July
09
/ 2018
In 1697, William Congreve, a British playwright, wrote that: “ Musick hath Charms to sooth a savage Breast, To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak. I've read, that things inanimate have mov'd, and, as with living Souls, have been inform'd, by Magick Numbers and persuasive Sound.” The study of the magical, mathematical properties in music goes all the way back to an ancient Greek mathematician named Pythagoras, the ‘father’ of modern geometry. He was the first to recognize the unique qualities of the musical intervals, or the space between notes on a musical scale, that he called the ‘perfect’ fourth and the ‘perfect’ fifth. His name for these intervals, ‘perfect’, stays with them to this day. Other intervals are
