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

Maybe it's because high notes are more likely to be
produced by flying animals (birds, bats) or tiny
(lighter) ones (mice...), and deep notes by heavy
animals like bears, mammoths and so on ? (1) I think
our ancestors knew little about sound frequencies.
Anyway, even if considering frequencies, why should
"high" frequencies be high, and low ones, low ? There
seems to be little spatial meaning in sound.

(1) But one could also argue that thunder, though
being a deep sound, seems to come from the sky...

--- Doug Dee <AmateurLinguist@...> wrote:
>
> 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

=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html

Replies