Quite right, Mr D! Our apologies to you, and to Mr Grew. However, the principle of our post does it not still stand?

Yeah, Andy - it's just wonderful, isn't it? 

One thing which has always struck me about the Kontarsky recording of number 9 is the poco a poco diminuendo in the derided 142/8 first bar - he doesn't quite manage it and which human could? It's a bit like Conlon Nancarrow's Player Piano Studies - there are some things that can be played better by a non-human. I'm sure Nancarrow, if he'd been a bit younger, would have loved computers.

Herbert Henck does a good job with the diminuendo. But knowing what a micromanager he is, I bet he devised some elaborate system of counterweights to assure the evenness of execution.

I don't get very anathema about pitch class set theory, often finding it a little useful -- except in the way it overemphasizes the 'content' of a sonority irrespective of register, inversion, etc. This chord of Mr Stickhousing would be a different thing would it not if built up from the ,G-F#-c-b -- or even the unplayable possibility ,B-F#-g-c'

The two adjacent perfect fourths are more immediately audible than the more elusive two tritones, let alone the framing diminished octave as a distinct dyad vs. the inner minor second. But then, 142 repetitions does give one a fighting chance of hearing all these possible classifications individually, like a

We did deliberately not put it in so many words that we ourselves regard the pitch class theory as a lower class theory, although when push and shove find themselves in propinquity we would have to say that we are indeed of the opinion that there is much music to which its implied principle of "octave equivalence" is of limited applicability and at worst can serve to distract one from what might be more important issues. We would however be very much of the opinion that Mr Strickjacke's oft-iterated chord is one in which the intervals of the perfect fourth place themselves forcefully in the foreground of our perception, although as Members have pointed out the listener has ample opportunity to examine the other intervallic interpretations of this somewhat stygian sonority at his leisure.

Isn't it just.

If only it were more Lethe-ian than Styx-ian...

Say, another thing about set theory (and in this sense I do find it more useful than its originators perhaps intended): I sometimes marvel about how some music that is set-theoretically quite homogeneous (assuming that one 'groups' the notes in a musically sensible fashion) sounds quite heterogeneous harmonically. A case against interval-constellation equivalence, yes, but that too is informative, is it not?

I think in particular looking at Stefan Wolpe's works one sees efforts to create maximum contrast between pitchically similar clutches of notes (e.g., first pairs of phrases of the Piece in Two parts for flutiano, the Symphony 1, and some others that I don't have at mnemonic hand right now).

So set theory can be used to demonstrate how set-equivalence is nothing like a guarantee of "unity" -- this too is information!

As did I, from usually reliable Nordrhein-Westfalen musical sources. Nothing online as yet though...