source file: mills2.txt Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 13:22:39 -0800 Subject: Re: More diatonicism (und Yasser ist auch dabei) From: Paul Hahn On Wed, 20 Nov 1996, Bill Alves wrote: > Medieval hexachordal theory is a problem. I've heard several unconvincing > arguments as to why Guido chose 6 for his theory. Your explanation sounds > interesting, but perhaps I'm not following it. Why couldn't heptachords > (i.e. octave species) accomplish the same thing? It would certainly have > helped many a music history student who scratched their heads over this > hexachordal "basis" for heptatonic scales. The most obvious thing that comes to my mind is that six pitches is as many as you can chain together along the circle of fifths without encountering a tritone, that "diabolus in musica". --pH (manynote@library.wustl.edu or http://library.wustl.edu/~manynote) O /\ "How about that? The guy can't run six balls, -\-\-- o and they make him president." Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Wed, 20 Nov 1996 23:14 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA01234; Wed, 20 Nov 1996 23:16:02 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA01232 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id OAA15630; Wed, 20 Nov 1996 14:15:59 -0800 Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 14:15:59 -0800 Message-Id: <009ABAC0CD26CBC0.3C8F@vbv40.ezh.nl> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu