source file: mills2.txt Date: Sat, 7 Sep 1996 13:54:27 -0700 Subject: The Problem with 7 in Musical History From: Kami Rousseau Here is the translation of an article by M.J. Chailley, published in 1958 in a book called _Acoustique Musicale_. **** We know that the calculations of the Pythagorean monochord don't go beyond the 3rd harmonic. [...] If the 5th harmonic was introduced by Ramis de Pareja in the 15th century, and spreaded by Zarlino in the 16th century, it was only as a justification of an interval and a mode, not by real consonance. The transition from one motion to the other is the result of Sauveur's work, transposed by Rameau in the field of musical perception. Rameau observed 7 and listened to it, but he refused to identify it with the minor 7th of the 7+ chord because of it is out of tune. That's why he analysed the 7+ chord as a dissonance, as the adjunction of another 6/5 to the natural 4:5:6 chord. The consequences of this postulate in musical history is the pseudo-rule of the stacked thirds and its derivates, until Schonberg. [...] The instinctive assimilation of 7/4 as the minor seventh of the 7+ chord would not be different of the other assimilations observed in history, including the 3rd of the minor chord, of which the justification is historical, not physical. The 7+ chord should be defined as being consonant, starting at a certain historical moment in the musical development. The 9+ chords and harmonic 11ths should also be accepted. **** As you can see by this article, Rameau is the one who refused to use the 7th harmonic and proposed 9/5, locking musical theory into 5-limit. Maybe his influence is to blame for the current state of music. -Kami Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 02:24 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA27495; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 02:26:21 +0200 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA27672 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id RAA00150; Sat, 7 Sep 1996 17:26:18 -0700 Date: Sat, 7 Sep 1996 17:26:18 -0700 Message-Id: <960908002405_71670.2576_HHB37-3@CompuServe.COM> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu