Klarinet Archive - Posting 000229.txt from 2004/07

From: Tony Pay <tony.p@-----.org>
Subj: Re: [kl] Music theory.
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 10:36:05 -0400

On 6 Jul, Umar Goldeli <umar@-----.com> wrote:

> Greetings Gentlefolk,
>
> While slightly offtopic and not clarinet specific - this is something that
> has been bothering me all day and I can't come up with an answer even
> after hours of googling..
>
> I'm hoping that the answer is simple and that the answer isn't just
> "historical".
>
> Well - the question is "Why A, B, C, D, E, F, G"? More specifically - why
> is there only a semitone between (B and C) and (E and F)?
>
> I looked up the mathematics behind the frequencies themselves and their
> relationships etc and approximations to the Just scale and understand it
> all makes perfect sense in terms of "degrees" - i.e. numbering from 0 to
> 11 or 1 to 12 and the doubling of the frequency from octave to octave..

If you looked up the references, then you'll have seen why the mathematics of
'driven' oscillations (giving rise to the harmonic series of overtones in,
say, an animal call) means that the major scale is in some sense, natural,
perhaps originally to do with providing relatively 'beat-free' and therefore
consonant melodic intervals in some suitably resonant acoustic.

There are seven steps to this major scale, five large and two small, so there
are seven note names.

> But there was no reference at all to why A to G were chosen - it is always
> just stated as fact.

Alphabetic?

> Wouldn't it have been a lot easier to use A to F? That way we could have
> A,A#,B,B#,C,C#,D,D#,E,E#,F,F# - and that would still be 12 degrees and on
> a piano keyboard there wouldn't be a missing black key between B/C and E/F
> etc?

The chromatic scale is secondary, and comes about via needing a major scale
starting on each of the note names, I've always assumed. (Who's an expert on
the history of all this, here?) Once created, the remarkable coincidence
that 1:2^(7/12) is very, very nearly 2:3 then allowed equal temperament, and
gave rise to the possibility of modern western music. See Mike McIntyre's 'A
Journey into Musical Hyperspace':

http://www.atm.damtp.cam.ac.uk/people/mem/papers/LHCE/lucidity-note-58.pdf

Going back to your question, I'd have thought it was more natural to ask, why
not make A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A correspond to a major scale? with a semitone
between C and D, and between G and A?

I'm sure the answer to that must be 'just' historical, because calling the
notes something different obviously wouldn't change anything.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd tony.p@-----.org
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE http://classicalplus.gmn.com/artists
tel/fax 01865 553339

... KLEPTOMANIA! Take something for it!

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org