Timeline for Why intervals are not named after distance
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 30, 2016 at 0:14 | comment | added | Emilio | Please vote to reopen if you think it's worth it. This question has a different point of view and, in my opinion, shouldn't be considerd duplicate | |
| Dec 21, 2016 at 5:35 | vote | accept | Emilio | ||
| Dec 21, 2016 at 5:27 | comment | added | Emilio | I still don't think that the notion of zero has importance here, but the point about history is very well made. | |
| Dec 20, 2016 at 17:03 | comment | added | Tim | Yet in music 'an octave' works in the same sort of way; eighth note away, (hence octo) but seven spaces. | |
| Dec 19, 2016 at 19:29 | comment | added | user19146 | @Emilio the earliest Western writing about musical temperament and intervals (dating back to the 13th century or earlier) was linked to the Catholic church, and in Latin. The church still uses the term "octave" to mean the time interval between a two days with the same name, e.g. Wednesday to the following Wednesday, which we would call seven days not eight. | |
| Dec 19, 2016 at 16:26 | comment | added | Scott Wallace | Yep- you all have it: it's a linguistic (or counting) convention, pretty obviously. Equally obviously, we should rather call a fifth a 3/2, but as long as everyone knows what's meant, what's the big deal? | |
| Dec 19, 2016 at 15:45 | comment | added | Michael Seifert | @Emilio: The seven-tone Pythagorean scale dates back a couple thousand years. The Greeks called the perfect fifth the "diapente", which literally means "across five" [notes]. Similarly, the perfect fourth was the "diatesseron" ("across four"). So the counting system for intervals was established well before the European Renaissance. | |
| Dec 19, 2016 at 15:27 | comment | added | Emilio | I like the linguistical point of view and the example about the Romans. But I think that musicians didn't start talking about intervals until a few hundred years ago | |
| Dec 19, 2016 at 15:18 | history | answered | user19146 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |