devil in the music

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

> The interval which our awkwardly unflatted B makes with F
> was known to the ancients as the 'devil in the music.'

Glenn Scheper: "I don't know music, just math. . . ."

And you're seeing irrational numbers---numbers that don't fit 
into the pythagorean ratios. They result in "Wolftones", 
aberrant screechy intervals, thus the devil in music. If you are at 
all familiar with the Bulgarian vocal tradition, you become aware
of the use of very strange intervals. They use pure, but rather
alien ratios.

I'm sure there's a major league scale/mode/math link in AtD, anyone with a 
math background is herewith enjoined to contribute to this conversation.

"Penny wrote: 
  
> Also, instruments weren't "tempered" until Bach.

(a little interjection here: these considerations primarily were with 
keyboard instruments. A keyboard tuning that was perfectly in tune
for a C scale would be out of tune for a C# min scale, to a rather 
frightening degree. So some sort of compromise was in order).

This caused a condition 
> known as wolftones. That is what makes medieval music played on period 
> instruments sound out of tune. I imagine that this changed the handling of 
> modes. Question: can we use that as an excuse when our harps go out of tune 
> in the middle of a song? 

Ahem...some of us might say that it is what makes medieval music sound out 
of tune when played on modern instruments. In any case, it is why the 
medievals regarded thirds as relatively dissonant, and based their 
harmonies on fourths, fifths, and octaves. One handles modes by avoiding 
the wolf intervals (there's really only one in a pythagorean octave), and 
by not using triadic chords (which weren't invented in the middle ages, 
and don't work that well with modes anyway, IMHO.) 

Tim "

http://tns-www.lcs.mit.edu/harp/archives/1999.03/0256.html



http://www.frankfrench.name/other.htm