Re: Musical notes, was Re: Hot, Cold, and Temperature

On Saturday 27 March 2004 09:00 am, James Worlton wrote:
> Doug Dee wrote:
> > In a message dated 3/27/2004 10:43:57 AM Eastern Standard Time,
> > cowan@CCIL.ORG writes:
> >
> > Is there a similar explanation in music -- why are high notes called
"high"
> > and low notes called "low"?  Are notes "high" and "low" universally (in
> > Chinese, Navajo,. . . ) or are there languages that use left/right, or
wet/dry, or
> > some other metaphor instead of high/low? When did the high/low metaphor
come
> > into use for musical tones?
> >
> > I once asked this question to a linguist, who did not know.  I'm hoping
> > someone around here does.
> >
> > Doug
>
> I don't know about the linguistic parts of your question.
>
> However, for a musical explanation: High notes are called high notes, I
> believe, because of the 'higher' frequency (my personally preferred
> explanation). For example: take A440 (440 Hz), the tuning standard, and
> double it (880 Hz) and you have the next octave 'above' the given note.
> Perhaps the 'high' and 'low' terminology is a reflection of this greater
> energy/frequency in the sound. However, without a knowledge of acoustics
> this explanation would not give rise to the terminology in question.
> Indeed, consider the lengths of strings: two strings, one is twice as
> long as the other and therefore an octave lower (assuming similar
> thickness and tension). If you stood them up next to each other the
> 'lower' one would be 'longer' or conceivably 'higher'.
>
> Another theory: it is harder to produce 'high' notes in just about every
> instrument and voice (except keyboard). Since early western music was
> sung (ecclesiactically, anyway), the notes that took greater effort to
> sing were called higher.
>
> I am not a music historian, I am a composer (my degree had some theory
> in there too, but not history of theory). So you can take my theories
> with as much salt as you'd like. :)
>
> --
> =============
> James Worlton
>           "We know by means of our intelligence
>           that what the intelligence does not
>           comprehend is more real than what it
>           does comprehend."
>                            --Simone Weil
>
Did European sheet music ever have the high notes on the bottom of the staff
eqivalent?  Do traditional means of recording music in other cultures
(Chinese, Japanese if different from Chinese, Indian/South Asian, Arabic,
whatever) have preferred orientations? (It's annoying being 1000 miles from
my reference books. One more week...)

Linguistically, did ancient Greek and Latin (or Egyptian or Sumerian, for that
matter) have words for deep and shrill sounds that literally translate to low
and high, as opposed to big and small?

Actually, I suspect that low and high may be a fairly common metaphor: if you
pile up a bunch of drums with varying pitches, the deeper-toned ones probably
need to be on the bottom if you don't want the pile to fall over.
--
Elyse Grasso

The World of Cherani Station
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Cherani Tradespeech
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