THE EVOLUTION OE THE MUSICAL SCALE. 



BY C. M. BROOMALL. 



To the musician the thought of science in connection with 

 his art is distasteful. He refuses to admit in its make-up 

 other than the divine inspiration of the Muse and claims that 

 everything he produces or renders is untrammeled by cold, 

 scientific laws. 



In this he is wrong and modern harmony, existing in its 

 present form and developed from the music of the past, is an 

 unanswerable argument in support of the allegation that 

 music is to some extent at least the child of science. The 

 development of the modern system of harmony, as evidenced 

 in the present orchestral combinations, from the old Greek 

 scale of two thousand years ago, shows, as we shall see, how 

 the musician of to-day has been forced unconsciously to obey 

 these laws. In other words, it is impossible that the music of 

 to-day could have developed from the ancient melodic music 

 except in the one direction in which it has. Indeed, had the 

 old Greek with his scale of melody possessed to-day's know- 

 ledge of acoustics and had he been seized with a desire to pre- 

 dict the scale which could be the basis of a system of har- 

 mon}', he would have chosen unquestionably the intervals of 

 the modern scale. 



It is interesting to examine this more in detail. History' 

 tells us that a couple of centuries ago music consisted only of 

 the melody sung in unison and there appears little reason why 

 one scale should have been preferable to another. The scale 

 as used by the Greeks, for instance, was that which, in terms 

 of the first note, can be represented by the following ratios : — 



I 9:8 81:64 4:3 3:2 27:16 243:128 2 

 This is known as the Pythagorean scale and is one of the 

 scales of which a complete record has come down to us. 

 There were probably many others, but this will suffice for 

 comparison. So much for the ancient music. 



But as time went on artistic vearnint>s were not satisfied 



