May 13, 1980

NEW SOLIDARITY Page 11

Music: Vivian Freyre Zoakos

3,000 Years of Equal Tempering

It is a fairly incredible thing for a musician who studies the relevant historical records to find that, against all evidence, music historians today insist that our so-called "Western" music and its system of tuning is unique to the last 300 years. The historical record, even after a fairly cursory study, is replete with documentation of the existence of our "modern" tuning system throughout the past 3,000 years at least. What emerges from the evidence at hand is the preliminary finding that throughout history there seems always to have existed, side by side, two distinct conceptions of the notion of music. The one viewed music not only as a legitimate science but as the queen of sciences, a tool for drawing out the powers of reason in the listener. The other view, which flourished especially during periods of civil degeneration, sawand still today sees music as an equally effective means for coking the flames of the infantile self, and produced highly effective music to this end. Plato and Aristotle The two distinct uses of music are best studied by comparing the writings of Plato and Aristotle. Plato's notion of music was shared and realized through Beethoven. Aristotle is a far better spokesman for the subversive use of music than certainly any modern figure. Evil though he was, he was still forced by historical circumstances to speak coherently of his subject. Both Plato and Aristotle proceeded from the profound Classical Greek notion that music works through imitation. That is, music operates on the mind through its capacity to quite literally "imitate" the way in which the mind thinks. For Aristotle, as he carefully notes in his poetics, music imitates what he calls the "passions": fear, anger, lust, pleasure. Plato, on the other hand, makes abundantly clear throughout his dialogues that the sort of music which plays such a role is conducive to "evil". True music, which he uses interchangeably with the notion of "the Good," imitates the noetic processes of the mind. Hence he would banish from his

republic those musical modes which he likes to term "effeminate" and "weak" in that they effect the passions through imitation rather than engaging the mind's creative powers. The Question of Tuning The most easily accessible way to trace the existence of both types of music throughout the period of written history is by studying the different forms of tuning practiced. In brief, this is because instruments are tuned according to the dictates of the music being performed, and because music is a true science, it is possible within certain bounds to work backwards and deduce some important aspects of the music of a period or a composer. If, say, it is found that our system of equal temperament existed in a particular period, that would prove the existence of a highly developed understanding of modulation among keys, which can lead to the formulation of some rigorous hypotheses about that period's notion of counterpoint. This is precisely what we have found. Equal tempering, as we reported two weeks ago, was practiced among at least some musicians in the China of ca. 1000 B.C. This is testified to by the unearthing of a magnificent set of bells six months ago which were tuned in precise equal temperament. Still looking at China, we find the musician Ho Tchheng-thyen in 400 A.D. writing a very ingenious solution for determining the ratios appropriate to equal temperament. (The issue here is that the ratios resulting from equal tempering are irrational or radical, unlike the simple numerical ratios arising from any form of plain tuning.) Tchheng-thyen's solution was then picked up and developed further by the brilliant Prince Tsai-yu a thousand years later. Tsai-yu, a renowned musician and historian, also documents how the earlier scales had been systematically subverted in his country by the disastrous 15th century Ming Dynasty. In the Renaissance Turning to Europe, we find the famous Francisco Salinas in Spain of the 16th century using a combined mechanical and geometric solution for arriving at the correct ratios for equal temperament. His technique was borrowed straight from the Greeks, specifically Archimedes mesolabium. The great Zarlino, the leading musician of the Italian Renaissance, used the same methods, also advocating equal temperament. Zarlino cites Philo of

Byzantium (2nd century A.D.) as another source for learning how to tune in equal temperament. Zarlino and Salinas join Vincenzo Galileo, well known father of the well known scientist, in insisting that fretted instruments such as guitars, lutes, and so forth had always been tuned in equal temperament. In this they were referring to the practice of the Arabs, whose greatest musician, Al Farabi, similarly wrote passionately from the scientific and epistemological standpoint on the need to temper all musical instruments. Friedrich Marpurg, the German 18th century composer, in discussing the equal tempering principles laid out by Kircher, the 17th century scholar and mathematician whose writings had a profound influence on Bach, goes so far as to say that Kircher borrowed from none other than Plato his method of arriving at the appropriate tempered ratios!