Correspondence.(Letter to the Editor)

Publication: Perspectives of New Music

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2003 University of Washington

30 March 2003

Dear Editors:

It was troubling to read Julia Werntz's "Adding Pitches" in your issue 39:2. What might have been a valuable introduction to the remarkable and subtle 72-tone-equal-temperament music of Joseph Maneri was disturbingly compromised, I felt, by a lengthy introductory section that did little more than disparage just tuning and the many composers who have used and are using this musical resource. ("Just intonation, as an idea,.... ignores and devalues the music of all the great composers,.... and it denies the beauty of human complexity--the humanity--that is art" (169).)

I limit myself to a couple of remarks. (A lengthier rebuttal by David Doty, who composes in and promotes just intonation, is "From the Editor: A Response to Julia Werntz," 1/1 11:2 (Winter 2003): 2, 17-8.) Werntz's contention that "historically ... just intonation never took hold" (168) is simply wrong, as anyone with knowledge of music theory of the Renaissance and experience singing music of that era in a small group with proper attention...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.