How/why did the major scale was born independently by different civilizations?

[herodotus]

Here is a question I haven't thought of before... is 4/4 a universal metric pulse? Hmm...

I will guess not. The Tempus perfectum of mensural notation was definitely based on 3, not 4. My guess is that this was due to the conventions of prosody, where patterns that resolve into 3s are more common than patterns that resolve into 4s.


What scares me is that, for me, 5 based time patterns have become the norm. 4/4 often seems to be missing something, like the patterns I hear every day are incomplete, somehow.

Perhaps I'm becoming one of the aliens, like the main character in District 9.

[Jafo]

What scares me is that, for me, 5 based time patterns have become the norm. 4/4 often seems to be missing something, like the patterns I hear every day are incomplete, somehow.

Perhaps you should take five before posting... (Sorry; couldn't resist. lol)

[Ogg Vorbis]

I'd think that 2-beat based patterns would be in every culture since (most) humans have two legs. Walking sets up a meter that might infect musical thinking.

So maybe if 5 based time patterns have become the norm, then we know what those aliens that infected Paul Desmond looked like!

[Meffy]

Walking with a staff or walking-stick makes it 4/4, at least with the rhythm I walk with. With stick in right hand: Left foot/stick strikes ground, right foot, left foot/pick up stick, right foot.

A main character in one of Piers Anthony's earlier, still readable "Xanth" stories was a horse (loosely speaking) that could run in gaits with rhythms of two beats per measure (trot), three (canter), four (gallop), AND five (no name for it, since it occurs only in fantasy stories).

[chj]

So my teacher ask me to research this. How/why did the major scale was born independently by different civilizations?

How is it possible different people long time ago arrived to the major scale independently?

he told me nobody knows how different people arrive to that relationship of intervals we know as the major scale..

He suggest it could maybe aliens teach humas centuries ago.

I didnt expect such coocked answer

Really? Plenty of people know how different civilizations came to use the major scale. It's physics, this is a well known fact. Certain intervals sound good because every few cycles the wavelengths match up and complement each other. One octave higher, the wavelength is half as long, so they match up every other wavelength. Major Fourths and Fifths match up frequently, minor 2nds, not as much. Notes that aren't in the scale almost never match up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_of_music

If the wavelengths seldom or never really match up it won't sound very "musical", unless you think completely dissonant sound is music. The physics don't change, no matter what culture/civilization you come from. Commonly used scales came about because many cultures/civilizations found that dissonant noise didn't make particularly good music.

[herodotus]

So maybe if 5 based time patterns have become the norm....

This is an impossibility, for if it were not, I would be normal, and we all know that this is not the case.

[mattie]

The major scale has been completed with the introducing of the piano. With this scale one can write harmonies or counterpoint easier, then eastern scales.

IF you modulate in the different church scale (phrygian, lydian, ect.) major is the most resoluting.

[Gamma-UT]

Here is a question I haven't thought of before... is 4/4 a universal metric pulse? Hmm...

I will guess not. The Tempus perfectum of mensural notation was definitely based on 3, not 4. My guess is that this was due to the conventions of prosody, where patterns that resolve into 3s are more common than patterns that resolve into 4s.
:

The clue's in the name: it was chosen not because it was natural; in fact the reverse. It refers to the Christian Trinity so was simply used for those connotations. Plenty of folk music would be going on in 4/4.

[herodotus]

Plenty of folk music would be going on in 4/4.

How would we know, though?


The only evidence we have of musical activity, pre-Edison, consists of notated examples. If they are wrong (and I am not saying that they aren't) what will we provide as evidence to the contrary? Conjecture? What else is there?

[1-2-Many]

he told me nobody knows how different people arrive to that relationship of intervals we know as the major scale..

He suggest it could maybe aliens teach humas centuries ago.

I didnt expect such coocked answer

who is this "teacher" and what is this class?

[Jafo]

The only evidence we have of musical activity, pre-Edison, consists of notated examples. If they are wrong (and I am not saying that they aren't) what will we provide as evidence to the contrary? Conjecture? What else is there?

Meh, how do we know that any recording (or record, for that matter) isn't faked? Or any datum? And if we can't entirely trust the data in every case, how can we make accurate models and theories? There's a lot of guesswork and faith involved in proofs, sometimes.

Sorry to go philosophical, but re-reading some Kant pissed me off (inborn appreciation for rules and morality, my ass -- the damn idjit obviously never raised kids), so I'm in a bit of a contrary mood. Or a Humean mode. They aren't mutually exclusive, after all.

Anyhoo, I guess we could always posit memories of/from past lives, but that sheds a dubious light on one uncertainty by invoking a much larger one. Still, that's good enough for theology and politics...

[Gamma-UT]

Plenty of folk music would be going on in 4/4.

How would we know, though?


The only evidence we have of musical activity, pre-Edison, consists of notated examples. If they are wrong (and I am not saying that they aren't) what will we provide as evidence to the contrary? Conjecture? What else is there?

a) Given that music academics of the time found it necessary to describe one meter as tempus perfectum, which kind of implies that there is/was a tempus imperfectum, is it reasonable to assume other meters weren't being used? All through that period, religion, music and science were intertwined. Music was considered an insight into the mind of God - or at least musica recta was. Musica ficta was all the stuff musicians really used that didn't fit the theories. For exampe, theoreticians thought the planets were governed by music, or at least [i[musica recta[/i] and this belief persisted for quite a while. Kepler spent/wasted a long time trying to demonstrate a link between music and planetary motion - hence music of the spheres.

b) Some records do exist of non-religious music. For example, there are documents that describe Italian balli dances of the 15th Century. Some are in 6/4; some are in 4/4.

c) Of course, all these records could be wrong. But, given the variety of meters in European folk music that has survived through the centuries is it reasonable to assume all evolved from a common 3/4 meter, or that people simply used whatever made sense at the time and these tunes and their meters were handed down orally more or less unchanged? Which one involves less incredulity?

[saxer]

the world wide spread of the major scale has to do with the agressive colonalization politic of the powerfull european countries.
after occupying africa and parts of asia they moved to america. and they brought their christian music with them which was developed in monasteries and cultivated at court. actually it's source is a kind of ethnic music from middle europe. but they had a great major lable for promotion
now we know why it's called 'major' scale!

[jancivil]

What scares me is that, for me, 5 based time patterns have become the norm.

I lean towards five myself, a toms fill most people would do 4 seems foreshortened. I'm doing a lot of 9, I found a lot of 9:4 in my improvisation when I measured it to determine barlines. I'm partial to triplet feel, 4/4 is best as 12/8 type of division, reggae feel for instance.

Here, a couple years back someone asserted that the heartbeat indicated the naturalness of 4/4.

I believe it's closer to 2+3. check it out sometime.

as per the project of confirming the major scale as an inevitability, IMO it's absurd. I would be driven to refute it down to the ground. I remember all too well the horrendous Eurocentrism at conservatory, the Grout book... theses such as [the Nazi] Furtwangler's, the equal temperament and tonality as a relection of nature. This is all bogus.

I'm no musicologist myself, but I have had an abiding interest in Indian music over the years... the 'scale' that corresponds with major, Bilaval Thaat, is relatively new to the music, mid or late 19th century and reveals influence from white people music. You see a raga in it called things like 'in the western scale' often enough. It's not major scale even so, it's modal and a lot of it dwells on ^7; eg., tonic = D; vadi ['dominant'] F#, samvadi ['subdominant'] C#