Phoenix Journal 208 - Four Winds 10

notes in a musical scale, developing a scheme of divine musical harmony which he published as Harmonices
Mundi (Harmonies of the World) in 1619" (The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Astronomy And
Space, Ian Ridpath, p. 104, emphasis mine). Everything in the universe is in octaves and harmonics of
octaves.
What are the frequencies of the music scale? This question is not as simple as it seems. A musical scale
that has the greatest possible number of harmonizing intervals is called the just, or true, diatonic scale.
Here it is for the key of C:
key of c music chart
This scale cannot by used for musical instruments, such as a piano or organ, because the frequencies listed
above for the key of C would not be in the correct ratios to each other for music played in any other key.
So what is used now is called a tempered scale, in which the octave is divided into twelve semitones, each
of which is 1.0595 times that of the next lower semitone. The A above middle C is assigned the frequency
of 440.00 Hz. In this scale the frequencies are:
middle C 261.62 Hz
C-Sharp 277.18
D 293.67
D-sharp 311.13
E 329.23
F 349.23
F-sharp 369.99
G 392.00
G-sharp 415.30
A 440.00
A-sharp 466.16
B 493.88
C’ 523.25
The fundamental frequency of a vibrating string is inversely proportional to its length, or directly proportional
to the reciprocal of its length.
The tuning scale has been changed and some opera houses use various tunings. They tune their scales
based on the pitch of A and a few years ago Vienna was at A-450. Some opera houses have A-452, La
Scala is at A-442, Florence is at A-448.
It has been determined that there are six species of the human singing voice: bass, baritone, tenor, contralto,
alto, and soprano. At proper tunings, the voice fits harmoniously and easily with the physics of
sound. But if the tuning is wrong, the singer has to sing out of his natural scale to complete the octave. The
magazine Fidelio says that there is a conspiracy to destroy the science of musical composition, and since
this is true in so many other areas—the powers that be keep changing the yardsticks and moving the
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