The music of Hindostan - Ibiblio

THE SCALE 125
but only by calculating upwards in major Tones (5 X 204 = 1020),
and this process confuses the ear.
It does not matter that 1020 is
not the same as 1018 ; for the difference is only -^ of a semitone,
and it requires a good ear to distinguish even tenths of Semitones
in an interval which, like C-Btr, is derived, and not a matter of immediate
perception like, for instance, C-G, or C-E. What matters is
that the ear cannot make so elaborate a calculation as five successive
major Tones—as, indeed, Aristoxenus, quoted above, suggested.
The ear, therefore, takes by preference the intervals derived from
the 5th partial, the major Third, which form ' tertian " harmony.
As 'quintal^ harmony was derived from the Octave and Fifth, so
tertian harmony is derived from the Octave, Fifth, and Third ;
and
' septimal
'
harmony, if it is ever used, is derived from these three
and the 7th partial.
In tertian harmony the series is again infinite,
as indeed any of these series must be, since no basic interval is an
exact power (or root) of another basic interval. But since there
are three basic intervals instead of, as before, two, it is found
by experience that a larger number of derived intervals, about
eight, are easily intelligible in tertian harmony. We have no
experience of septimal harmony, and it is impossible to say
what intervals the ear would here accept. And this is important.
With the acoustical material available, many and diverse scales
might be constructed, and they would all look equally well—or
ill—on paper. Whether Indians have modified the ancient Hindu
theory of strictly quintal and tertian intervals by the introduction
(due, Mr. Clements suggests, to Mohammedan influence) of septimal
intervals, can only be established on evidence.
If any people
hears septimal intervals, the Indians and Greeks, with the fine ear
which practised and the fine discrimination which recorded the
niceties of the genera and the grdinas,
would have been among the
first to do it ; but to establish the fact it requires, in the complete
absence in their theoretical works of any hint that they did so,
a broader basis of observation than is provided by the performance
of a single singer.
With regard to the transilient scales, I received from the melodies
sung in them a strong impression that they were in just intonation
—that a major and minor Tone made a major Third, that the Sixth
was just and not sharp. There is no reason, however, why tertian
intervals (which this implies) should not have been accepted in