Re: tuplets (was: GDP for kids :)

[Henning Hraban Ramm]

2007/9/21, Trevor Bača <address@hidden>:
> > In German the word is "Tupel" vs. "Duole", "Triole", "Pentole" etc.
> > I never really heard "Tupel" in musical context, only mathemathically.
> > My musical lexicon doesn't know it - but my favourite online
> > dictionary doesn't know "tuplet" either.
>
> Yeah, I may be spreading unsubstantiated rumours here, but the term
> seems definitely to have shown up first in English (rather than FR or
> DE) and I *think* it actually originated in an early version of the
> Finale user manual (God help us). I've never been able to verify this
> last bit, but, if true, it would at least explain why the word doesn't
> seem to exist in any EN dictionaries yet.
>
> Henning, is das (?) Tupel the same word that gets used in math to talk
> about ordered collections of  stuff like (17, 18, 29)? EN has "tuple"
> for such things ... and "tuplet" (with the final t) seems to be a
> completely novel musical term backformed from triplet, quadruplet,
> quintuplet, [s|h]extuplet, etc. Maybe DE has to make due with only one
> form of the word? Or possibly you guys could borrow in "Tuplet"? Or
> perhaps that simply looks absurd ...

As Mark Knoop wrote, (indeed "das") "Tupel" is normally a vector and
as a musical term seems to be as common as "tuplet".
For the German tuplets named Duole, Triole, Quartole, Quintole/Pentole
etc. the neologism would have to be "die Tupole", but I guess that's
silly.

Greetlings, Hraban