The Music of Hindostan c9.21

c9.21

We must not argue from these eighteen scales to any preference for a particular size of interval, for neither do we know how representative this list, a mere handful of the flutes of India, may be, nor can we hope to base anything upon the sporadic list of ‘origins’. But a given scale tends to consist, on the whole, of one size of interval, showing that there was an average feeling, varying of course locally, of the sort of distance it was to the ‘next door’ note. We see, however, that in no scale is this distance uniform. The scale is conceived ‘diatonically’, that is to say, mixing up large and small intervals. This throws light incidentally on a statement of Aristoxenus that ‘it is impossible to hear three next door notes in succession’.¹