I'm going to be translating and incorporating the excellent German page at de:Quartenharmonik over the next few days. (Progress at User:Rainwarrior/quartal translation) - Rainwarrior 15:45, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Great! —Keenan Pepper 21:24, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It has been slower-going than I anticipated, but I have translated a great deal of the page by now (about two thirds of it, everything except the history, which is coming...). You might want to take a look at it (User:Rainwarrior/quartal translation) and start incorporating this information. A great deal of the image examples are useable without any translation work needed, and the audio examples are just tones and things so they don't need translation either. (References might be a pain though eventually. I have translated the titles, some books I knew English versions of, and some links were to English pages, so there's even stuff down there that could be used.) - Rainwarrior 04:57, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The history section has now been at least turned into English words, if not yet proper English grammar. Cleaning this up will not take too much time. It is for the most part understandable though, if anyone is interested in working on this already. Almost done translating! (phew) - Rainwarrior 03:46, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's done. Please incorporate material from User:Rainwarrior/quartal translation into this page. - Rainwarrior 17:33, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Even to replace this entire article with the translation would not be that bad, all of the material here (except the reference to Oliver Nelson maybe) is discussed on the translated page, and almost all of the images are useable without any work. It would mostly be a matter of cleaning out my editorial remarks, which I flagged with "(? )", and after that the changes made would only be minor. - Rainwarrior 17:56, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I've moved all of that stuff from the translation here, translated the images which had German text, and cleaned out the external links to German sites. I could use a proofing by someone else... it's hard to read the same text over and over again. (I have a feeling there's some rough language in the first section.) - Rainwarrior 06:06, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, seems like the new article is focused on quartal harmony and barely mentions quintal harmony. There are two things we could do: either move this to Quartal harmony and start a stub at Quintal harmony, or do some heavy editing to work in quintal harmony. Too bad there's no German article de:Quintenharmonik... or is that the wrong word? —Keenan Pepper 17:27, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's not the wrong word, it's just a very obscure term. True "quintal" harmony doesn't appear very often (the example on the page from The Cage comes to mind), and where it is it is usually mixed with quartal harmony as well. Most often "quartal harmony" is a term used to cover them both. Honestly, I can't remember any reference to "quintal harmony" in any of my music theory readings, and taking a quick look through the indices of the books on my shelf, I can't find it mentioned. I don't think it needs its own page, but this page may deserve a rename with a redirect from quintal? - Rainwarrior 17:49, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just as a further check, I tried looking up "quartal harmony" and "quintal harmony" on JSTOR; the former turned up plenty, the latter turned up 3 articles, 2 of which were guides for teaching young composers (mentioning it in a list after quartal), and the last was an article on Charles Ives which again mentions is in a list "quartal and quintal harmony in...". - Rainwarrior 18:04, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would say that in every usage I can find, "quartal and quintal harmony" is a synonym for "quartal harmony", and the latter is used much more often. (I can't find any mention at all of "quintal harmony" on its own.) - Rainwarrior 18:22, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, fair enough. It does seem a bit unfair though: 4:6:9 is one of my favorite chords. =P —Keenan Pepper 18:57, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, i am the german author of the article "Quartenharmonik". I`m very impressed of your translation. Must have been a lot of work. The next days i will read your translation. Maybe i`ll find some mistakes. If i can help you in any way, please contact me. I see, that you also translated most of the text in the pictures. Perfect ! To your discussion about quintal harmony. I think these expression doesn`t really exist. The fifth is a normal part of tonal chords with first, third and fifth -> (major and minor chords). I would say, quintal harmony is simply what we call tonal system. In german language and musicbooks, the term "Quintenharmonik" doesn`t exist. I don`t know, how it`s in english music-literature. Please excuse my bad english. Have a nice day --Boris Fernbacher 22:30, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Boris! I worked on it a little bit at a time for about two months. Yes, English theory doesn't often use "quintal harmony", but it means almost the same thing as "quartal harmony". - Rainwarrior 23:13, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, if you make a mirror of fourths (D - G - C), then yo`ve got fifths (C - G - D). An german we say "Komplementärintervall". It`s funny and sometimes difficult to understand, reading my own article in english. Good night --Boris Fernbacher 23:59, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the translation of Riemann`s words about Scriabin was not correct. I changed it. Maybe in a bad english style. But from the meaning it now matches with the german original. --Boris Fernbacher 00:13, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your translation is very good and near to the original. Have you studied german at university ? --Boris Fernbacher 00:18, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for checking it over. I'm glad you found that misunderstanding in the Riemann quote; it was probably the most difficult thing to translate. Regarding "Komplementärintervall", we do say "complementary interval" in English, but more often we say "inversion"; they have two different meanings, but when talking about only one interval, they have the same effect. I studied German a little in High School, but I did not understand it until I was at university. I did not take courses in German there, but I frequently read German articles on music (or other topics), and I think it is from this reading that I have learned most of my German. Thank you for the complement; your own English is good, much better than I am at writing German. Thanks for writing such a great article in the first place for me to translate! - Rainwarrior 00:35, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Bradley, the Franz Liszt example: You translated "La lugubra gondola" as "the lazy gondola". I think it has to be translated as "the gondola of grief". In german it`s translated as "Trauergondel". I think also it really sounds more griefing then beeing lazy. Can you imagine yourself a lazy gondola ? Have a nice day --Boris Fernbacher 07:50, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, that's right. Sometimes a "lugubrious" thing may seem "lazy", so I had forgotten the meaning of that word. I have changed it to "mournful". Also, I believe it's "lugubre", not "lugubra". - Rainwarrior 08:15, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I also think "lugubre" is right. I´ll change it also in the german article. --Boris Fernbacher 08:22, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]