FW: seven colors, seven planets, seven notes, septive?

[JM]

Brian McCary Writes....
---------------Original Message---------------

If Newton did want corrospondance between the notes of the scale and
the colors, and from Malcolm Saunders' comments, it sounds like he did,
then it seems to me he was trying to force to a somewhat arbitrary 
scheme, since there are eight notes in an octive.  Otherwise, of course,
it would be a septive, right?  The note we all forget in these evenly
tempered times would be the flatted seventh, which, in the key of C,
those retentive Germans occasionally refered to as H, at least through the
time of Beethoven.   It shows up all the time in pop music, in dominant
seventh chords just before the resolution to the tonic (some sort of short
story in that theme...) and corrosponds to the 14th overtone in the 
harmonic series, where the eighth through the fifteenth overtones make up 
the notes of the octave.  I can't recall when the harmonic scale was 
abandoned for the 12 note tempered scale, but for some reason, I thought
it was after Newton.

Which just goes to show that scientists are just as prone to ritualization
and fetishism as anyone else.  I believe it was Kepler who "proved" that 
there where only five planents, because there were only 5 perfect 
solids, which fit the known planitary orbits....

Brian McCary


I'm a little rusty on music theory, but I go along with the 7 note scale based on 
the old Greek modes.   Each of the seven modes began on a different note of 
the scale, though the two half-step intervals stayed always in the same place.  
(Try this using only the white keys of a piano.  Only the scale beginning on "C" 
will sound right.)  "We" selected one of the 7 modes to be our major scale.  
The 8th note, of course, was a repeat of the 1st, just like each Sunday begins 
another seven-day week.  (If a seven day week is not an arbitrary unit of time I 
don't know what is!)  I thought the German "H" referred to an enharmonic 
note, not to a diminished seventh.   So I can see the kute korrespondence 
that Newton was seeking.  As for the conversion from the old mean-tone scale 
(in which each of the 12 intervals was equal) to the equal-temperament scale 
that we now use, didn't J.S. Bach (who died in 1750) have a large role in that? 
                -jm