Scholarly Abstractions: Relationship between Just Intonation and Gesture

Pierson, Brad. The Relationship between Just Intonation and Gesture: Tracking the Evolution of Sound to Inform the Choral Rehearsal.  Master of Music Thesis.  California State University-Los Angeles, 2011.

 

       A great deal of writing currently circulates on the preferred system of tuning for music and musicians, as well as the methods for achieving that ideal.  Most musicians and theorists would agree that singers, specifically those who are well trained and singing unaccompanied music, will naturally tend toward a system of a more pure or “just” intonation. Further, recent texts by authors such as W.A. Mathieu have proposed the specific mathematics for such an intonation system as well as methods by which to achieve it. The result is a methodology and desired result for tuning, without the explanation for why it is functional other than the statement that it is somehow “more correct.”
       In a strongly correlated field of study, the rapidly developing field of music cognition presents a great deal of information regarding neural structure and the musical development of the brain.  These studies include the idea of cognitive development both as it relates to the course of human evolution, as well as from birth to adulthood. 
       In this report, the author will present information from each of these fields of study, linking them to draw new conclusions which thusly advocate for the inherent efficiency in just intonation.  Additionally, hypotheses will be presented on how this tuning system is directly linked to score study and audiation, how this informs gesture in choral conducting, and the resulting effects of intonation in the choral setting.