major, minor, perfect, imperfect
Recently, my dad asked me a music question: Why are 4ths and 5ths called perfect and the other intervals designated as only major 2nd, 3rd, etc?
If an accomplished musician wonders, so may you. So I'm sharing the answer.
Actually, primes and octaves are also called perfect. That gives us nine (arguably) different note relationships.
Coming at the problem from an angle, let's ask, What if there were two kinds of cars, male and female? But there aren't; there's just one. There are just cars, and they're not gendered. Dogs, on the other hand, are gendered: a dog has to be either male or female, and can't be both and can't be neither.
Some intervals are cars, and some are dogs. For mathematical reasons, primes and octaves and fourths and fifths don't come in two "genders," major and minor; they just don't. Only seconds, thirds, sixths, and sevenths are major or minor. So, in the European minds of several hundred years ago, seconds and thirds and sixths and sevenths, which have to be either major or minor, and can't be both and can't be neither, seemed more like the mutable moon and the mutable earth below it. Primes and octaves and fourths and fifths, which only exist in one state and can't be major or minor, seemed more like the immutable sun and the immutable stars beyond. So one set of intervals is called "imperfect," and the other "perfect."
All this is aside from chromatic modifications: any interval, perfect or imperfect, can be an "augmented" or "diminished" interval. If you fiddle around with them on a piano, you'll see that the definitions overlap, and are only there for ease of reading. (That's my opinion; others think they're there for theoretical purity, which leads to some horribly unreadable charts.)
But, no matter whether you agree that the metaphor of perfection and imperfection is a good one, there has to be some name that reflects the very real difference between the dogs and the cars, the gendered and the ungendered.
If an accomplished musician wonders, so may you. So I'm sharing the answer.
Actually, primes and octaves are also called perfect. That gives us nine (arguably) different note relationships.
Coming at the problem from an angle, let's ask, What if there were two kinds of cars, male and female? But there aren't; there's just one. There are just cars, and they're not gendered. Dogs, on the other hand, are gendered: a dog has to be either male or female, and can't be both and can't be neither.
Some intervals are cars, and some are dogs. For mathematical reasons, primes and octaves and fourths and fifths don't come in two "genders," major and minor; they just don't. Only seconds, thirds, sixths, and sevenths are major or minor. So, in the European minds of several hundred years ago, seconds and thirds and sixths and sevenths, which have to be either major or minor, and can't be both and can't be neither, seemed more like the mutable moon and the mutable earth below it. Primes and octaves and fourths and fifths, which only exist in one state and can't be major or minor, seemed more like the immutable sun and the immutable stars beyond. So one set of intervals is called "imperfect," and the other "perfect."
All this is aside from chromatic modifications: any interval, perfect or imperfect, can be an "augmented" or "diminished" interval. If you fiddle around with them on a piano, you'll see that the definitions overlap, and are only there for ease of reading. (That's my opinion; others think they're there for theoretical purity, which leads to some horribly unreadable charts.)
But, no matter whether you agree that the metaphor of perfection and imperfection is a good one, there has to be some name that reflects the very real difference between the dogs and the cars, the gendered and the ungendered.
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