A note on the passing of the Mexican/American (dual national)
tuning theorist, Ervin M. Wilson on December 8th. Wilson, born in
Colonia Pacheco, Chihuahua, Mexico was a non-academic theorist
specializing in alternative tuning systems, their notation, and designs
for keyboard instruments to accommodate them. Principle points of
departure for his work were the generalized keyboards of Bosanquet, the
theory of "evolving tonality" of the Polish-American musicologist and
theorist Joseph Yasser, from which Wilson extrapolated wider varieties
of new scalar types (his "scale tree"), typically identified by a total
number of tones and a generating interval, and the arithmetic insights
of the Mexican theorist Agusto Novaro. He collaborated with Harry
Partch, Adrian Fokker, John H. Chalmers, Jr., and Lou Harrison. Wilson
explored scales and tuning systems in just intonation, equal
temperaments, and systems that do not easily fall into either category.
He designed a large number of instruments, principally keyboards (the
19-tone generalized Hackleman-Wilson clavichord was a notable example)
and mallet percussion and experimented with novel guitar frettings and
collected a large number of indigenous flutes with equally-spaced
fingers holes, thus approximating subharmonic series, along the lines
described by Kathleen Schlesinger.
Above and beyond the large number of practical solutions for
instruments and notations typically presented in his virtuoso
draughtsman's manuscript (he was employed, for many years, in the
aerospace industry, as a draughtsman while also managing his ranch in
Chihuahua where he carried out experiments in corn and chenepod hybrids)
and the huge variety of techniques he developed for generating new
scales and systems with musically useful potential (see especially the
articles on the "Marwa Pemutations" and the "Purvi Modulations" as well
as his later work with sequences of intervals associated with patterns
in Pascal's Triangle, the "meta-meantone", "meta-slendro", "meta-pelog"
and "metal-mavila", in particular,) I believe one of his most valuable
contributions was the "combination-product set" which built upon his
insight that the "tonality diamond" of Partch (with a precedent in
Novaro, a diamond was basically a harmonic series multiplied by its
subharmonic mirror) was, at base, a selection of tones based on globally
organizing the factors of the (just) intervals between them. While the
diamonds tended, inevitably, to reinforce a single tonal center, the
Combination-Product Sets tended instead to be locally tonal while
globally centerless, rich in symmetrical intervallic structures, but
also rich in the total varieties of relationships found relative to each
tone, and all in a compact system of just intonation of, typically, 6,
20 or 70 tones in total. To some degree, one could find in such a rich
system a compelling alternative to many contemporary atonal practices in
12-equal.
Wilson's
idea of a scalar "moment of symmetry", in which a generating interval
(a fifth, for example), within a given modulus (an octave, for example)
at certain numbers of iterations creates a pattern of scale step
symmetry in which the instances of the generator (and one closing,
anomalous interval) each subtend the same number of scalar steps,
appears to predate the notions of generated and well-formed scales
familiar to many in the academic theoretical community.
Wilson's principle publications were made over many years in the informal journal of experimental music, Xenharmonikon.
The composer Kraig Grady hosts a large archive of Wilson's manuscripts
here: http://www.anaphoria.com/wilson.html A dissertation on Wilson's
music-theoretical work by Terumi Narushima is now in press.
And this, too: Erv was a generous teacher and a friend. He had an amazing ear (I was once tuning some metal tubes in his workshop and, from time to
time from up in his room, he would shout out the ratios of intervals as
they were tuned up "135/128! 13/12! 64/45!") and a greater imagination
for new tuning systems, keyboards, and notations
that all came in families that propagated and mutated like those corn or
quinoa hybrids. He
taught with generosity, mostly at his dining table, with excursions,
when necessary, to the metallophones and bamboo marimbas and refretted
guitars and the wheezing old Scalatron in his living room, and always
began by asking if the student had anything to teach him first.