have finally been worked out." So who will be working out the legalities? IMSLP's creator doesn't have the time or resources, that is why he closed down the database. And Tim points out all of the difficulties in investigating copyright legality. I won't get too excited until more clarification is provided.

In the meantime, Bob Kosovsky of the Music Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has provided some other sources of public domain scores:

Sheet Music Archive
Choral Public Domain Library
Chopin Early Editions
Werner Icking Music Archive
Indiana University's William and Gayle Cook Music Library, Variations
Eastman School of Music's Sibley Music Library, this service will take requests for public domain scores, putting all legal requests up on the website.

Intelligible scores

One of the Episcopal blogs is having a debate on the meaning of scripture. One person, William Witt, wrote a comment stating that Scripture is inherently intelligible. Thus any "competent reader" will agree on the meaning of a given text (something that any theological discussion will prove false almost immediately). What I found interesting was a second comment Mr. Witt made, defending his assertion against a very persuasive argument by Father Kimel. In this second comment, Mr. Witt uses Mozart as an analogy.

To provide a parallel example, the score of a Mozart symphony has an inherent intelligibility to those who know how to read music, and especially to those who are trained classical musicians. To me, who has a minimal ability to read music, and no musical training whatsoever, it is just notes on a page. However, this does not mean that even my amateur ears cannot pick out a Mozart symphony when I hear it played--at least those pieces with which I am familiar.

The intelligibility, however, is not provided by the listener, nor even by the classically trained symphony. Mozart who was, of course, part of a musical tradition himself, provided the intelligibility, and the trained musician does his best to be faithful to the text. Should a new Mozart score be discovered, trained musicians could play it because of its inherent intelligibility.

None of this has anything to do with “private judgment.” Someone (either with or without the relevant musical skills), who just decides to wing it as he goes along rather than follow the score, is not “playing Mozart.” Someone with amateur skills, who does her best to follow the score, will nonetheless be playing Mozart, even if not with the adequacy of a classically trained musician.

In both cases, the inherent intelligibility is in the text. In the former, it is ignored. In the latter, it is revealed. The question of whether or not the musician correctly interprets the text is not provided either by the private musician, or even by the skilled guild of classical musicians. It is only because the text has an inherent intelligibility that skilled (or even unskilled) musicians can listen to a performance, and respond: “That is (or is not) Mozart.”

I'm not going to attempt to argue about Scripture, but Witt's claims about Mozart were perplexing. It comes down to what a musical score is, and what relationship it has to a musical performance. Is the score of a Mozart symphony the actual symphony, or instructions on how to perform the symphony? I would say the latter. I disagree that the intelligibility of a performance "is not provided by the listener, nor even by the classically trained symphony." Those are exactly who determine the quality of the performance, with most of the emphasis on the listener. Thus to some listeners a Mozart symphony has no intelligibility, just as to some listeners a Schoenberg symphony has no coherence.

As for the dividing line between the performance being "Mozart" or "not Mozart," I think it is much more nuanced than Mr. Witt makes it. I've heard improvisations that are very much in the style of Mozart. Since they are inspired by Mozart's compositions, do they not have some "Mozart" in them? I've also heard performances of Mozart's compositions that were not played in the style that Mozart envisioned, and therefore did not sound like Mozart. Are they still "Mozart?" I'd argue that both of these situations have some "Mozart" as long as the listener (me) still perceives Mozart's influence (his intelligibility?).

Strange Fruit

Today the family went to a pumpkin patch/apple orchard. While browsing through the store for caramel apples, I saw that they were selling tubs of persimmon pulp. I've been curious about persimmons for awhile now, from an Eating the Alphabet book and various roadside farm stands advertising it. And this season the local ice cream parlor has made homemade persimmon ice cream, intriguing me further. So I bought a tub of the pulp, and made persimmon pudding for tonight's dessert. It was incredible, I can't believe I'd been missing this delicacy my whole life. Go get some diaspyros virginiana, "food of the gods," and enjoy this Thanksgiving treat now.