User talk:Basemetal

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Henry Greenway's Harps
The information I have about the harp came directly from the museum's identifying label, which I used for my comment about it. (I'm certain I have a photo of the label somewhere, but it has been a few years since I was in Vermillion, and since then, I have taken thousands of photos, so it won't be easy for me to find.) The label may mean this is one of only two harps of this type that Henry Greenway made himself, not that they are the only two of this type in existence. There was no indication that he invented this harp form. (I am writing to you from France.) Amicalement, Charvex (talk) 06:47, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
 * « Mais les photos semblent tellement différentes. » (!!) I think you are mistaken. The instruments in the two photos look identical to me : SVP, look at the scroll work on the sound board and the myriad of details. The museum's photo is very brightly lighted (and has enjoyed the enhancements of Adobe PhotoShop), and mine does not. This is all. -- I believe the other Henri Greenway harp of this type is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which is really digging deep in my mind, but I think it is correct. May I suggest that you search the records of that museum's fine musical instrument collection? --- At the time I saw it, the Vermillion museum's label did not have the identical words that now appear on the web site. --- I certainly do not take inspiration from the air to write my comments for Wikipédia articles. My words in the article were factual to the best of my knowledge at the time. (Those personal comments to you yesterday, written above, were speculation.) Bonne continuation et bonne quête ! Charvex (talk) 06:15, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Hello again. When you write a new article for Wikipédia, it is beneficial to add things such as Sources (re to texts from references mentioned is OK because it will help readers to know where to go to find more) ; See also links (think of at least a few related Wikipédia articles) ; Categories (birth and death date categories are not enough, think of related subject matter) ; and whenever possible, an Image (search WikiCommons, or go to Google Images search, snag it, and then add it to WikiCommons and your article). Adding a WikiProject category to the Talk page is also good. --- These things will give your article more substance, and more important, it help you avoid the over-zealous WikiPolice. --- I added these things to your Henry Greenway article for you, so you can see what I mean. --- Tchao ! Charvex (talk) 09:13, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Re: Bathroom humor
Hi Basemetal,first of all I am honored that you feel my article worthy for inclusion in your anecdotes. Definitely let me know what came out of that. As for the statement, i first added it when I wrote the article (which, by the way, was one of the quickest articles ever to gain feature status, only coconut crab (also by me) was faster, methinks. When I added it i was fully aware that a lot of people will find the idea of masturbating with a toilet revolting. But then, when you talk with emergency room doctors you will find out that they have to deal on a daily basis with surgically removing "masturbation aids" out of somebody's rectum or elsewhere (from lubricated rodents to mobile phones). Hence I added the info anyway, since Wikipedia should not care if the information is likeable, only if it is true. On that respect, my source was also rather weak, the equivalent of the british "yellow press". But since then others brought up many more sources, albeit none of them "scientific". Unfortunately, due to demands in my real life I did not have the time to follow this problem up close, and only acted if people wanted to remove the whole article from feature status on the grounds of yuckiness. It was eventually removed due to lack of citations, which i did not have the time to fix (again - real life demands). Hope this info helps. Also, if you are looking for lore, you can also go into the "Gdansk" vs. "Danzig" conflict, including edit wars with behind the scenes email collaboration to push the polish name. Cheers -- Chris 73 | Talk 09:06, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
 * It was indeed the mainichi article, which is a source of low value. I think itr was called "wai wai", a collection of weird news in english on Japan.-- Chris 73 | Talk 20:05, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Proof score
This is like a galley proof -- the composer's handwritten corrections appear on this score. See the source here for more information. -- Ssilvers (talk) 18:19, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Georgian chant
Recently there had been plenty of recordings published at youtube which have more to offer than Nana Peradze. You can find some links at the article about Cherubikon. Especially the Anchiskhati church choir has become very active, but it is not the only one.

Tbilisi has recently restructured the polyphony website, the conferences have now an own site: http://symposium.polyphony.ge/en/ John A. Graham has also published his contributions (not only for Tbilisi) here: http://www.georgianchant.org/jagraham/publications.html and offers a fin introduction into the documentation of a former living tradition: http://www.georgianchant.org/music/chanthistory.html

You are right, mixed choirs are avoided for the liturgical repertoire, but there are female ensembles as well. --Platonykiss (talk) 02:43, 13 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I'll follow the links. Basemetal  07:16, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Article Byzantine music
Dear Basemetal

You asked me for an opinion about the article "Byzantine music". I think there is still a lot of work to do which I would like to encourage, especially it should be less biblical and rather musical.

Concerning the quoted phrase, it is not completely bullshit, but probably not the easiest point to start. First of all, unlike Latin theory, there has been a strict division between music theory as a mathematical science (harmonikai) and a chant manual teaching the octoechos. Quite late (during the Palaiologan period) there had been harmonikai treatises which made explicite references to contemporary composition methods. On the other hand, there are papadikai which do even treat a "method of John of Damascus," but also one "of Ptolemy." In Cantus planus 2004, there was a paper by Pavlos Erevnidis about the syntheseis since Boethius. Quite original, but it did not really provoke a scholarly debate. Otherwise, we could at least say a controversial topic, but it rather seems to be a speculation. As I wrote in the article Hagiopolitan octoechos, a profound knowledge of transposition (metabole kata tonon) is necessary to understand some practices used in more complex compositions of Byzantine music (while Carolingian theory rather abandoned it).

The main problem seems, while the synthesis between harmonikai and Carolingian chant theory can be studied between Boethius as a Carolingian source (we have no earlier manuscripts) and Hucbald, there has not really survived an early source which testified about the synthesis between the Byzantine octoechos and the Ancient Greek tropes, I mean how the Dorian mode on E—e became that of D—d. Harold Powers (Grove article "mode") wrote:

"From the 6th century to the early 9th, when the repertory of Western plainchant achieved its basic forms, there is no record of descriptive or theoretical sources, and of course no notated music. Towards the end of this period a system of eight modal categories, for which there was no genuine precedent in Hellenistic theory, came to be associated with the rapidly stabilizing repertory of Gregorian chant. This system was proximately of medieval Byzantine origin, as indicated by the non-Hellenistic Greek names of the modes in the earliest Western sources from about 800."

"The origins of the Eastern Christian system of eight modes – usually called Oktōēchos – are not entirely clear; but it seems more than probable that it was not delimited purely or even primarily by musical criteria. In any case, the octenary property of the modal system of Latin chant in the West was of non-Latin origin"

Then he abruptly switched back to the Western synthesis and the reception of the Hagiopolites in Carolingian tonaries. In my imagination, the synthesis can probably be explained, that Dorian as the main trope was defined by the fixed degrees of the tone system, the frame of the tetrachords had been B—E—a—b—e—aa, and it must have changed somewhen to A—D—G—a—d—g—aa. But so far, no source had been found which could offer any further evidence. Concerning Carolingian theory, this could simply have been a misreading of Boethius, but this is my personal hypothesis which has only touched by Pavlos' article.

You are on the safe side, if you write that theorists always tried to apply Ancient Greek theory as a medium of chant transmission. But these efforts rather produced very original concepts. Metabole kata tonon, kata genos, kata systema, kata echon are definitely key categories of Byzantine music, but the Hagiopolites, the only early chant manual left, does not treat them at all, while Latin theories officially excluded absonia, all genera except the diatonic, all systems except the systema teleion (nevertheless, we have triphonia in Aurelianus of Réôme's Musica disciplina and tetraphonia in the Musica enchiriadis, but we have no records about their influence except the refuse of tetraphonia among theoretic authors of the 11th century), any theoretic perspective which observes changes of the tonus within the monodic melos (this was rather an experimental field in the polyphonic practice of florid organum).

Wolfram, G., 2001. "Fragen der Kontinuität zwischen antiker und byzantinischer Musiktheorie." In Cantus Planus: Papers read at the ninth meeting. Budapest: Magyar Tudomanyos Akademia, pp. 575–584. Available at: CP 1998.

Erevnidis, P., 2006. “'In the Name of the Mode': Intervallic Content, Nomenclature and Numbering of the Modes." In L. Dobszay, ed. Papers read at the 12th Meeting of the IMS Study Group “Cantus Planus” Lillafüred/Hungary, 2004. Aug. 23–28. Budapest: Institute for Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, pp. 93–114. Available at: CP 2004.

By the way, the category Greek music had been removed. No doubt that the living tradition of Orthodox monodic chant is an important part of Greek music (similar to traditional forms like makamlar in Turkey), but the same can be said about all other countries of the Balkans including Middle East. Better to add more categories than to remove this one. I fear, you will get into trouble otherwise, which is easier to avoid. —Platonykiss (talk) 21:57, 6 February 2014 (UTC)


 * (Adding this after the message below) Regarding removal of category Greek music I'm not sure what you mean. The article still belongs to that category. Contact Basemetal here 00:04, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Greetings. Thank you for this detailed answer. But I have another question:


 * If we move away from the theory to the musical material, the "how the melodies go" so to speak, can you say there is continuity or a break between the very few relics of ancient Greek music and the melodies of Byzantine music?


 * In other words is it that Byzantine musicians simply attempted to acclimatize theoretical concepts from ancient Greek theory without really be familiar with ancient Greek musical practice or are we talking of some continuity from ancient Greek musical culture and practice to the Byzantine musical culture?


 * Contact Basemetal here 23:34, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Especially Byzantinists outside Greece once tended to the polemic view that the Byzantine culture was a decline of Hellenism, but also in Greece we find still the strong attitude of the so-called "ethnikoi" to neglect the Byzantine culture, mainly because of Christian censorship against certain philosophical schools which had been regarded as heretic and pagan.

During the 19th century Byzantine Music was disregarded as a kind of misunderstood or even "Chinese Hellenism", but the negative judgement was also based on certain misunderstandings of the chant sources, their melodies had been disregarded, simply because the neumes did not tell us, "how the melodies go". Today we understand that it is not enough to sing phonic steps, because they do not represent the melodies itself, rather a sketch of a musical composition. Only the thesis of the melos creates the melody, which means that the melos was part of an oral tradition which is lost today.

During the 20th century certain philologues who founded the famous Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae series, even established on this misunderstanding a puristic concept of Byzantine chant based on the aesthetics of "Gregorian chant" which had nothing to offer to traditional Orthodox singers, because every change to the chromatic or enharmonic genos was regarded as an Ottoman corruption (see the essay by Alexander Lingas). If you like, it is a Western European projection on Byzantine culture, but it is in fact the Latin middle ages which had a very poor idea of Ancient Greek harmonics, and I guess that this profound ignorance is the real problem.

Byzantine culture was once admired by the Islamic caliphate, not only because of Hellenism, but also because it had exchanges with the whole Mediterranean, Persia, China, and the Middle Orient. Concerning Hellenism, the changes to the enharmonic and chromatic genus (metabole kata genos) had been well known, but it became part of Arab music which had been characterised as a synthesis of the best taken from the Byzantine tradition of Damascus and the best taken from Persian musicians.

The Hagiopolites defined the octoechos as 8 diatonic echoi and 2 phthorai ("destroyers") were needed to leave the diatonic genus, which was unlikely a Constantinopolitan nor an Ancient Greek concept, but rather a monastic one of Palestine (inspired by liturgical practices of Sephardic cantors). It was imitated anyway by Arab musicians, and some composers also avoided certain "exotic models", which were regarded as excluded, similar to John of Damascus himself. It should not be overemphasized, because phthora, despite the negative connotation of the word, was a central category of Byzantine music, and it has spread since the 13th century over the meloi, so that the octoechos of the living tradition today has certain echoi which are mostly or entirely defined as enharmonic (tritos, grave mode) or as chromatic (devteros, plagios devteros).

Old Greek music is a very controversial topic, according to Martin Vogel the enharmonic genus was very dominant in Ancient Greek Music. If he was right, the Hagiopolites would be a profound correction, because it regarded the diatonic genus as dominant, but it was probably rather a monastic opposition against the cathedral rite of Constantinople. The earliest manuscripts are papyri, and the largest collection is a Georgian Iadgari (see Frøyshov), these earlier collections prove that not only Mar Saba and Mount Sinai were the centers of the reform, but also monastic hymnodists of Constantinople already contributed to it during th 6th century.

One of their main genres was the heirmologic one, since the 10th century collected in an extra book the "heirmologion." The heirmoi are melodic models to memorize a very complex meter whose strophes had been called odes and the sequence of odes was called canon, because it was the order of the Old Testament canticles. The ode in fact is a poetic structure used for the choir in Ancient Greek drama. So the heirmologic genre was somehow refered to the very early practice of canticle recitation which dominated the morning services at Greek cathedrals, but only a few verses of the bible were used in heirmologic poetry to create a kind of homiletic commentary, and this poetry was made over the melodic model of the heirmos, which was troped by syllables according to its metric structure.

I am quite sure, that there was a certain continuity, but it had been also innovative at the same time.

Vogel, M., 1963. Die Enharmonik der Griechen (Part 1: Tonsystem und Notation. Part 2: Der Ursprung der Enharmonik). Düsseldorf: Verlag der Gesellschaft zur Förderung der systematischen Musikwissenschaft.

Frøyshov, S.S.R., 2012. "The Georgian Witness to the Jerusalem Liturgy: New Sources and Studies." In B. Groen, S. Hawkes-Teeples, & S. Alexopoulos, eds. Inquiries into Eastern Christian Worship: Selected Papers of the Second International Congressof the Society of Oriental Liturgy (Rome, 17-21 September 2008). Eastern Christian Studies. Leuven, Paris, Walpole: Peeters, pp. 227–267. Available at: academia.edu.

Lingas, A., 1999. "Performance Practice and the Politics of Transcribing Byzantine Chant." Acta Musicae Byzantinae: Revista Centrului De Studii Bizantine Iaşi 6, pp.56–76 at: analogion.com. —Platonykiss (talk) 15:53, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * One last question: Is there a reasonably recent and up-to-date broad overview of the topic, since Egon Wellesz's "History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography" from 1961 is more than 50 years old and probably completely outdated? And would you say that "History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography" is part of what you call "a puristic concept of Byzantine chant based on the aesthetics of Gregorian chant" and "a Western European projection on Byzantine culture"? Also I'd like to know what you think of Wellesz's discussion of the 3rd c. AD "Hymn to the Holy Trinity", especially Wellesz's position that the melody of the "Hymn to the Holy Trinity" is a kind of proto-Byzantine melody that stands in contrast to the other melodies (Seikilos, Delphic Hymns, Mesomedes, etc.) left from ancient Greek music?


 * Contact Basemetal here 19:10, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

I have a great respect for Miloš Velimirović, Egon Wellesz and Henry Julius Wetenhall Tillyard. The second volume "New Oxford History of Music" in general is a fine book, but there are some points, where they were fundamentally wrong and it is also a lack of taste which became like an epidemy in Italy, and a certain disrespect for the living tradition of psaltic art, at Istanbul in particular, was simply caused by a Western megalomania. For these questions, I advice the essay about oktoechos by Gerhard Neubauer, which you can grasp from my oktoechos articles, which is my introduction for you here at wikipedia. I also advice Oliver Strunk's collection of "Essays on music in the Byzantine World," which is a very fine school, even if also his introduction into the Byzantine tonal system needs to be updated.

Further on Chrysanthos' "Mega Theoretikon" ist still worth reading, if you have problems with the original, there is also a translation into English by Katy Romanou (just look on her account at academia.edu). There is also a more recent book, a collection of essays as well, but suitable to serve as an introduction, Oliver Gerlach's "Studies of the Dark Continent in European Music History: Collected Essays on Traditions of Religious Chant in the Balkans" Rome 2011. And the same page at Analogion, where you found Alexander Lingas' article, has plenty other useful articles. Please try "Mediaeval Byzantine Chant: Speculative reconstructions: story in a nutshell".—Platonykiss (talk) 00:50, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Phos hilaron in a third-century papyrus fragment
Sorry that I did not answer yet your question about this early papyrus. It is indeed very early, and recently also Lykourgos Angelopoulos made a project about the hymn of the adolescents in the furnace (the seventh and eight of the biblical canticles of the Old Testament) reconstructed according to one of the Oxyrhynchus papyri. I guess it was one of his last projects before he died.

I know the studies by the Canadian Franc Gayte about this early hymn, which he dates even to the 2nd century, but he obviously did not know this early notated source. The earliest papyri with notated Greek liturgical hymns I knew used the Alypian notation, but this is too early, the scribe could not know it. It must be the older notation system which was already criticised by Aristoxenos.

One obvious error of the text is, that somebody wrote:

"The notation is Hypolydian, and employs the rhythmic symbols macron (diseme), leimma + macron, stigme, hyphen, and colon."

I do not understand, what "Hypolydian notation" is supposed to mean, Lydian is a tribal name, but Hypolydian means a certain tropus, which according to Western medieval theory would be C—F—c (see the link to the article), but according to the Ancient Greek system F—b—f with the tritone as mese. According to the 18th century system (but not according to Chrysanthos and his reform in 1814), echos varys (the diatonic plagios tritos) was still intoned on the same scale (traditional singers who died during the 1980s like Thrasyvoulos Stanitsas and Dionysios Firfiris, continued it and they still have followers like Demosthenis Paikopoulos who went to Piraeus during the Cyprus crisis), but the tritos pentachord was F—c ot B flat—F.

If this is the ambitus of the composition is the same, we cannot know, whether it was already classified as "hypolydios" as a kind of tonality which defines a base and final degree, originally tropus meant something different like an echos. But it is true that there is a kind of modality based on F with a finalis G, especially used for Greek or bilingual hymns within Latin liturgical traditions of medieval Southern Italy.

φῶς ἱλαρὸν since the 18th century is a hymn, which is either composed in a kind of diatonic echos mesos tetartos (a kind of E mode as medial tetartos within the pentachord C—G) or soft chromatic echos devteros. --Platonykiss (talk) 13:12, 19 May 2016 (UTC)


 * It is actually another hymn. Here are two reconstructions:


 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnIxAz9gCno


 * by Gregorio Paniagua (Atrium Musicae de Madrid).


 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6cTHpXj-KU


 * by Lykourgos Angelopoulos (Greek-Byzantine Choir). Platonykiss (talk) 15:25, 22 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the links. Btw you must understand modern Greek because the supposed "French subtitles" for the second video are a joke. I do too (to some extent). I was surprised to hear Angelopoulos attempt a "reconstructed" pronunciation (even though it is very imperfect). Usually Greeks prefer to use the Byzantine pronunciation. Basemetal  11:09, 23 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Of the Polis, right, but it is medieval. I guess for this early source you can really use Koiné pronunciation, but what the philologists do sounds rather Ancient Greek (probably more adapted to the recitation of Sophokles). You can see from Carolingian Latin transliteration of Greek that the contemporary Greek pronunciation was not far from the modern one. Platonykiss (talk) 14:49, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Section "Byzantine Empire" of the article Musical Notation
Dear Basemetal

Much more problematic than the article "Byzantine music" is actually this section. I made the most necessary changes, maybe you would like to have a look. If it is said this way, it is indeed simply wrong. Platonykiss (talk) 11:01, 28 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Finally got around to reading your corrections from August 2015. Looks good to me. But by "Persian music and its music theoretical transfer in Sanskrit" I don't know what you're referring to. I am not aware that there is any Persian influence on the way say the Samaveda is chanted or on the earliest secular music of India, as described in the Natyashastra for example. Maybe you mean the other way round? Basemetal  11:05, 23 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I had a long correspondence with Eckhard Neubauer about the Old Persian system which was based on 7 advar (sg. parde), it has nothing to do with dastgah. He thinks that there was a Sanskrit transfer. I met a Dhrupad expert who told me about medieval Sanskrit manuscripts where a "God of seven notes" was mentioned. It could be the link, but I do not know who really studied this. Right now, he is about to publish his book where he also mentions links to Oriental traditions. Platonykiss (talk) 14:57, 25 April 2017 (UTC)


 * What do you mean exactly by "the Old Persian [musical] system"? I'm only familiar with the use of Old Persian as a linguistic term, either for the language or the script of the Achaemenid inscriptions. Do you just mean the system which preceded the current one? As far as I know the theoretical framework of the current Persian system goes back to the late Sasanian period. So do you mean an earlier system in use in Sasanian Iran? Basemetal  22:13, 27 April 2017 (UTC)


 * That system which existed between the 9th and 15th centuries according to the Christian time scale. It is not so easy, because dastgah and maqām are used by Persian musicians, even shashmaqam (in the Eastern region), and muğam in Azerbaijan, but all therapeutic treatises treat a system of twelve modes, whether in Arabic or in Persian. --Platonykiss (talk) 01:38, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Mozart's use of prefabricated chunks of material
One of the things that really distinguishes Mozart from his contemporaries (except Haydn) is his ability to never give you quite what you expected. (In fact, this is how I passed with 9/10 a certain online test asking you to distinguish Mozart and Salieri – and the one I got wrong was an excerpt from La clemenza di Tito, which famously manages to be boring and beautiful simultaneously.) Yet one other thing I somewhat contradictorily also love in Mozart is all those prefabricated chunks of material that you get to add brilliance near cadences in concerti, or in vocal coloratura in arias. I also love all those sequences when you know in exactly how many bars you will get back to the recapitulation (e.g. KV 467, first movement). The idea of knowing exactly what is coming and yet taking enjoyment in it, because it is so beautiful and exciting and hard, and you know that every time you hear it – I love the contrast it makes from the total control you need with Romantic tiny motives. Because when you are going straight from the bedrock of the tonal system, the triads, and using that as the logical material that sparks off everything – well, not only can you have a wealth of melodies, but you can also work miracles with the most banal material (e.g. KV 451, KV 503). I wonder how many people actually feel this way, since it is one of the things that I notice often get remarked on when Mozart gets critiqued by people with very Romantic sensibilities, which is something I hear a lot more than I would like to. And I wonder if you could have an atonal equivalent to this, likewise based on the foundation of the musical language in question.

(I think we all know where this is from, but I think we also realise that this would make sense in just about any Mozart work in B-flat major and 4/4.) Double sharp (talk) 13:59, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * We do? What is it? Basemetal  23:46, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * It's from the Queen of the Night's first aria in Die Zauberflöte. And I realise that I seem to have ran past my own question, which is now no longer obviously placed: is there an atonal equivalent for this kind of clichéd scale-and-arpeggio material? Double sharp (talk) 03:46, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Atonal as in serial atonal? Basemetal  10:26, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, that is one possibility. The other obvious possibility – "free atonality" along the lines of Schoenberg's Erwartung – would seem to cry out completely for athematicism (as indeed Schoenberg uses there, notwithstanding the quotes from his early D-minor lied Am Wegrand). There's two extremes that could negate this use of off-the-shelf components: either a motivic web so complex that everything is motivically connected, or total athematicism. Double sharp (talk) 13:50, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * BTW, I cannot stop myself from going on down this sidetrack: I always also thought that this sort of standard coloratura cliché material was one reason why the Queen of the Night was so effective. It nicely captured the lack of the human simple expression that you see in the folksy music for Papageno or the more heartfelt music of the other characters. (I always thought Cristina Deutekom was the best at this role for that reason, making her voice almost sound like an instrument – and indeed this sort of writing comes up as well in Mozart's instrumental concerti. I wish she had sung Popoli, though I understand that the G6 is almost certainly asking too much from the performer. The Mozart Companion suggests that tenors might try some of the soprano arias an octave down, though I would note that one would have to be a true male alto to handle most of them without sounding impossibly strained, and even a mezzo-soprano for Popoli an octave down.) If one were to come up with a linguistic expression for the kind of expression that involves this sort of musical writing, it would be as if we were always finding some way to quote epic poetry in our speech, instead of finding something tailored to the conversation. And yet, what works absolutely terribly for music – actual plots, actual character development, actual literary writing – works perfectly in writing, and vice versa. I dare you to find a Romantic opera that does not completely disfigure the literary masterpieces used as source material, and sometimes even for the better, like Musorgsky's Boris Godunov. These two arts: so similar, yet so different! Double sharp (talk) 14:09, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't know how much la Motte Fouqué's novella Undine qualifies as a masterpiece but as far as I'm concerned Hoffmann's opera does not disfigure it. But I am reminded of a question I've had. Romantic and classical German opera did not use recitative and relied on spoken dialog between sung numbers to push the action along. In all the cases I can recall, when the actors start speaking the music stops, i.e. the spoken dialog is never accompanied by music. Can you think of any case where spoken dialog is accompanied by music in the background? Basemetal  23:46, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, there are always exceptions. If I were desperately trying to publish something about this, I'd probably make reference to "outliers" and promptly forget about them. (^_^) I'm also somewhat biased towards the Classical era, mostly because that was the period I listened most to as a child. (Given that I find 20th-century music interests me more than typical middle- and late-Romantic works, I wonder if someone actually born in the 1760s would feel the same way if he were teleported to the present day.)
 * I can think of Schubert's melodrama Die Zauberharfe, D 644, as well as the song Abschied von der Erde, D 829. Perhaps one could also count the interruptions by Belmonte of Osmin's song in Mozart's Die Entführung, as well as Papageno counting to three before he resolves to commit suicide (interrupted) in Die Zauberflöte. And, of course, Idomeneo (but that's Italian). Double sharp (talk) 03:46, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Idomeneo has spoken dialog? Basemetal  10:26, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * What you have just witnessed is an example of DS having a momentary memory lapse. It appears that DS is half-right even when in the wrong, because there may have been a spoken aside in an earlier version of Idomeneo (link). No, I was thinking of the German Zaïde. Forgive me for confusing the two – my lame excuse is that they were written in consecutive years.
 * Capping off this dramatic demonstration of fail, I also managed to forget Beethoven's Fidelio. How shameful. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go sit in a corner and cry. (^_^) Double sharp (talk) 13:47, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * You're supposed to go kneel in a corner. Facing the corner. This is better. I can lend you my dunce cap. Fidelio has got music over spoken words? Where? Basemetal  15:52, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I've found one answer at Melodrama: the grave-digging scene. Is that the one you had in mind? I hadn't realized that's what melodrama originally was . Hmm. To think that I even tried to edit that article . But to be fair, all I did was trying to restore something. I didn't really contribute anything. The reason I thought of this technique (which I now know is called "melodrama") when you mentioned Mozart opera writing above was that I remembered reading some years ago some of Mozart's letters to his family (particularly to his father) where he described that technique and thought it was awesome (at least that's what he says in that letter) so I thought he might have ended up trying it himself. I don't think he used the word though. In fact it sounded in that letter like Mozart had never seen and was not even aware of the existence of that technique. So that letter must have predated Zaide. Basemetal  17:13, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Something else
Since you were wondering about off-the-shelf components in atonal music and since I know absolutely nothing about atonal music I perused a few of the relevant articles (or more accurately tried to) just to get an idea of what you had in mind. I immediately hit potholes (in the guise of an undefined terms):


 * What are "interval-preserving transformations"? Do they mean this: the transformation T is said to be interval-preserving iff for any row t0, ..., t11, the interval between pitch class ti and ti+1 and the one between T(ti) and T(ti+1) are the same? Because if that's what they mean I don't see how retrogradation can be a pitch preserving transformation.
 * And by the way, does the interval between the last and first pitch classes of the row (t11 and t0) have any importance? In other words must the row be seen more as a circle (for which you would have picked an orientation and a starting point) than a sequence?
 * And also: is the interval between pitch classes (in the sense that is assumed in those articles) a number between 0 and 11 or a number between 0 and 6? I mean is the interval concept (in this context) antisymmetric, that is the interval between say C and D is 2 but the interval between D and C is 10? Or is the interval in both cases 2? Indeed you could see the interval as the distance between two pitches on an orientated circle (orientated clockwise say) or the distance on a non orientated circle (always choosing the shortest possibility whatever the orientation). Which is it?

Basemetal 13:19, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Possible further addition to the Don Byrd canon, but would like further research before I dare to communicate it
Earliest accent signs: Haydn, Piano Trios Hob:XV/27 and 28 (1797). Before 1797, Haydn writes fz instead. Double sharp (talk) 04:39, 16 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Yeah, you've got to be careful with Don. If haven't checked things properly he'll make you kneel in a corner with a dunce hat, or, worse, a French bonnet d'âne, which looks a lot worse (for the intended purpose). But I think you can relax. His last contribution is from beginning February. The fz stands for? "Forza"? (As in "Forza Italia!"). And what are those new accent signs? Things like this: > ? For which part are they used? Are these autographs? Basemetal  10:10, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * fz for forzato, probably. These [>] signs are in the first editions, which were presumably proofread by the composer. Double sharp (talk) 10:18, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * What part are they used for? Piano? Strings? Basemetal  10:25, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Can't remember. Also it is unfortunately moot because the String Quartet Op. 76 No. 2 (1796–7) has them too and is earlier (this is why I didn't dare to say it yet)... Double sharp (talk) 10:28, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * It appears I will indeed need to kneel in a corner with the dunce hat, as I found some in the third and fourth movements of Haydn's String Quartet Op. 50 No. 1 (1787). Oops! I think I have to go through the earlier quartets too to make sure now... Double sharp (talk) 14:53, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
 * That's ok. Dunce caps go for as low as 1 buck 50 these days (depending on quality, stylishness, etc.). Alternatively you could just hold both your earlobes between the thumb and the index of the respective hand. That's even cheaper. Basemetal  21:51, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Modern Hebrew words stressed on the antepenult
Almost all of them are loan words, and the technical word you are looking for - is מלעיל דמלעיל. In principle, there may be also the property of מלעיל דמלעיל דמלעיל (and so forth), provided that there is a loan word (e.g. a proper noun and the like) having that property - in any foreign language from which Hebrew borrows that word.

I've written "almost all of them", rather than "all of them", because the Bible contains two rare words which may linguistically be regarded as מלעיל דמלעיל words, provided that a חטף (e.g. a short /ă/ as opposed to the longer one /a/ - or a short /ĕ/ as opposed to the longer one /e/ - and the like), should be regarded as a "full" vowel (it's not though - as far as Hebrew is concerned). The two words are: 1) הָאֹהֱלָה (being the third Hebrew word in Genesis 18 6) - pronounced /ha'ohĕla/ - and meaning the Allative case of "the tent", and: 2) צֹעֲרָה (being the last Hebrew word in Genesis 19, 23) - pronounced /'Ṣoʕăra/ in Biblical Hebrew ( /'Tsoʕăra/ in Formal Modern Hebrew) - and meaning the Allative case of (the place) "Zoar". 141.226.217.81 (talk) 06:42, 18 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Doesn't the modern pronunciation of משהו ("something") or מישהו ("someone") in Modern Hebew stress the antepenult? "Ma-she-hu"? "Mi-she-hu"? Basemetal  08:04, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * You're absolutely correct. I didn't pay attention to those words, because I was mainly thinking about Biblical Hebrew (even though you asked about Modern Hebrew).
 * Thanks to those excellent examples you've provided, I can now think also about מלעיל דמלעיל דמלעיל, being: משהויים, pronounced /'maʃehuyim/, and meaning the plural of "something". You can find this word in the Babylonian Talmud (Eruvin 87a). 141.226.217.81 (talk) 08:09, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Plural of "something"? Like "some things"? Is the surrounding context Aramaic? So a Hebrew word (or madeup word) used inside an Aramaic sentence? Basemetal  08:31, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * This word could have meant "somethings", if English Grammar had allowed to use such a construction.
 * The surrounding context is a Hebrew one, e.g. in the Hebrew sentence in Eruvin 87a, even though the word ibid. is משהויין, pronounced /'maʃehuyin/, which ends with an originally Aramaic suffix - sometimes used also in rare Hebrew cases e.g. נישואין and גירושין (and משהויין) and the like.
 * in Modern Hebrew, the word משהויים (as well as משהויין) is not in a common use. It was used many centuries ago though. Nowadays, it's only used in Talmudic contexts (e.g. when studying Eruvin 87a), and is also used in Jewish religious Law (e.g. in Shulchan Aruch). 141.226.217.81 (talk) 08:58, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

As for babysitter: That's true, this word being one of the loan words I was referring to - in the beginning (even though it's not a proper noun). As for אמבולנסים: The stress is very seldom on the first syllable. This word is usually pronounced as a regular מלעיל, the stress being on the "ְלַנ".

141.226.217.81 (talk) 09:27, 18 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Are you saying that in אמבולנס the stress is מלרע or are you saying that the stress shifts from singular to plural? Basemetal  09:36, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Shifts, because the singular is pronounced as a מלעיל דמלעיל. Anyways, if I hear anybody pronounce the plural as a מלעיל דמלעיל דמלעיל (the stress being on the first syllable), then I will still regard them as native Hebrew speakers, although that form is much less common than the מלעיל form. 141.226.217.81 (talk) 09:48, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Thnx. But why didn't answer at the RD? Basemetal  14:23, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Because the RD is protected right now. 141.226.217.81 15:30, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I note, for the Biblical examples you mentioned above, that in both cases we're dealing with allatives of a מילה סגולית where the last vowel was replaced by the corresponding חטף whether חטף סגול for סגול in the first case or חטף פתח for פתח in the second case. when in other משקלים there would have been a שווא there. I wonder if these are the only examples of allatives for מילים סגוליות in the Bible. Btw what is the Hebrew word for "allative"? (Specifically the Hebrew case of the Biblical examples you mentioned and other phrases such as השמיימה and so on, not the Hebrew equivalent of the general linguistic term) Basemetal  10:10, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The Modern Hebrew term, for allatives in Hebrew, is ה' הכיוון, or ה' המגמה. The Talmudic description of this phenomenon (noticed more than fifteen centuries ago), is: כל תיבה שצריכה למ"ד בתחילתה, הטיל לה הכתוב ה"א בסופה. See Yebamoth 13b.
 * There are many examples of allatives for מילים סגוליות in the Bible. Here are a few examples:
 * נֶגְבָּה (e.g. Exodus 26 18), from נֶגֶב. Similarly, הַנֶּגְבָּה (e.g. Genesis 12 9), from הַנֶּגֶב.
 * קֵדְמָה (e.g. Genesis 25 6), from קֵדֶם.
 * חֹרְשָה (1 Samuel 23 16), from חֹרֶש.
 * גֹּרְנָה (Micah 4 12), from גֹּרֶן.
 * גֹּשְנָה (Genesis 46 28-29), from גֹּשֶן.
 * By the way, if נסוג אחור examples are counted as well, then one could claim that the Bible contains also מלעיל דמלעיל examples with no חטף, e.g. נערמו מים (Exodus 15 8). However, the word נערמו is pronounced ibid. as a מלעיל דמלעיל word - just because of the following מלעיל word (מים), whereas נערמו is regularly pronounced as a מלרע word, and that's why I didn't mention נסוג אחור examples (like נערמו מים and many others) in my first response. Additionally, please notice that the נסוג אחור phenomenon is Biblical only, and does not exist in Modern Hebrew (nor in Medieval Hebrew and likewise).
 * 141.226.217.81 13:00, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Holy Moly! You seem to have the מקרא at the tip of your fingers. Or do you have some fancy software? Or are you using a concordance such as אבן שושן 's? Ok. How bout allatives of מילים סגוליות whose second radical is א ה ח ע ? Basemetal  05:31, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's any software or any manual that may help you find allatives in Hebrew (or allatives of מלים סגוליות, or allatives of מילים סגוליות whose second radical is א ה ח ע).
 * The מקרא contains only two allatives of מילים סגוליות whose second radical is א ה ח ע, being: הָאֹהֱלָה and צֹעֲרָה. Modern Hebrew has no allatives of the kind you asked about.
 * By the way, not every מלעיל word must be a מילה סגולית. Think about: הֶן תָּקֹמְנָה (They will get up. Feminine), !שֵבְנָה (Sit down! 2nd pronoun Plural Feminine), and so forth.
 * Where is your Hebrew from? Can you also speak (and not only read/write)? 141.226.217.81 07:05, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * My Hebrew is from סטימצקי. Can't speak. (Blame it on סטימצקי.) Apologies for appearing to doubt. You should take part in a competition. Like this one. Btw that "Swedish" is crap. That supposed "Swede" has never heard Swedish in his life. But since you're so good with תנך et תלמוד and stuff I wanna ask you something I've always wanted to ask someone who knew Aramaic et Hebrew. I strongly suspect this, this and this is most probably not real Aramaic. It must be a joke. Hebrew disguised as Aramaic for comedic purpose. But since I'm not fluent enough I don't get the jokes. Could you tell me in a word what's funny about those clips, beyond the fact they're pretending to be speaking Aramaic when they obviously are not? Basemetal  21:33, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * It's a sketch comedy on the Israeli TV, presenting a parody of a well known Israeli game show. The original game show (not shown in the links you gave) is in Hebrew, but the parody (shown in those links) is in a mixture of about 95% of real Aramaic words (most of which are taken from the Talmud and from the Haggada), along with 5% of gibberish, but almost all of the sentences are meaningless, or the linkage between them is meaningless, so it's all literary nonsense. The joke is the very parody, so whoever watches Israeli TV - and is familiar with the original game show - is supposed to enjoy its parody.
 * I didn't understand the סטימצקי issue. I understand you read סטימצקי books, but who taught you to read Hebrew, and why Hebrew and not Swedish or Japanese? 141.226.217.81 23:12, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Why not Hebrew? Reminds me of the joke about that woman who bought her husband a blue tie and a red tie. When he showed up at Xmas wearing the blue tie she asked: "You don't like the red one?" In the past couple of years, given my limited amount of time, I've been trying to pick up Hebrew, Hindi and Japanese. Why those three and not, say, Korean, Russian and Italian? I'm sure these three would also be extremely interesting, but I got to those three first. In Hebrew I'm basically self-taught. Whatever outside help I got is negligible. The סטימצקי thing was a joke. You'd asked "Where is your Hebrew from?" as if Hebrew was something you can get somewhere, like a shirt or a pair of shoes. But maybe you were translating a Hebrew phrase. What is the name of the game show that was being parodied? Basemetal 08:06, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Both Hindi and Japanese are highly important languages, much more than Hebrew (if we disregard the importance of the Bible in the western culture), and I guess both of them are also more difficult to learn than Hebrew (which is much more difficult to learn than English of course). I also guess Japanese is more difficult to learn than Hindi. I'm not sure of that, though. I've always wanted to learn Japanese (along with some other East Asian languages, mainly tonal ones), because of some of its grammatical categories (e.g the pronoun system), that are much different from those in the "western" languages.
 * As for the parody: the theatrical scenery imitates that of גלגל המזל, but the intonation of speech imitates that of מי רוצה להיות מיליונר.
 * 141.226.217.81 12:38, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't pick a language by choosing it from a list of "important" languages. I pick it when I run into enough "cultural products" that appeal to me and make the culture and society that produced them seem interesting enough to make it worth my time to try and know it more from the inside. As for the difficulty I would say Hindi is the easiest (even though it has a coupla sounds that may pose a challenge to Westerners), then Hebrew and then Japanese, although Japanese is mostly difficult because of its writing system, the rest (pronunciation, grammar) being fairly easy. Basemetal  14:31, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * As for the "cultural products", as you call them: So I suppose you have learnt Greek Latin Arabic and Mandarine (or at least some of them) as well, haven't you? Unless you plan to learn them in the future...
 * I've always thought Hindi is more difficult than Hebrew, because Hindi uses cases (nominative, oblique and vocative). Disregarding the allative case, Hebrew (like English) uses cases in pronouns only, While Hindi uses them in nouns as well. As for Japanese: yes, its orthography is very difficult to learn, but I think its pronoun system is not less complex. Which language (of the three) do you understand better? 141.226.217.81 18:44, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I have no plan at the moment to ever study nor have I ever seriously studied Greek, Latin, Arabic or Chinese. I respect classical cultures as much as anyone but what I meant by "cultural products" are those of societies in existence today (movies, songs, cartoons, manga, television, newspapers, and so on). Chinese and Arabic besides being classical cultures are of course also cultures and societies of today but I haven't found much that appealed to me there. Just as an example: after years of intensive search I've found one recent Chinese pop song I liked. All the others I've heard sounded like elevator music to me. Hell, I've found more songs I liked in Indonesian. Of the three I understand Hebrew the best although I'm starting to understand Hindi better and better, especially in songs and movies where the Hindi is relatively simpler. Since you are a native Hebrew speaker you will probably never understand the problems that Hebrew can give someone who has never been exposed to a Semitic language. Even the simple fact that the meaning of words is concentrated in their consonant skeleton and that manipulating the morphology and word derivation of that language requires you to be able to extract it is something that takes getting used to. In fact here's a good exercise for beginning students in Hebrew or Arabic. As soon as they've studied the phonology of the language, before they've even studied much vocabulary or grammar they should do the following exercise: you give them two words and they have to produce, orally and at lightning speed, a form using the שורש of the one and the משקל of the other: for example from תפוח and מדרגה they would have to produce דרוג and מתפחה. I doesn't matter if what they get are nonsense and not actual words of the language. The point is to get used to the mechanism until it becomes second nature. That will make learning the morphology, the word derivation and the vocabulary of the language much easier. Incidentally if you could help me with some more Hebrew: I was never able to find out what the real title of the following very old song was. Even though the YouTube video gives the title as רד הלילה (what does רד mean btw?) these lyrics I've found on the net give it as רב הלילה (and what would that mean?). So who's right and who's wrong? Basemetal  22:18, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * What cultural products appeal to you, of Hindi origin? Japanese origin? (Hebrew origin?) Can you give me examples? As far as I'm concerned, I'm much interested in Hinduism (and also in Shinto to some extent), and I really enjoy watching National geographic movies about India (and also about East Asia generally), but they are not an originally Indian cultural product - as they were made by westerners.
 * You write: "You will probably never understand the problems that Hebrew can give someone who has never been exposed to a Semitic language ". Actually, as a linguist, I've always been quite aware of the great difficulty beginners have to face when learning any language whose morphology is based on roots, but I thought Hindi was more difficult to learn - because of the cases.
 * The exercise you present is interesting. have you read about it somewhere?
 * The title of the song you've asked about, is הורה מחודשת (i.e. "renewed Horah". Please notice that both words are מלעיל).
 * The first sentence heard on Youtube is רד הלילה רב שירנו, but the correct sentence - as was originally written by the poet (Yaakov Orland), is רב הלילה רב שירנו. He said that explicitly when he was interviewed in 1983. You can read the original interview in this link.
 * The word רב is usually used as an adjective - meaning "much" (or as a noun meaning Rabbi), but in poetry (rather than in spoken language) it may also be a verb, meaning "be much". In the interview, the poet explained he had meant "the night is much, i.e. thin, and our song is great ". So, it seems like he borrowed the verb (originally meaning "be much") for close meanings ("be thin" and "be great"). I assume, by "the night is thin" he meant "the darkness is thin" - i.e. is touchable (see Exodus 10 21).
 * As for רַד: it's a very rare Biblical verb (Judges 19 11: היום רד, literally: "the day went down" i.e. "the sun went down"). It's sometimes used in poetry, but is never used in spoken language. It means ירד, so "הלילה רד" means "the night came down" - or something like that. It's not clear though, whether the original root of רד is רוד (as a rare alternative of the regular root ירד), or the original root of רד is indeed the regular ירד - but its first letter is rarely omitted (once in the whole Bible) in 3rd Pronoun Singular Past, for some unknown reason.
 * 141.226.217.81 09:32, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks again for your help, really. All this information you provided is very valuable and not easy to get at. It's great to have a Hebrew native speaker within reach. And you obviously know Hebrew, both modern and Biblical, inside out. I must say I don't have that for Hindi or Japanese, unfortunately. In general when I needed information about Hebrew, I either went to the RD (there's user Deborahjay for modern Hebrew and user הסרפד for Biblical Hebrew, neither of them native speakers though), or I used to (and still, whenever the need arises, plan to) go to user Amire80 who I understand is originally a native speaker of Russian but lives in Jerusalem and his Hebrew is excellent, top notch, native level. But it's great to have you. Unfortunately you haven't registered, so I can't leave questions at your talk page. Why don't you register? It would be easier to get in touch with you. So you're a linguist?

The exercise I described I didn't find anywhere. In fact I made it up as I was typing my response to you. I nevertheless think it could be of use.

As to the cultural products (I can see my catchphrase is catching on but I do think that's good way to describe those things, if I'm allowed to say so myself, as they are usually considered "lowlier" than High Culture) it would not be difficult to point to you a small sampling in those three languages. However your mentioning Hinduism and Shinto makes me a bit concerned that you're looking in the wrong direction as far as I am concerned. As I said I respect classical and traditional cultures a lot. But that's not what I am interested in and what I'm trying to get at by studying those languages.

So I'm afraid if I list a few of those things you'll be very disappointed. There's no philosophy, no religion, no high culture there. It's popular culture, pop music, movies, TV serials (yeah, even soaps), cartoons, etc.

It'd also be very hard to come up with a representative sample. There's dozens and dozens of those things I've found I liked in those three languages. That's precisely because I found so many things that I liked in those three that I decided to put in the time and effort to attempt to study them a bit more in depth. Just because I've found a couple of songs that I like in a language would not be a sufficient reason to attempt to learn it. I happened to mention above I found a few songs I like in Indonesian and Korean. But I'm obviously not going to start learning Indonesian just because there's three Indonesian songs I like. All this to say that it will be very hard indeed to even make a choice.

Basemetal 11:48, 24 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Why should I register, if I don't edit? Anyways, you can find hundreds of native Hebrew speakers, at [Category:User he-N]. Alternatively, you can address me on your talk page.
 * Actually, I'm a mathematician, but...yes, I'm also a linguist, not of Hebrew, but rather of artificial languages, e.g. computer languages and the like.
 * The exercise you've made up is interesting. Maybe I will use it (70% of the inhabitants of the town where I live are immigrants from USA, and I think it may help some of them). Maybe I will use also "cultural products" (as opposed to high culture)...
 * I see you like music. Me too. Here are three Hebrew songs (of my very long playlist). If (and only if) you have the time, try to find something in common (from a musical viewpoint) between these songs: 1. השמלה הסגולה (here is its playback with full orchestra, and here is another playback with piano only); 2. שוב היא כאן; and finally: 3. מה עושות האיילות.
 * 141.226.217.81 11:28, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Urtext edition article
This article has the fascinating statement "The great danger—not at all hypothetical—is that an interestingly eccentric or even inspired choice on the composer's part will be obliterated by an overzealous editor." Alas I cannot think of an example off the top of my head right now, but I know one that almost happened. In Mozart's Abendempfindung KV 523 (here, have my edition), look at b. 97. Harmonically speaking, the root position is an eccentric choice. Normally Mozart would use I$6 4$ here, and the NMA Critical Report obligingly suggests amending the left hand from F1/F2 to C2/C3. Yet I am quite convinced that F1/F2 is absolutely right. Why? First of all, it would be irresponsible for me as an editor to change it when the only surviving source gives F1/F2. (That source is the first edition, Zwey Deutschen Arien zum Singen beym Clavier, published in 1789, giving KV 523, 524, 476, and 519. The vocal part is in soprano C clef, of course. Like many great works, like the Serenade KV 525 and the Quintets KV 515 and 516, it was composed while Mozart was procrastinating for Don Giovanni; there must be a great life lesson there.) Second, musically speaking (this argument is weaker), I think the root position is particularly inspired. It's almost proto-Berliozian, in how it sounds a little harmonically awkward perhaps, but lends radience to the beautiful vocal melisma. (Regarding Berlioz's use of inversions for colour, even when contrapuntally unwarranted, see No. 4 of Les nuits d'été for a very obvious example. Gaze upon the viola part in b.3–4 and despair!) After all, the singer is singing ...die schönste Perle..., and how can we not let such a moment be drawn out? Who would want it to end? Double sharp (talk) 13:55, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * (This is the wonderful thing about Haydn and Mozart: you can find in them prefigurings of almost anyone you might want.) Double sharp (talk) 13:55, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Remind me again what is that kind of I$6 4$ that follows IV called again? I mean the I$6 4$ that Mozart would normally use there and that according to you he doesn't, opting instead for I$5$ in this particular case? (Had to use a redundant 5 otherwise it looks like I in me, myself and I) And the difference with b. 105 is that there we have V - I - V? Btw, did you typeset the Mozart? Why is the natural in b. 97 in brackets? Basemetal  22:03, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, I typeset this. One would expect a cadential I$6 4$, so that b.97–99 would be V$6–5 4–3$–I, like you see in b.108–109. (Bar 105 isn't really relevant to my point here, since there's no I$6 4$.) But he gives you I$5$ instead. Thus instead of leading from IV to V, which is about the same as ii–V (falling circle of fifths), he has a plagal(!) IV–I motion before the final perfect cadence of V–I.
 * The reason the natural in b. 97 is in brackets is because it is not in the source. However, the flat on the fourth beat is(!). Therefore I figured that since the B♭ was explicitly marked, it seemed likely that the earlier B was intended to be a B♮ (the NMA agrees – it makes more sense as a cambiata figure). Double sharp (talk) 03:50, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * And as to the Berlioz I despair... Yeah, I despair of understanding what's going on... You think everyone's Captain 𝄪 by any chance?... (But at least, let's count our blessings, the transposing instruments are not playing yet, thank God!) What I see is IV - I - ... (the I$5$ again in root position maybe this is why the Mozart example reminded you of this?) and then... I (as in me, myself and I) see a VI with a raised 3rd (what is this called, a V/ii?) then a ii$6 4$ then that V/ii again then back to a ii$6$ then I$6 4$ then V... then blah blah blah, rising scale of D-sharp minor in the 1st violins (almost, except for that little chromatic shit... and I gave up on the chords by now as you can tell) and... and then ii$6 5$ (by this I mean a 1st inversion of ii$7$, and I think this is used for a IV so this is some sort of plagal shit) and it all ends on a I$6 4$ and the transposing instruments are starting to play and... whew... I think I'll wait for you to explain this to me. I've got to go lie down. This gave me a headache. Basemetal  23:28, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oh, the point I was trying to make was a little simpler, and was confined to just b. 3–4, which is V$4 2$–I$5 3$. This is odd because you would expect the in the bass of the first chord to fall to, giving a I6, but that apparently doesn't give the brightness Berlioz wants in b. 4. This is why the Mozart example reminded me of this – it's a I in root position when you would not expect one. But if you want my analysis:
 * F♯: I (b.1–2) → V$4 2$ (b.3) → I (b.4) → V/ii (b.5–6) → ii6 (b.7) → V$6–5 4–3$ (b.8) → ii6 → vii°$6 4$ (b.9) → I6 = V6/IV (b.10) → ii$6 5$ (b.11) → I$6 4$ (b.12) → vii°6/V → V7/V → vii°6 (b.13) → I → V7 (b.14) → I (b.15). The song could be described as a rondo, and this is the repeating theme.
 * From rehearsal number 1: F♯: ii°$4 3$? (b.16) → V? (b.17) → V$6 5$/V? (b.18) → V$4 2$? → V$6 5$? (b.19) → V$4 2$ = d♯: iv6 (b.20). (The question marks because this is in two parts, so we are not entirely sure of the harmonies, and hear everything in F♯ until b.21 when we must have left.) Then d♯: V7 (b.20–22) → vii°$6 5$/iv → iv6 (b.22) → i$6 4$ → VI (b.23) → i$6 4$ → iv (b.24) → V7 (b.25–6). This is the old trick of encircling the dominant around a cadence (see the bass). Then comes the ellipse from V/vi to I (in 1843, this would be a very old and obsolete trope – but that does fit with the lyrics, no?!), and the theme returns.
 * From rehearsal number 2: d♯: i (b.42) → vii°7 (b.43) → i → vii°$6 5$/♮vii (b.44) → ♮vii6 (b.45) → ♮VII6 → vii°$6 5$ (b.46) → i6 → vii°/iv (b.47) → iv → V → V7 (b.48) → VI → Fr.6/VI (b.49) → VI → iv6 (b.50) → V (b.51–52). Then comes the ellipse again, and the theme returns once more, sotto voce ed estinto.
 * (You'll notice I'm inconsistent about whether or not I$6 4$ is a separate chord or not, and that whether I think it is in each of its occurrences depends a lot on the harmonic rhythm. It can be one; it can also not be one. As for my labelling of the secondary French sixth in b.49: since the augmented sixth chord has a bit of a dominant quality to it, I suppose I should mark which chord it is dominant to, like a secondary dominant. So the standard ones would all have "/V" appended.)
 * In fact, the Berlioz also has the inverse example of the Mozart, in b.12 – you hear the I$6 4$ and think the cadence is approaching. It is, but Berlioz then moves the bass away from, and you get a weak vii°–I cadence instead – and after that, the surprise actual V–I! (This is something of what I miss in the analysis of the site you linked to me: I would like to see something of the importance of inversions. Berlioz seemed the best to make this point with.) Whereas in the Mozart, you think the cadence is approaching, and it is, but it gets held up by the stable I$5$ instead of the unstable I$6 4$. Double sharp (talk) 03:50, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Aaaah. Beautiful. So clear. If I wanna be able to follow your remarks here and elsewhere I've got to brush up on harmony (or even theory since I even managed to get my degrees of F-sharp mixed up, and the transposing instruments weren't even playing there, and on top of that, I didn't follow my own advice to use lowercase for minor chords; corrected now, so now those are corrected errors ). Regarding the Berlioz I did understand that you were referring only to bb. 3-4 but I was also asking you for the degree analysis of the whole phrase. Do you perform the analysis by looking at the score and detecting visually, in a pedestrian way, that this chord is this and that chord is that, or do you hear the ii, the V, the IV, etc. as you're reading the score and hearing it in your head? Basemetal  11:07, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * And finally I've got to say something about that sanctimonious editor Opus33 whose prose I can smell in "the great danger, not at all hypothetical, is that etc." This of course is not backed up by any reference. I'm not at all saying that statement is unreasonable or incorrect. All I'm saying when another editor wants to insert the same type of statement, which is reasonable and probably true but for which they don't have at that very moment a reliable source then Opus33 gets on his high horse. Apparently he's the only one allowed to do that. Basemetal  23:41, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I see...that doesn't sound particularly good (understatement). Ah well, I suppose we could try to find an actual source detailing an example where this happened. I did try (that's how we got here), but nothing yet... Double sharp (talk) 03:50, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Relax. I don't at all suggest to revert that statement, or even challenge it. Of course if you have actual examples please add them, but keep in mind that by strict WP standards you'd need the authority of a "reliable source" to actually decide those supressions were wrong (but you have my full encouragement to entirely ignore that requirement!). It is obviously a reasonable statement that Opus33 is making. But it is so general a statement that only a knowledgeable person familiar with musical editions as a whole would have the authority to make (which Opus33 clearly is!) because otherwise, by strict WP standards, if you base that item of information on a secondary source you could only say "so and so stated here that there is the danger, not at all hypothetical, etc." and if you base it on primary sources, that is after having yourself actually compared autographs (or first editions, etc.) and Urtext editions and detected actual examples which you think are proofs of editorial activism you still wouldn't (again by strict WP standards) have any authority to make a general statement but could only say "in this and this and that case the editor of the Urtext edition in their zeal suppressed an autograph reading and this or that authority claims that it was a bad thing to do etc." So we know that in actual fact you cannot always stick to strict WP standards if you want WP to be a moderately readable and useful source of information. (I can give you examples where that was done and the result was that WP is actually misleading). But then why then understand that problem for yourself but then turn around and apply those strict standards to other editors and get on sanctimonious preaches like "we at WP we don't know nothing, all we do is collect statements from reliable sources, blah, blah, blah" that I've seen Opus33 do more than once? That is what irritates me. Anyways, I think that "Urtext edition" article should be turned into a general "Edition of musical texts" article. It already mentions facsimile editions, interpretative editions, etc which have nothing to do with so called Urtext editions. It could be expanded to an article dealing with other issues such as editions that add in the realization of the figured or unfigured bass, or the accidentals of musica ficta, conversion from old notation systems to the current one (e.g. for medieval music), change of clefs, adding speculative information about instrumentation, performance and/or ornementation marks when there are none or not as full, etc. etc. etc. There really is no good reason to have such a specialized topic having its own article when the more general topic doesn't. But is this the first time you've read that article? That sentence which attracted your attention has been there since 2003. Basemetal  11:07, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Just to ruin your productivity entertainingly
I was going to write something about the unjust neglect of Mozart's litanies, but I figured that linking to Hatsune Miku singing the Viaticum from KV 243 (link) would be funnier. Here is the score. (What a strange mix of Baroque harmonic movement and Classically articulated phrasing...)

When I have more time to read through the scores again I might write something about the style in Mozart's late church music (which is basically KV 341, 427, 618, and 626). He really does write church music in an astonishing mixture of Baroque and Classical styles that sometimes even seems to foreshadow Romanticism... Double sharp (talk) 05:41, 9 October 2016 (UTC)


 * At the beginning of the Viaticum you have tasto solo. Then at the beginning of Pignus you have a bunch of 1s in the figuring (editorially supplied). But isn't tasto solo and 1 (and 0) actually the same thing? Basemetal  10:16, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Tasto solo to me implies only playing the bass line, while to me a bunch of 1s ought to allow octave doubling. I might not be right about this. Double sharp (talk) 15:09, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I thought octave doubling would be a bunch of 8s but maybe 8s require doubling while 1s only allow it? Basemetal  15:57, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Would make sense. After all, figures are octave-equivalent with the exception of 9 and 2. So maybe 8 and 1 could have a subtly different meaning like that. Double sharp (talk) 16:13, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Do you have any idea who that gnagre3 is, or did you just stumble on that channel? It's all Mozart, otherwise he (or she) has got pretty wide ranging tastes, e.g. Leck mich im Arsch! He (or she) seems to be Japanese.  Basemetal  10:23, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't know who s/he is; I found it simply by searching "Mozart Viaticum". This channel certainly has the cutest Queen of the Night... I think the Viaticum is the best, mostly because arco strings tend to sound horrible on MIDI, but pizzicato strings and winds are actually not bad. This actually makes me think of the old Latin regional pronunciations... I remember having used the German one for Mozart, but now I'm imagining a Japanese Latin regional pronunciation for Japanese composers (「ミゼレレノビス」?!?!) and can't stop laughing. And yes, that is indeed a wide variety of tastes (utterly fails at holding in immature laughter). Double sharp (talk) 15:09, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Japanese Latin is at its best when Latin has closed syllables as indeed in 「ミゼレレ·ノビス」(some letters such as final T would be especially awkward: 「インツロイト」?) but also when Rs and Ls are mixed, e.g. 「キリエ·エレイソン」or 「リベラ·メ」 Basemetal  15:57, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Requiem aeternam also gets butchered pretty badly. Ah well, there go our funny plans. The Confutatis seems to barely work, though. Double sharp (talk) 16:13, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
 * To add a pedantic note now: Confutatis works if you use the neo-Japanese syllable ティ Ti. Since that syllable does not exist in native Japanese words where T+i always gives チ Chi, if you try to spell it with native Japanese syllables exclusively, you get something like (Church) Latin Confutacis. Same more or less for Sanctus, etc. You can spell it with the neo-Japanese syllable トゥ Tu (like they do here), but, again, that syllable doesn't exist in native Japanese where T+u always gives ツ Tsu. I think that to some extent using neo-Japanese syllables is cheating. As long as we're going to do Japanese Latin we should use only native Japanese sounds . Btw, I wonder if some sort of real Japanese Latin may not not have really existed historically at the end of the 16th c. and beginning of the 17th c. when there many converts to Catholicism, since at the time the Mass, etc. had all to be said in Latin, and there were Japanese priests and so on. (See History of the Catholic Church in Japan and Kirishitan for the background, although I couldn't find there anything about any Japanese Latin). Basemetal  18:16, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Schubert's road to Classicism
I have not yet seen a study that takes us from the first experiment of D 18 to Classicism's last bow in D 936A, but this comes close in covering the first years. (And then we jump ahead to the last sonatas...) Double sharp (talk) 05:29, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
 * P.S. D 936A/ii, in a sort-of hybrid of cavatina form and finale sonata form, neatly solves the problem of the weakness of v as a dominant substitute in minor even though it bars itself from going to III by using that key colouristically in the first subject group. Just go to V instead! (Why isn't that done more often?) Here is the structure, with capital letters denoting themes:
 * b: i, theme A → modulation, theme B → v, theme A → V, theme C → modulation, theme B → i, theme A → modulation, theme B → iv, theme A → modulation, theme B → I, theme C → coda, primarily based on theme A.
 * In fact, his first subject is exactly the same as his second subject: it's just that in the second subject, the soprano and tenor switch places. Especially in this last work, Schubert seems to be approaching a sort of near-total reinvention of Classical practice, similar to what Beethoven does in his last period from the Hammerklavier onwards. Unfortunately, it was not to happen. So, that ended up being the last Classical masterpiece. But what a journey it was in the fifty-one years from KV 271 (1777) to D 936A (1828)! Double sharp (talk) 06:03, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Great. Thanks. Basemetal  09:23, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
 * PS: By great I don't mean dying at 31. That was not great. That was a grave mistake. Basemetal  09:23, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
 * This concludes the week of silence in remembrance of the awful pun... Double sharp (talk) 14:33, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
 * So, you've had a good mourning? Note, though, it should have been over at 09:23, no matter where you are. Basemetal  18:19, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
 * There was a promotion. Double sharp (talk) 03:27, 23 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Do you know of any Emmi Passenter in Schubert's life or do you know for a fact it to be a fabrication of cinema? Basemetal  20:38, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
 * She's a cinematic fabrication, definitely. Double sharp (talk) 15:48, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I've found out Yasujirō Ozu was instrumental in spreading Schubert misinformation in Japan! Here he is, quoting Willi Forst's movie in one of his first talkies The Only Son: Franz romping in the wheat with a mere cinematic fabrication! Talkies were probably still something new in Japan. You gotta love the reaction of the Japanese mother at the beginning of the scene. Basemetal  18:30, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

the NMA site
BTW, did you know that they now have the complete (last time I checked) prefaces translated to English now? (Though I still absolutely recommend you go search for the autographs if they are available, just to see Mozart's original notation that is sometimes impossible to transcribe fully in print.)

This also reminds me that some time ago I got halfway through (KV 575 and the first half of KV 589) typesetting the Prussian Quartets from the autograph, with tenor clef replacing the irritating treble-8vb clef for the cello; maybe I should finish that and post it on IMSLP soon. (You can read about this problem here.) I also found a few little mistakes in the NMA here and there (for shame!). (Maybe they are commented on in the Critical Report; I haven't checked.) Double sharp (talk) 14:50, 27 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Do they have facsimiles for all of Mozart's autographs there? I didn't know about that cello "trouble clef" problem even though I used to play the cello. To me the treble clef was just to obviate the need for ledger lines when the notes went too high even for the tenor clef, but it was to be read at the correct pitch, i.e. without implied 8va bassa. I had never heard of it before. There's still mistakes in the Mozart editions? Wow. You noticed them by comparing to the autographs? Basemetal  20:45, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Some of the autographs are online in various places. They usually give facsimiles of some representative pages of the works in the prefaces. The mistakes are pretty minor and mostly concern things like dynamics and articulations (so far, have only checked the late quartets); nothing like the appalling amounts of nonsense that flow through the New Schubert Edition (I still haven't found a volume without some nonsense in it). (Henle is getting at least some of them right in their editions, BTW! They should be starting to come out at the end of this year.) As for false treble clef: there used to be an utterly ridiculous convention that treble clef after a bass clef meant 8vb, but treble clef after a tenor clef meant loco. (No, really. Berlioz condemned this silly practice, which was mostly limited anyway to central Europe. I do wonder why the NMA decided to keep Mozart's old practice when they had no trouble replacing soprano clefs by treble clefs. No doubt the solo at b.28 here might have given you a minor heart attack... ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 02:51, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Do you know if that convention also applied in orchestra scores to cello (and bassoon and double-bass) parts, in the same places? But maybe it's harder to get examples because of the more limited range? Basemetal  18:08, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Seems to be true of cello parts as far as the Dvořák and Bruckner symphonies (and thus would make sense for double bass). I don't think it would be true for the bassoon, because for the standard range of the 19th century treble clef loco is quite unnecessary! Double sharp (talk) 06:05, 29 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Since we're talking Mozart, I wanted to add something about a certain WP editor. Take a look at "Mozart's compositional method": Do you believe that editor's statement is truly based on a statement by Deutsch saying Mozart did what he did in order to compensate for "his limitations in sight-reading"? The Grétry quote is certainly not saying that. Or might that rather be that editor's personal opinion masquerading as a sourced statement? I personally think that if he really had a quote from Deutsch saying that explicitly he would have used it. I think he didn't but that he had no problem smuggling in underhandedly a personal opinion pretending he did. Basemetal  20:45, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't, honestly. This reeks of OR, and it's not even the sort of OR that I remember seeing somewhere and could possibly find a source for (as I just provided at Symphony No. 8 (Schubert), for example). And, hilariously, a piece of OR just before this is "There is apparently little evidence to bear on the question of whether Mozart's improvisations were a source of ideas to him for permanent compositions." Funny! Only a little research brings me to the story of KV 309, where Mozart wrote to his father on 23–25 October 1777 that he had played "all at once an impressive sonata in C major straight off the top of my head, with a rondo to finish...it was a mighty bluster and noise", and the preface to the Wiener Urtext Edition cautiously draws a link to KV 309 (written out in Mannheim soon afterwards). Double sharp (talk) 03:04, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Might it not have been preferable to modify that sentence (e.g. "There does seem to be evidence to show that Mozart's improvisations were a source of ideas to him for permanent compositions, for example...") with a reference to the preface, rather than just removing it? Basemetal  17:41, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
 * And what do you think of: "Mozart evidently needed a keyboard to work out his musical thoughts"? There are some sources there that seem to back something like that, at least partially. (The main secondary source apparently being "Prof. Dr." Ulrich Kondrad's Mozarts Schaffensweise (1992); his article "How Mozart Went about Composing: A New View", in The Mozart Society of America Newsletter (2004), and his article "Compositional method", in the The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia (2006) mentioned in the bibliography of the WP article are simply summaries; the Mozart Society of American Newsletter article is actually an English translation of the overview at the end of the 1992 book) But does the statement not seem to you a bit too absolute? Is there evidence (one way or another) on whether Mozart used a keyboard to write all of his output, let alone that he needed a keyboard to compose, which is a stronger statement again? (Having just read the 2004 paper I can say that, at least in that paper, which is, remember, an overview of his 1992 book, Konrad does not mention the supposed need for a keyboard in order to compose at all. Yet it is Konrad that is the ostensible source of that statement. Frankly, I suspect again that WP editor has convinced himself of something, and is passing off his personal opinion as a sourced fact) Basemetal  18:08, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

DS's Urtext edition of the Prussian Quartets
I have to echo what Webster is quoted to say in Urtext edition, incidentally. In many places, the NMA differentiates between strokes and dots (e.g. the Menuetto of KV 575), giving the impression that the distinction is clear-cut. Now, I have kept this distinction because comparison with all the parallel passages written out allows you to figure out based on the first occurrence just which is which. The problem is that while some marks are obviously dots, and some are obviously strokes, most of them fall somewhere in the middle. If you saw one of those marks surrounded by dots, you'd read it as a dot; if you saw one of them surrounded by strokes, you'd read it as a stroke. So, what is it out of context? How do you print dots that gradually lengthen into strokes? (Schubert is no better. In D 946 we encounter dots that gradually lengthen into tenuti.) I have decided to keep the distinction when it is particularly obvious, but to homogenise them in passages. The reason is that writing a single stroke in a sea of dots (e.g. the minuet of KV 575 in the NMA) draws undue attention to the note with the stroke when I do not think Mozart intended one with his gradual lengthening (which could very well result from hasty penmanship instead of authorial intention).

There are some other sillier possible criticisms; for instance, I have to harmonise Mozart's writing conventions to standard printed music conventions, whether it be something trivial like stem length and direction, or slurs that start above the staff and cross under it (or even break halfway despite never having done so before – Mozart is notoriously lazy about continuing slurs when they continue to the next system). But you also have to think about whether Mozart's f p is supposed to mean something different from his fp (this problem crops up at the beginning of the Menuetto in KV 575).

Unlike the NMA, I decided to refrain from getting into matters of performance practice. If Mozart writes an eighth-note appoggiatura, I print one. I do not try to tell you how long it should be played for; you'll have to figure that out. I decided on this course of action so as not to privilege one possible reading over any other, when all of them seem plausible. As well, some of the NMA's suggested Eingänge and appoggiaturae in the concert arias are frankly stupid (e.g. KV 418, in which it obliterates the distinction between the appoggiaturae Mozart wrote and those he didn't), though at least they do not contravene the composer's text like the NSA sometimes does in Alfonso und Estrella.

I did however modernise Mozart's octave-treble clef throughout to the tenor clef, largely because musical conventions have changed so that the former gives the thoroughly wrong impression of the pitch (and also would give cellists heart attacks with the E♭6 in KV 589/ii). But this is an extreme case when new conventions make the old one give a demonstrably wrong impression. I would not change things like the long note values in Renaissance music. I would waver on changing the vocal C-clefs in Mozart to their modern equivalents, but would probably do it because using the soprano clef would probably do nothing but annoy readers (though I would state up front that I had done so).

(The reason I say this is that I've relooked at my KV 575 edition and have been proofreading it from the autograph once more. You should be able to find it on IMSLP soon!!!) Double sharp (talk) 07:40, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

in an ideal world...
Have you come across anyone else using Prokofiev's conventions for orchestral scores, where everything is notated at sounding pitch and all clefs are abolished except for treble, alto, and bass? (Alto clef is still needed in C scores so that French horns, English horns, clarinets, basset horns, trombones, and violas don't end up with a mad wash of ledger lines.) The general convention used there is "one clef per octave", so that it goes: treble 8va, treble, alto, bass, bass 8vb. (Which indeed results in my idea of treble-alto-alto-bass for SATB scores...) Double sharp (talk) 02:38, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * As far as writing everything at concert pitch, there's also Arthur Honegger, for example in the score of Pacific 231, but he doesn't use the alto clef except for the viola. For example English horn is in treble clef and French horns switch between treble clef and bass clef. But I've also seen works by Honegger where transposing instruments were notated transposingly. I think that's also true for some Prokofiev: I know his first piano concerto was published with everything at concert pitch but I think there's some other works where he writes transposing instruments transposingly, I'm not sure. Basemetal  06:03, 31 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Say a bright kid tells you: Ok. I get why there are transposing instruments. But what need is there for the conductor to look at transposed parts for those instruments? Whatcha telling them? Basemetal  16:10, 31 October 2016 (UTC) PS: I've got my own "speculation" regarding this but I'd like to hear yours first.
 * I would like to think that it was not so long ago that I was that "bright kid" asking that question ^_^ From experience, when you use a concert-pitch score, you end up having to mentally transpose whenever you talk to the transposing-instrument players. This inconvenience is not persent if you use a transposed score. Double sharp (talk) 08:38, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * And having to transpose a few notes here and there on those few occasions that you have to tell those retards something is more of an inconvenience compared to having to constantly look at transposed parts and having to constantly mentally transpose them? Don't know. To me this just doesn't seem like a historically likely explanation for this idiotic convention. Basemetal  17:03, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * As you can see, I don't really have a good explanation for it other than that. Double sharp (talk) 02:25, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * My own theory is composers wrote transposed parts for transposing instruments, because if they had written them at pitch it would have been the copyists who would have had to transpose the parts of the players of transposing instruments, and that would have been risky. Basemetal  04:11, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Seems like as good a guess as any, considering the gross incompetence of most copyists then by today's standards (citation: any of the 32 Beethoven sonatas ^_-☆) Double sharp (talk) 15:09, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

if you remember that lazy Sunday...
For my favourite major–minor shifts (perhaps even more sophisticated than Schubert) try for example Berlioz with Villanelle from Les nuits d'été – I've always loved that F♯ in the second verse (well, for me it is a D and sung a major third lower). I know Julian Rushton says (quoted in the article) that the downward transposition has a deleterious effect, but there's already quite a bit of darkness beneath the chirpy winds of this song anyway – for example the quickly ignored modulation to iv just before the 3rd verse. Double sharp (talk) 08:29, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

this edit
Hi again! I am inclined to believe that the name "Fantaisie" applies only to the first movement of D 894, since the first edition by Haslinger calls the work "Fantaisie, Andante, Menuetto and Allegretto" (in translation; I'm on my phone and can't look it up easily right now). Furthermore it is not actually on Schubert's autograph, which just lists the title as "Sonata IV", so its use as a title and classification of the work as a fantasy ought to be considered a historical matter. In form it is clearly a sonata. And I see that the Grazer Fantaisie D 605A is not listed; it made it into the Henle and NSA editions, but I have always had some doubts about its authenticity...

(My pet peeve with this work has always been the finale, which I despair of ever hearing played at a real Allegretto of = 76! You'd think that pianists would welcome the opportunity to play the infamous double thirds at a speed that makes them easy, instead of struggling with them like Moritz Rosenthal, but apparently the more modern taste for a brilliant finale has won completely. And look at me, calling 19th-century practice modern. ^_-☆) Double sharp (talk) 04:01, 10 November 2017 (UTC)


 * What do you mean by "a historical matter"? Obsolete? Basemetal  07:13, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeah, a title that people used to use that no one actually uses anymore. Double sharp (talk) 23:39, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Another question about the consensus of French theorists
What's the status French theory texts usually give to I$6 4$? And do they usually consider vii° to be a rootless V7? Double sharp (talk) 07:57, 28 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Regarding vii° I don't remember what Chailley & Challan say, but, for at least most of the French harmony treatises I've seen, the answer is yes. Similarly for the 7th chord placed on the VIIth degree which is considered in fact to be a dominant 9th chord. See here and here which, as far as I can remember, represent pretty much the traditional consensus position. For I$6 4$ there are several kinds. It depends on the context and on the degree where they are placed. See again this article which represents more or less the traditional consensus position in French treatises, as far as I can remember. Unfortunately the guy who wrote these articles didn't believe in referencing any of his statements. I tried to get some references out of him but w/o success. Basemetal  08:59, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * PS: There are some cases where French treatises would say those chords are actually placed on the VIIth degree, for example in the so called "marches d'harmonie". If the concept of a "chord missing its root" bothers you, you can take it as a shorthand for "chord being used in a function other than what would be suggested by its root". Also "fondamentale" in French refers to both the root of the chord and the fundamental frequency of a series of overtones. Maybe if you took the notes of a vii° to be overtones the fundamental would really be somewhere else than on the VIIth degree. I don't know, but maybe that terminology goes back to Rameau who liked to play with harmonics and such. Basemetal  09:24, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm really not sure what B-D-F could possibly be the overtones of. The tritone occurs so high up in the harmonic series that any sense of a real fundamental would be very weak! I've been trying to find Rameau's original terminology and I'm not sure I understand it yet, though I'm amused to note that he seems to include the popular-music added sixth chord (sixte ajoutée) in his theory! I remember there was some indications that harmonic sequences could legitimise chords like I$6 4$ on the LQELQV site, and vii° would not be that far of a stretch. I'm still trying to find a real V/vii° in the wild that would be the silver bullet to the chords-without-their-roots werewolf (admittedly my beloved First Viennese School might not be the ideal place to look, but it would certainly give a certain kill). I have still not found one: I have found V/vii in late Haydn, but that's not at all the same thing. I will keep looking! Double sharp (talk) 16:15, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
 * P.S. Thank you very much for firing up this possibly vain quest again! Now I am looking through lots of Schubert songs and finding such beautiful treasures! The next time I hear someone say that everything in tonality has been done I will show him or her An die Entfernte D 765! Double sharp (talk) 16:30, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

P.P.S. I guess a real V/vii° would have to look like this: If you allow vii°/vii°, it not only becomes too easy, but also misleading (as to my mind those are just simultaneous appoggiaturas, while the F♯ paradoxically scotches that idea in about the same way as Mozart's use of V/ii°). Double sharp (talk) 16:53, 3 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Don't blame me, Captain. Are most vii° not dominant chords? Even if you find your rare bird, how is it gonna change that? Basemetal  00:04, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * PS: What Rameau are you reading? Basemetal  00:05, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * PPS: As to the fundamental of a diminished chord, of course I was just talking mathematically. That should have been enough for Rameau, shouldn't it? Take the simplest natural (just intonation) minor 3rd among our acquaintances: 6/5. The diminished fifth chord 1 - 6/5 - 36/25 or 25/25 - 30/25 - 36/25 is made up of the 25th, 30th and 36th overtones of some note. What is that note? It is 25/16 (but 4 octaves down of course). Ouch. This 25/16 is 5/4 x 5/4, that is an augmented 5th (some sort of). Darn. By the overtone theory the diminished fifth chord on the 7th degree should not be functionally a V chord, it should be a IIIb chord. Who would have known! That overtone story is crap. I want my money back.  Basemetal  00:30, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The way I see it, vii° can either have a dominant function or take its place in the circle-of-fifths sequence leading to iii. Indeed, only if I manage to find a V/vii° that leads to vii° and then iii would it change anything. FWIW, I don't think such a progression sounds wrong in a tonal context, and maybe what should count is not so much the rarity of a procedure but its continued viability (e.g. starting the recapitulation in IV, which was always possible but never common, unlike starting it in V which stopped being possible as the classical style was developed). I regret to say that I haven't really read the original Rameau so much as what others quote him as saying, but I will go have a look at the original when I find it and the time. ^_^ I share your viewpoint on the overtone story that would have us believe literally that the tonic minor triad really has the submediant as its root unless you fudge things; I guess you could argue that there's something strange about trying to find dissonant chords in the overtone series, but then again, isn't every chord in a tonal piece more or less dissonant except for the tonic triad in root position? (Though I guess the fact that the tonic major triad is more consonant than the tonic minor triad is reassuring, the fact remains that you can end with the latter with complete satisfaction.) Double sharp (talk) 23:51, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

A real double-accidental key signature
I finally found a vocal score of the Foulds World Requiem I passed to Don Byrd a few years ago, and I am proud to announce that it really does include that long-sought G♯ major key signature with the F! It starts with the C♯ and then goes naturally around the circle of fifths: C♯, G♯, D♯, A♯, E♯, B♯, F. All sharps appear in their normal positions for each staff; the F appears on where F♯ usually would (except for being at the end rather than at the beginning). This is also the way LilyPond automatically draws a G♯ major key signature: Double sharp (talk) 16:02, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Congratulations. But I think Foulds and LilyPond are wrong:


 * This is awful. Why not just leave the order alone and put the double sharps where the single sharps were? What's the logic? Basemetal  23:10, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I guess the logic is that proceeding this way keeps each sharp a perfect fifth above (or a perfect fourth below) the last one (e.g. B♯ to F), instead of introducing a tritone (e.g. F to C♯); or in other words, it follows the circle of fifths, where first you have naturals, and proceeding sharpwards gives you all the single sharps and then all of the double sharps. It does break the shape we're used to, though. I am not sure if any of this ought to be accounted standard notation anyway! ^_-☆ Double sharp (talk) 23:41, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Response to your question on a closed discussion...
Since the discussion is closed, I won't answer there, but since you asked me directly, I will answer here. The answer is I don't make any assumption about a person's gender if I don't know. The default is not "male", the default is "unknown". -- Jayron 32 15:50, 8 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Ok. Btw, I never implied the default should be "male". But perhaps you never implied that I implied the default should be "male". Basemetal  15:58, 8 May 2018 (UTC)


 * No, but the person I was talking to at the time had. They had claimed that they could tell what gender someone was just by their writing.  That seemed rather presumptuous.  -- Jayron 32 16:32, 8 May 2018 (UTC)


 * What seemed presumptuous? To believe what they believed? Or to insist their belief necessarily represented the truth? Basemetal  18:23, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Your questions
About pari: This seems to go back to Proto-Iranian *par(H)ikaH, which can be projected back into Proto-Indo-Iranian as *par(H)i-kaH, maybe extended from *par(H)i-, but its further etymology is unclear, see Encyclopaedia Iranica. Neither Greek pallaki- nor Latin paelex, while superficially similar, are a good fit phonologically and morphologically, though Greek pall- could presuppose *paly-, which could, in theory, correspond to the hypothesised (Indo-)Iranian stem. But this is very uncertain.

About "orphan" in Persian, unfortunately my knowledge of Middle and Early New Persian is not extensive enough to answer this question, but there is a root *ćayú- in Indo-Iranian: source.

About the Scythians: First, Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic are notoriously similar and thought to be closely related (see Ringe 2002), therefore my suggestion is that in the early third millennium BC, a common Indo-Iranian–Balto-Slavic proto-dialect of Indo-European was spoken on the middle and upper Dnieper – having spread there from the lower Dnieper (firmly Yamnaya territory) –, and took part in the general Corded Ware horizon. From there, a migration to the northeast, into the (especially upper and middle) Volga basin, resulted in a dialect ancestral to Proto-Indo-Iranian, from which Proto-Uralic, which too was spoken in the Volga basin, started to borrow words from. This dialect can be correlated with the Abashevo culture between the Volga and Ural Mountains, from 2500 BC on. The Sintashta culture in the Ural River and Mountains area, from 2100 BC on, is usually correlated with Proto-Indo-Iranian proper. (Genetic evidence appears to corroborate this story: Haplogroup R1a1a1, Corded Ware culture.) Its spread is then thought to be the cause of the Andronovo horizon forming in Central Asia, which, on the upper Oxus (Amu Darya), is thought to have evolved further into Proto-Iranian and Proto-Indo-Aryan (while in contact with the BMAC). Therefore, Scythian can only have resulted from a back-migration to the northwest. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 05:06, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

Oh, and about Balto-Slavic: While Dutch researchers tend to date Proto-Balto-Slavic (likely located between Vistula and Dnieper) to the Bronze Age, it's probably nowhere near as old (that is, Proto-Balto-Slavic proper, the final stage before the split-up); Roland Kim dates it to as late as the last centuries BC, therefore contemporary with the Hellenistic period and the Old Latin literature. It then split into West Baltic, East Baltic and Slavic (plus, likely, further long-disappeared dialects), probably without an intervening Proto-Baltic stage (although the precise subgrouping of Balto-Slavic remains uncertain). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 05:35, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

More thoughts about Indo-Iranian: The alternative reconstruction of Proto-Uralic vocalism by Tálos mentioned here (although it admittedly seems to have been ignored by most Uralists, so I don't give it too much credence, although it does look interesting) does strikingly resemble Proto-Indo-Iranian vocalism, and one might entertain the possibility that Proto-Balto-Slavic–Indo-Iranian split into two by c. 2500 BC, because the ancestor of Proto-Balto-Slavic (the western part, spoken in the Middle Dnieper culture?) remained conservative, while the other (eastern?) part developed into Proto-Indo-Iranian influenced by a Proto-Uralic substratum (both spoken in the Abashevo culture, perhaps also in the Fatyanovo–Balanovo culture), which caused the vowel colours PIE */e/ and */o/ to merge into /a/. Interestingly, a similar trend /e/ > [æ], while PIE */o/ has mostly merged into /a/, is later seen in Balto-Slavic, too, and is plausibly due to Uralic influence. That said, looking at Abondolo, the two-tiered system suggested by Tálos really appears to be /a aː æ æː i iː u uː ɨ ɨː y yː/ (but only in the first syllable of a word; in the second syllable, only /a ~ æ/ and /ɨ ~ i/ seem to be possible). However, all of this hinges on the correctness of the reconstruction Tálos suggests, which is very much in doubt.

As Kümmel suggests that PIE */e/ goes back to earlier **/a/ and PIE */o/ to earlier **/aː/, which would make the early PIE vocalism resemble the mentioned reconstruction of Proto-Uralic, I wonder if (given that it is widely thought that if Proto-Indo-Uralic ever really existed, Proto-Uralic has remained much more similar to it than PIE) this points to an Indo-Uralic vocalism with */a/ and */aː/ – plus further vowels, presumably; an odd consequence of Kümmel's reconstruction is that – given that */i/ and */u/ really seem to be allophones of */j/ and */w/ and */a/ essentially an allophone of */e/ – the early PIE vowel system appears to have only a single vowel colour with two quantities, although Kümmel gives a system /i/ /u/ /a/ /aː/, which is still oddly asymmetric in view of the presence of quantity only in the low vowel, and does not address the problem of the high vowels, simply stating that they alternative with */j/ and */w/; but then, since /a/ alternates with /aː/, the idea seems to be that early PIE really had a three-vowel system originally; there seem to be instances of */i/ and */u/ that do not actually alternative with */j/ and */w/ respectively.

The consequence is that for an early stage of PIE, we can reconstruct a three-vowel system /i/ /u/ /a/ with [aː] as essentially an allophone, which however does not really fit Proto-Uralic since in my understanding there is no ablaut-like alternation in Proto-Uralic at all, regardless of reconstruction. Therefore, only the three-vowel system can properly be compared with the Proto-Uralic system, which is however much richer in vowel colours, in any case. Of course it is possible that this richness somehow developed out of the much more simple system reconstructed for early PIE. Rather, however, I suspect that a rich system comparable to Proto-Uralic collapsed into the simple three-vowel system reconstructed for early PIE through various vowel mergers. However, it has never been completely clear to me how, on the other hand, the rich PIE consonant system could develop out of a comparably simple and very different system as in Proto-Uralic. The strong divergence between the phonologies of PIE and Proto-Uralic is the main reason why both the research into IE-Uralic loan contacts and especially a tentative reconstruction of Proto-Indo-Uralic are so difficult. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:08, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Precious anniversary
Happy Valentine! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:37, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

flowers - Valentine --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:49, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Another song that's ridiculously similar
Hi Basemetal,

you have explained before down to the very details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Joepnl#Amadare_no_uta_(%E9%9B%A8%E3%81%A0%E3%82%8C%E3%81%AE%E6%AD%8C) how a Japanese was similar to the Cups Song for which I'm still grateful. An easier to listenn to song would be Billy Joel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxEPV4kolz0 and this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9J0K0ewPsw and the question is simpler as well. What exactly makes these songs any different? Joepnl (talk) 00:55, 1 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Ok. I'll take a look. (I'll leave a note at your talk page). At first sight they seem to be very similar. And their melody sounds so familiar I'm surprised Billy Joel could even copyright the melody of his song (if he did). But how on earth did you ever stumble onto "Ode til Odense" and why this particular recording of that work when there are other ones with better sound? Basemetal  22:39, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Concerning Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura's deciphering key.
Yes she is right. See e.g. Mitchell. You will find a lot of comment and the entire Bible as a musical score on my blog. https://meafar.blogspot.com. See the introduction for examples: https://meafar.blogspot.com/2022/03/an-introduction-to-music-of-hebrew-bible.html I have worked with her deciphering key for the last 13 years. It explains much more than anyone else in the last 1000 years about the music of the te'amim. See for instance my criticism of Wickes (19th century - still taught today). https://meafar.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-inter-verse-and-inter-chapter.html It is inconceivable that a set of arbitrary signs could be mapped to nice music without a harmonic rationale. She has found it. It is the only one that is likely. I have tried to illustrate this subjectively using Bayes theorem. You can find that on the blog too. I have done some edits but I don't have a page [just created it]. (talk) 16:41, 24 January 2024 (UTC)Bob906 Bob906 (talk) 16:33, 24 January 2024 (UTC)