Add Context - 5. Music, Temperament, and Social Concord
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Query: 5. Music, Temperament, and Social Concord
Add Context
Quoted text:
The seven notes of the scale equated to the seven movable bodies in the heavens. The numerological symbolism of the time described the number eight as the “rebirth” number, probably because it started a new octave or, in Semitic cultures, a new seven-day week.
Also of a periodic nature in both music and calendar-keeping was the number 12. It signified the octave’s 12 tones, and also the 12 months of the year. And, as noted in Alphanumeric Notation and the Calendrical-Musical Kosmos, music and astronomy may have shared similar symbols for their notation.
Plutarch stated in Moralia: “The Chaldeans say that Spring stands to Autumn in the relation of a Fourth, to Winter in the relation of a Fifth, and to Summer in the relation of an Octave.” And Curt Sachs also pointed out that “the ancient Chinese also viewed the Spring as distant from the Autumn by a Fourth and from the Winter by Fifth.”[1] But they viewed the spring as distant from the summer by a second, not by an octave as the Babylonians did.Originally this section was written as notes instead of as full sentences before we made the fragments complete sentences. It may still need some fleshing out and explication though, if you’re able to help.
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- ↑ Curt Sachs, The Rise of Music in the Ancient World: East and West (New York: 1943).
