The point was, by example, that some great creative minds, spirits, can see
unrealised potential in instruments or systems, which others are still
striving to exploit to the full - without contradicting what is perceived to
be the essential character of the instrument. It is an inevitable, dynamic,
multi-dimensional process.

As for supposed 'developments', it is not often appreciated by non-players
that in many cases the particular expressiveness of an instrument (assuming
it is well designed in the first place) often arises especially from the
things it ~cannot~  do. The flute cannot overlap notes, the piano can. It
does this to suggest legato, which it cannot, strictly speaking, do. The
flute, and the singing voice, can swell a single note, which the piano
cannot.  Much of the beauty of piano music, and piano playing, arises from
the ways players contrive to suggest such things. Neither instrument can
achieve a smooth pitch slide, whereas it is almost trivial for a violin. No
human voice can even approach the pitch range of these instruments. But the
human voice has great richness in other ways, and for most instrumentalists,
still represents the ultimate model of human musical expressiveness.

The great danger lies in the thought that somehow a computer instrument with
no limitations must be more expressive than an instrument with limitations.
But where a performer cannot communicate effort, struggle, transcendence,
the expression, on a human level, will be found wanting, except perhaps by
those for whom the ascendancy of the computer has become a religion. The
development of the electric guitar is the classic example - with
amplification, being loud, shouting with it, became easy, trivial. So the
only was to express those feelings was to destroy the instrument itself. It
is in this sense, that I recognise that =cw4t7abs has a point. The key
feature of all the historical developments of instruments was that this
aspect was preserved - it was possible to suggest a place to which the
musician needed to go, but where the instrument could not take them- a vital
symbolic form of expression.  If that makes me an incorrigible romantic,
well, so be it!

As for the clavichord, let me be a conservative - for me, its primary
quality  is its intimacy, the delicateness of it's sound, the light
suggestiveness of its inflections. I can think of few worse prospects than
hearing one, amplified, at great distance, in a large concert hall! At best,
it will simply be a new instrument, to be evaluated in those terms. But it
will no longer be a clavichord.

Where is this world in which 'pitch is never fixed'? Is 'never' a statement
of a reality, or another moral imperative?

One absolutely final point - I think that if we are truly confident of the
musical worth of what we do, we have no need to argue the extinction or
obsolescence of the competition!

Richard Dobson

Carlton Wilkinson wrote:

> Regarding the Boehm post from Richard D.:
> I'm not sure what your point was here. I think we need to encourage as
> much debate as possible about what was good, what can be done, what can
> be retained, what should be discarded--what can  be retrieved, like
> advantages to the Lyricon. Otherwise the New MIDI boss will be the same
> as the old MIDI boss.
>
>
> I think the instruments we have say a lot about us as a culture, but
> certainly none are finished evolving. Some of them, by the way, have
> barely begun (the trombone, the guitar). The prize of volume +
> expressiveness (and tunable diatonicism) isn't a natural law and as it
> passes away many of these shining Boehm machines are going to go back to
> the drawing board. Even if it was a natural law, amplification opens a
> lot of other doors (anybody want to start a clavichord quartet? We could
> play Carnegie Hall. Hell, we could play Shea Stadium.) The piano
> itself--that creature so perfect that I am awestruck to call it a
> machine--remains to be brought into the 21st century (or it will become
> an museum piece). How do you move the piano into a musical world where
> pitch is never fixed?  Maybe the computer is the natural replacement for
> the piano--how sad--that awaits only the brilliantly designed human
> interface.
>
> Carlton Joseph Wilkinson
> http://excaliber.net/alex/wilkwrks.htm