CHAPTER 1

DEFINING THE PROBLEM SITUATION

1.1. THE PROBLEM OF CONSONANCE

When we listen to two musical sounds chosen at random, their successive

or simultaneous impact on our hearing will in general not be pleasant: nearly
all musical intervals are dissonances. However, when passing through this
continuum of dissonances, we hit from time to time upon a combination of
musical sounds which is not rough and unpleasant, but strikes us as sweet,
restful, and pure; these intervals are the so-called consonances. Owing to this
pie asant effect on our senses, consonances have become the next-to-universal
building-blocks of music. In all Western music up to and partly including the
20th century, and in nearly all non-Western music as weIl, the selection of the
notes to be used in the various tone scales has been guided primarily by the
consonances, either melodically (one constituent tone of the interval heard
after the other) or harmonically (both heard at the same time). Why is this
so? Where do these exceptional intervals called 'consonances' come from?
This question found a much more acute formulation through an experi-
ment carried out in the 6th century B.C. by Pythagoras. 1 He reputedly
discovered:
- that, when astring is divided into two equal parts, and one plucks
both ofthem, the consonance unison will be heard;
- that, when astring is divided into two equal parts, and first the half and
then the whole string is plucked, one will hear the consonance octave;
- that, when astring is divided at two thirds of its length and one plucks
first the ~ part and then the whole string, one will hear the consonance fi/th.
Thus the unison, the octave, and the fifth may be characterized by the
ratios oft, t, and ~ respectively. Moreover, as the fifth and the fourth together
constitute an octave, and as ratios are 'added together' by multiplying them,
the fourth should turn out to be 1. : ~ = 1. X ~ = ~, as is indeed confirmed
2 3 2 2 4
by experiment.
Thus we have now derived the Pythagorean consonances (Figure 1).
This way of dividing the octave into the two consonances fifth and fourth
is mathematically known as the harmonie division. The term b is said to
be the harmonic mean between a and c if ab --cb =~. c
If this is combined

H. F. Cohen, Quantifying Music

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 1984
2 CHAPTER 1

Name Ratio of string lengths Example in our sca1e

Unison 1: 1 C-C
Octave 1: 2 C-c

~=~}
Fifth 2: 3 together
Fourth 3: 4 octave C - c, as-i- X 1- =+
Fig.1.

with the requirement for the octave, a = 2c, we get b = ~ c. In its simplest
form this results in a = 6, b = 4, c = 3. Hence the harmonie series 6 4 3
represents the division of the octave into the fifth below (~ = and the t)
fourth above (~):
octave
643
fifth fourth
The octave can also be divided arithmetically, in which case the fourth is
placed below (e.g. C - F) and the fifth above (F - c). In this case the se ries
is 4 3 2, whieh is an arithmetical series according to its defining characteristic
a- b =b - c:
octave
432
fourth fifth
We shall meet these divisions again when discussing Kepler and Stevin
(Chapter 2).
On the basis of his successive divisions of astring into t, t
and ~, Pythag-
oras was able to form a complete musical scale. As a result of his findings,
which constitute one of the first naturallaws ever discovered, the problem of
consonance could now be defined much more acutely, since we readily see
that the consonances appear to correspond to ratios of the first few integers,
namely 1, 2, 3, and 4. Now where does this correspondence between mathe-
matical regularity and sense experience come [rom? Why does man find
pleasure and beauty in precisely those intervals which correspond to these
lew simple numbers?
Basically, this is still an unsolved mystery, although in the course of the
 DEFINING THE PROBLEM SITUATION 3

ages the problem has repeatedly undergone radical redefmitions, and at least
partial answers have been found in the process. The most drastic of these
redefmitions was occasioned by the Scientific Revolution, and thus con-
stitutes the main topic of this book. In order to make the problem as it
existed around 1600 understandable, I shall first give a short sketch of an
earlier redefmition of the problem of consonance, which resulted from
developments in the history of music itself.

1.1.1. Zarlino 's Redefinition o[ the Problem

As rnight be expected, Pythagoras did not fall to provide a solution to the

problem he had discovered. With the willingness to jump to the most extreme
conclusion conceivable that constitutes the great charm of Greek philosophy,
he concluded that the world consists of nothing but numbers. If this is so,
the problem of consonance has of course 'been solved, but most people
since have believed that this solution creates problems greater than the one
it set out to solve in the first place. Later phllosophers solved the problem
of consonance by considering the human soul to constitute a harmony of
various elements, which is aroused by a sirnilar harmony as is provided for
by the consonances. 2
Both this defmition of the problem and this somewhat vague explanation
prevalled during Antiquity and during the early Middle Ages, when music
was probably played in the Pythagorean scale and musical theory was com-
pletely dominated by ideas taken from the ancients. But between roughly
the 12th and the 14th centuries two radically new developments in music
occurred, which together informed Western music in a unique way and
drastically changed the problem of consonance in the process. These were
the invention of polyphony and the introduction of the thirds and the sixths
as consonances. 3
Polyphony may be defined as: several relatively independent melodies
played or sung simultaneously. The key-word here is: relatively. For the
simultaneous singing of the same melody at different pitches, which for
instance happens automatically when women and men sing together, does
not constitute polyphony proper. Neither does the other extreme, which
occurs when entirely different melodies are played together without any
regard for the resulting chords, which in such a case would be completely
arbitrary. In true polyphony as it somehow grew out of Gregorian chant,
the melodies always proceed in such a way that at least the accented resulting
chords sound harmoniously, in other words the going together of the melodies
4 CHAPTER 1

is govemed by the consonances. These consonances were the Pythagorean

ones: unison, octave, fifth, and fourth. This is natural, since in the Pythag-
orean scale that was employed, the thirds and the sixths are dissonances. A
detailed discussion of why this is so will be given in Section 2.2. (The basic
fact is that it follows from Pythagoras' law of the relationship between inter-
vals and string lengths that the consonances are incompatib/e; one cannot
construct a scale in which all consona{lces are completely pure.)
Around 1300 composers nevertheless began to use pure thirds and sixths
as consonant chords. That is, these were now employed in accented pI aces
as weIl, like the final chord of a piece, without any need feIt to 'resolve'
them, as the technical term has it, on a consonant chord, because this major
or minor third or sixth was now considered to be a consonant interval in its
own right. In no time various chords based on the third - the major and
minor triad in their various positions - came to dominate harmony, and
when we listen now to that early polyphonic music that is restricted to
unison, octave, fifth, and fourth only, the chords strike us as slightly odd,
and somehow a bit 'empty'.
As a result of this extension of the traditional range of the consonances
in musical practice, musical theory was now confronted with the task of
somehow accounting for these new consonances. The ratios which define
the thirds and the sixths in their pure form were readily found. The major
and the minor thirds tumed out to be given by the harmonic as weIl as the
arithmetical division ofthe fifth: 15 1210, and 6 5 4, respectively:

fifth fifth
15 12 10 6 5 4
major third minor third rninor third major third

Thus the major third is i, and the rninor third is 2..

Again, experiment shows that the division ~f astring into these ratios
resuIts in the two consonances looked for.
So now we have the list of consonances that is shown in Figure 2. The dif-
ficult task which remained was to integrate the new consonances into existing
musical theory. The man who fmally achieved this, in one of the great master-
pieces in the history of musical theory, the Istitutioni Harmoniche (1558),
was Gio'Seffo Zarlino, maestro di cape/la of St Mark's in Venice. This unique
book represents the first attempt to found rules for composition on the
theory of consonance. Here the scientific and the aesthetic approach to music
 DEFINING THE PROBLEM SITUATION 5

Name Ratio of string lengths Example in our scale

Unison 1: 1 C-C
Octave 1: 2 C-c
Pythagorean
Fifth 2: 3 C-G} together octave,
Fourth 3: 4 G- c as2-X2.=1..
3 4 2

Major third 4: 5 C-E} together octave,

Minor sixth 5: 8 E-c as~X~=1..
5 8 2
New
Minor third 5: 6 A - c } together octave,
Major sixth 3: 5 C-A as~X~=1..
6 s 2

Fig.2.

are united in a synthesis made possible by a characteristic common to all

music up to that time, but lost soon afterwards, namely, the fact that disso-
nances were still treated as exceptions, to be employed only for the expression
of a few selected affects, and always to be carefully prepared by and resolved
on consonant chords. Owing to this feature of late Renaissance music, Zarlino
was able to turn the theory of consonance into the cornerstone of the whole
of musical theory.
Zarlino redefined the Pythagorean problem of consonance in the following
way. When we look at the ratios of the consonances, as noted in Figure 2,
we readily perceive that all of them are contained in the number six. That
is, all numbers that make up the ratios of the consonances are one of the
first six integers. This range of the first six integers, or the senario, is the
'sonorous number', the 'harmonie number', which possesses this power to
generate all musical consonances. Now why just six? What properties enable
precisely this number to do so?
In the first place, six is the first of the perfeet numbers, that is, those
numbers that are themselves the sum of all factors into which they can be
resolved:

lX2X3=1+2+3

Furthermore, Zarlino says, God needed six days for the Creation. There
are six planets: moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. There
are six 'natural offices': size, color, shape, interval, state, and motion. There
6 CHAPTER 1

are six directions: up, down, forward, backward, to the right, to the left.
Six surfaces delimit the cube. And so on.
Thus the problem of consonance has been redefined in that the senario
has been discovered to be the harmonic number that gene rates all conso-
nances, both the traditional and the recently acquired ones, and the problem
has finally been solved as well, in that it has been shown why precisely the
number six is so privileged as to possess this unique generating capacity.4

1.1.2. Objections to the Senario

However. A few points might be raised against the senario, both in its defin-
ing and in its explanatory capacities.
(1) As a more careful inspection of Figure 2 will readily reveal, one of
the consonances is not contained in the senario, namely the minor sixth,
l Zarlino managed to get out of this difficulty by applying a typically
Aristotelian distinction: while the other consonances are actually contained
in the senario, the minor sixth is so only po tentially , which is really a rather
pompous way of saying that in this special case eight should pie ase be con-
ceived of as twice four.
Zarlino also offered an alternative solution, namely to derive the major
and minor sixth by adding a fourth to the major and the minor third, res-
pectively. The same way out of the difficulty was chosen by the Spanish
musicologist, Francisco Salinas, whose De musica Ubri septem (1577) was
at the time nearly as famous as Zarlino's work. s However, this solution
fails to solve the problem, as an exactly sirnilar operation like adding, e.g.,
a fifth and a major third results in the dissonant interval called seventh (e.g.
1
e - G added to G - B, giving e - B; numerically: 1- X = 185). Hence this
rule of Zarlino's gives no criterion whatever for distinguishing consonances
from dissonances.
But why was it so necessary for both theorists to cling to the senario?
Why couldn't they setde for the ottonario, the number 8, instead? The
answer is, that in that case aU intervals which contain the number 7 would
have to be admitted as consonances as well. But these have no place in.our
scale at all, and the intervals that are nearest to them, the augmented fourth
and the diminished seventh, were traditionally regarded as extremely harsh
dissonances. We shall meet the problem of the consonance of the intervals
containing 7 again in Sections 3.5. (Mersenne) and 6.2. (Huygens).
(2) Even if we grant for the moment that a harmonie number exists, it
is not at all dear how it affects the human faculty that perceives and takes
 DEFINING THE PROBLEM SITUATION 7

pleasure in the consonances (henceforward we shall call this faculty 'the

soul'). Evidently Zarlino's solution does not move us beyond the tradition al
sympathy between the harmonie number and the harmonious soul: the
chasm between sense experience and abstract numbers has not been bridged.
(3) Again, even if the existence of a harmonie number is granted, why
just six? It is clear that Zarlino's arguments are completely arbitrary,6 and
that it is not at all difficult to carry out a sirnilar exercise with, for instance,
the number seven:
- God needed seven days for the Creation (for why not include His day
of rest as weil?);
- there are seven heavenly bodies in between the earth and the fixed
stars: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn;
- there are seven wonders of the world. And so on.
Now why do these counterarguments appear so devastating to us, and how
could such a clever and knowledgeable man as Zarlino be so satisfied with
this naive number mysticism? The answer is that, obvious as these counter-
arguments may be to us, they really stern from a mode of thought that
hardly existed at the time. Zarlino's thinking represents a characteristic
mixture of Aristotelianism and neo-Platonic number mysticism. As such it
was quite typical for Renaissance science, which, however, was so on to
be replaced by the profoundly different scientific approaches characteristic
of the Scientific Revolution.

1.2. THE NATURE OF THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

In a surprisingly brief period of time around 1600 traditional science gave

way, in many respects, to a new way of interpreting nature. Started as a novel
way of addressing scientific problems, the new science eventually enabled
man to manipulate and change nature on a totally unprecedented scale.
What brought about this fundamental upheaval is one of the core problems
of history . At best, only partial answers have hitherto been found, and it
is not my intention to attempt here to increase their number.
But, in order to demonstrate how the science of music fitted in with the
new developments in science, it is desirable to give a quick overview of the
main characteristics of the Scientific Revolution. The following threefold
sub division may serve the purpose.
(1) Mathematization. Up to the 17th century the scientific (as distinguished
from magical) study of nature was entirely dominated by the doctrines of
Aristotle and his numerous commentators. Aristotelian science is, among
8 CHAPTER 1

other things, essentially qualitative; its aim is to explain natural phenomena

by defming their essences. For instance, free fall is explained as a natural
tendency of the falling body towards the center of the Universe. This ten-
dency constitutes part of the essence of the body in question; it is always
there, independent of any relationship of the body with other bodies. Thus
the process of falling is considered explained by pointing out the general
final cause (the striving for the center of the universe ), and the specific
efficient cause (e.g. the hand that, at some particular moment, is taken away
from under a stone, thus removing the support it had in the air). As a result
there is little interest in describing how the body falls.
In contrast the new science of the 17th century is quantitative: properties
of nature are explained by linking distinct phenomena through a law for-
mulated in mathematical terms. For instance, it is said of a falling body
that at any moment the distance through which it has fallen in the void
is proportional to the time squared:
SI: S2 = t 12 : t 22 •

In this view mathematics is no longer just the science that deals with numbers
and geometrie fig':lres; it acquires a fundamentally new function that is
clearly expressed in Galileo's famous line: "the Book of Nature is written
in the language of mathematics". 7 Kepler expressed a quite similar feeling
in an even more explicitly metaphysical vein:
Geometry [ . . . 1, coetemal with God, and radiating in the divine Mind, supplied God
with the models [ ... 1 for establishing the World so as to make it the Best and the
Finest, in short, the most similar to its Creator. 8

The transition that is marked by such words will turn out to be highly relevant
for the science of music as weIl.
(2) Experiment. In a sense Aristotelian science is quite empirically ori-
ented. It certainly derives its data from the careful observation of nature.
What distinguishes it from the new science is the sort of nature observed.
The Aristotelian method is straightforwardly empirieal: free fall, for instance,
is observed just as it is, too fast, that is, for the eye to analyze it, and also
heavily complicated by the effects of the air through which the body falls.
The new science, in contrast, observes, as it were, not 'natural' nature,
but an artificial nature, never to be seen in daily life. Thus, free fall is made
manageable by directing the falling body through a groove slightly inclined
against the horizon, and it is liberated from air friction and buoyancy by
imagining or effectively creating a vacuum through which the body is made
 DEFINING THE PROBLEM SITUATION 9

to fall. Such a process of forcing nature to exhibit phenomena not normally

produced is called 'experimenting'. Examples abound, and we shall meet
them, too, in musical science.
(3) Mechanization. In Aristotelian science properties are explained by
hypothesizing the existence of a certain quality in which the property to be
explained is contained. For instance, the fact that certain bodies are more
or less hot is explained by positing the presence in such a body of a certain
amount of a quality called 'he at' .
Around 1600 some scientists came to realize that this explanation of the
world is no less complicated than the world itself, and they began to look
for explanatory principles that would achieve areal reduction of reality's
infinite complexity. Inspired by ancient atomism they posited a division of
matter into particles (this division being either finite or infinite), stripped
these particles of all qualities except size and shape, and set out to explain
everything that happens in the world through the motion, that is the changing
relative location, of particles of matter of different shapes and sizes. The
carrying out of this research program is usually called the 'mechanization'
of nature, or the 'mechanical philosophy'. The explanation ofthe process of
human sensation was certainly apart of the program, and this is where, as
we shall see, the mechanization of nature became relevant to musical science.

The main purpose of this sub division is to serve as a c1ue for distinguishing
between the various musico-scientific theories we are going to deal with.
Yet I believe that it is relevant to the historical process of the Scientific
Revolution in a wider sense as weIl. The sub division is inspired by the works
of Dijksterhuis, who considered mathematization as the ultimately defining
feature of the Scientific Revolution, and Kuhn, who used the distinction
between the mathematical and the experimental approach in order to find
some meaningful pattern in the bewildering variety of scientific activity in
the period concerned. 9 Both were, of course, aware of the mechanization of
nature - Dijksterhuis' masterpiece The Mechanization 01 the World Pieture
even derives its tide from it - ; it seems to me that some c1arity is gained if
this process is considered as a third distinguishing feature of the Scientific
Revolution. Now if all this is combined with a thesis set forth in Westfall's
The Construction 01 Modern Science (1977 2 ), we tentatively arrive at the
following broad sketch of the dynamics that spurred on the historical process
of the Scientific Revolution:
- During the first stage, from ab out 1600 to 1650 or so, the research pro-
grams were delineated that became constitutive of the Scientific Revolution.
10 CHAPTER 1

Galileo formulated the programs both of the mathematical and the experi-
mental approach, while Descartes proclaimed his mechanistic research pro-
gram. For quite some time each of these distinct approaches advanced on
its own. For instance, Kepler mathematized the field that has since come to
be called geometrical optics; Torricelli experimented with the void; Gassendi
explained the world by means of atoms; and so on. Also many happy
combinations of the different approaches tumed out to be possible; thus,
for instance, Pascal mathematized the physics of air pressure, based on the
experimental foundations previously laid by Torricelli and by Pascal hirnself.
- In the course of the second stage (c. 1650 - c. 1690) the different
approaches increasingly collided. In particular, the mechanization of nature
appeared to be unfit for mathematical treatment. Research was more and
more directed to problems for the treatment of which the Galilean and the
Cartesian research programs gradually tumed out to be incompatible. The
resulting sense of crisis is particularly evident in the work of Huygens, who
was forcefully committed to both research programs, and became increasingly
aware of their ultimate incompatibility.
- The crisis was solved, and thus the Scientific Revolution brought to an
end, by Newton, who realized that a reformulation of mechanicism in terms
of [orces and the motions caused by these forces could make the mechanistic
approach susceptible to mathematical treatment on an experimental basis
after all. Thus the harmony between the three approaches was restored,
and a partly new research program defined that could, and did, serve to the
end ofthe 19th century.lO

l.2.l. TheScienceo[Musicaround 1600

We are now in a position to sketch the problem situation as it existed in the

science of music at the onset of our period. On the one hand, there was the
senario. On the other, three distinct new approaches to science were coming
to the fore that were substantially at odds with the explanatory principles
on which the senario rested. More precisely, in accordance with our three-
fold sub division we may suggest the following three hypotheses :
(I) We may expect that for anybody embracing the new conception of
mathematics as 'the language of the Book of Nature', the way Zarlino had
applied the senario to the problem of consonance would appear as nothing
but empty number-juggling.
(2) It is equallY to be expected that as the experimental approach to nature
rapidly became more common, the question of whether the consonances
 DEFINING THE PROBLEM SITUATION 11

might depend on variables other than just string lengths was an obvious
one to tackle.
(3) From the side of mechanicism, we may expect that attempts would
be made to bridge the gap still left by Zarlino between the origin of musical
sound and its reception by the soul, in terms of material particles of various
sizes and shapes.
Thus from all three new scientific points of view Zarlino's senario would
seem quite unsatisfactory, both as a defmition and as an explanation of the
problem of consonance. And indeed, some 30 years after the senario had
been proclaimed, the attacks began. Usually these did not take the form of
an extended polemic against Zarlino. It was just taken for granted that there
still existed a problem of consonance, and nearly every author I am going
to write about proudly proclaimed that he was the first, after 20 centuries,
to have solved it:
- Kepler (1619): After for two thousand years [the causes of the intervalsl had
been sought for, I am the iust, if I am not mistaken, to present them with the greatest
precision. 11
- Galileo (1638): [lI stood a long time in Doubt concerning the Forms of Conso-
nance, not thinking the Reasons commonly brought by the learned Authors, who have
hitherto wrote of Musick, sufficiently demonstrative. [ ... I We may perhaps be able
to assign a just Reason whence it comes to pass, that of Sounds differing in Tone, some
Pairs are heard with great Delight, others with less; and that others are very offensive
to the Ear. 12
- Beeckman (1629): [Descartesl is the man to whom, ten years ago, I communicated
what I had written about the causes of the sweetness of the consonances .... 13

1.3. OUTLINE OF CHAPTERS 2 THROUGH 7

Now that we have reached the year 1600 as a convenient starting point for
the Scientific Revolution, we can outline the arrangement of the rest of
this book.
In Chapter 2 we discuss two adherents of the mathematical approach
to the science of music, the German astronomer, Johannes Kepler, and
the Dutch engineer, Simon Stevin. The discussion of Stevin's contribution
to musical theory will also provide us with an opportunity to give abrief
historical sketch of the problems connected with the division of the octave,
that is, the construction of a scale based on as many consonances as possible.
In Chapter 3 the experimental approach to musical science will be
followed, from the Italian mathematician/physicist Giovanni Battista Bene-
detti, through father and son Galilei (the composer Vincenzo, and the
12 CHAPTER 1

physicist/astronomer Galileo) up to the French musicologist/physicist Marin

Mersenne.
Chapter 4 presents the mechanicists: the Dutch physicist/physician
Isaac Beeckman, and the French mathematician/scientist/philosopher Rene
Descartes.
In Chapter 5 the theories discussed will be put into chronological order.
The extent to which the various theorists knew and influenced and criticized
each other's work will be investigated, and priorities will be established as
far as the available sources permit.
In Chapter 6 it will be shown that around 1650 one particular explanation
of consonance had come to replace the senario, and the musical theories
of the Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens will be analyzed by way of an
example of the creative use to which the new theory could be put.
In the 7th and fmal chapter the principallater developments in the history
of the science of music will briefly be indicated. The results of our historical
account will be summed up and analyzed from three distinct points of view:
the significance of the science of music for the Scientific Revolution; the
extent to which the science and the art of music influenced each other; and,
finally, what it was that made one particular theory of consonance the sole
inheritor of the senario, thus, despite its many and serious drawbacks, making
it the reigning theory for about a century to come.