Keynote: Perfectly Imperfect: Music, Math and the Keyboard
summary
A practical tour of keyboard tuning and rhythm: a double‑manual 1789 Pascal Taskin copy built after 500 hours in a garage demonstrates Pythagorean vs mean‑tone vs equal temperament, with the Pythagorean comma measured at about 23.46 cents (the math forcing the notorious wolf fifth). Bradley Lehman’s 2005 reading of Bach’s title squiggle as a temperament clue is cited, plus LaMonte Young’s multihour tunings, Nancarrow’s punched player‑piano rolls, Partch’s found‑instrument keyboards and Xenakis’s stochastic processes.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (19)
- 0:00Introduction
- 2:35Music professor meets math
- 5:47Pythagoras and harmonics
- 10:28Natural vs equal temperament
- 13:11Pythagorean tuning problems
- 17:16Temperaments and solutions
- 20:33Tuning shapes style
- 21:49Bach’s Clavier in tunings
- 25:12Wolf interval dissonance
- 28:36Fixed pitch compromises
- 31:18Composers embrace dissonance
- 35:40Equal temperament impact
- 37:06Serialism and math
- 39:54Xenakis and stochastic music
- 42:53Unmeasured preludes
- 45:29Rhythmic complexity
- 47:46Cowell and irrational time
- 50:10Adès and natural rhythms
- 53:26Conclusion
