|
Musical intervals (Western music) This page is part of www.amarilli.co.uk by Brian Capleton
Page 2
|
||
|
You will need Windows media player installed, or something else that can play mp3 files! Broadband is recommended
Continued...
Notes in Western music theory are labeled with letters rather than numbers. Before, we had our scale arranged:
In Western music we take this arrangement and add letters to the notes...
Note that there are only 7 different letter names. G is the highest letter in the alphabet that is used (except in German notation, which we will not deal with here). Playing up the scale (increasing pitch), after we reach G, we start the alphabet again at A, and so on.
Why do we start on C, and why is A where it is? If someone sat down and invented this arrangement, surely it would have been logical to start at A? Yes, but the system was not invented in this way. The current arrangement is the result of the gradual "evolution" of the system, over about 1400 years or more. Outside the two Cs at the ends of the "keyboard" above, the pattern would just repeat itself. We just happen to be showing the part between two Cs, which is the modern preference. We "like" the sound of the scale from C to C. We do not have to show only the portion of this arrangement from C to C. Look at the portion below, which is the same pattern, but shown from A to A. Play the white notes (with the blue letters) from left to right.
This "scale" sounds very different. It is not a modern scale at all. It is in fact the old Aeolian mode, rather than a modern scale. Modern tonal music, using the scales we are used to hearing today, only became fully established by the 18th century. Originally, European music was based on modes, the Aeolian mode of the middle ages and renaissance being the one that sounds between the two As. Another mode that was used, was the Dorian mode. This would be found by playing all the white notes between two Ds. Different modes were considered by different theorists to have different emotional effects the human soul. The mode between two Cs, which we now recognise as a modern major scale, was considered by the Church in the middle ages to be lascivious, and was not approved for use in practical music making. Nevertheless, today it is the notes that happen to lie between the Cs that form the scale we use
|
||
