Perfection

Quite by chance, I came across the book at reference 1 at the second hand book stall at the bottom of the stairs to the museum at Bourne Hall, a stall from which I pick things up from time to time.

Being the eightieth volume in the 'International Scientific Series' published by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., Ltd. I learn that Kegan Paul was name of one rather than two persons, a person who went to Eton and then to Exeter College, Oxford and that Hubert Parry also went to Eton, took degrees from Cambridge and Dublin, was a fellow of the same Exeter College and was made a baronet for his services to music. Some things just don't change.

An interesting and varied list, and one supposes that the books were the sort of thing that the part educated bought, partly for interest, partly to better themselves. From the golden age of reading rooms, mechanics institutes and libraries. See reference 4 for one of our local examples.

And as it has turned out, this book might be just the thing to sort out my lack of knowledge of the theory of music, something that I poke at from time to time, without much lasting effect. To the point that, having for perhaps the third or fourth time worked out how a major scale worked, I decided it was time to make my own diagram, included above. Perhaps it will now stick. Note the way that the middle notes of an octave arise in a more or less natural way, with the ear recognising and liking the simple intervals involved, while the outer notes are more contrived.

All helped along the way with reference 2 and various handy summaries for things like 'middle C' from Wikipedia. So far the book seems remarkably up to date, considering that it was written well over a hundred years ago and so I share a few other snippets.

Back in the beginning, everyone had octaves but the original big divide was between five note scales and seven note scales, seemingly associated with whether there was a preference for downward fourths rather than upward fifths. With a lot of scales, even now, going down by convention, whereas ours go up.

The Greeks, the Europeans, the Arabs, the Persians, the Indians, the Javanese, the Siamese, the Chinese and the Japanese were all into scales of one sort or another. All peoples who were more into melody than rhythm, with the savages of the south being more into rhythm than melody. This according to Parry, back in 1900 or so, with the invention of the savage mind by Lévi Strauss not coming until more than half a century later.

The Europeans moved on from just temperament to equal temperament, got very good at harmony and counterpoint and produced the Mount Everests of the musical world. But before that, there were various papal edits (aka decretals), particularly from popes called Gregory, about how things should be done. Hence Gregorian chants. It seems that at one time, authorities around the world took a keen interest in these matters.

Reference 1: The evolution of the art of music - Sir. C. Hubert H. Parry – 1905.

Reference 2:  Chamber’s Encyclopedia – various authors - 1959. The article on temperament.

Reference 3: La Pensée sauvage - Claude Lévi-Strauss - 1962.

Reference 4: http://www.leatherheadca.org.uk/.