Definition:Musical Interval/Historical Note
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Historical Note on Musical Interval
The Pythagoreans noticed that aesthetically pleasing musical intervals were obtained by sounding notes from strings whose lengths were in ratios of small natural numbers: $1 : 2$, $2 : 3$, $3 : 4$ and so on.
This may have been one of the inspirations behind their mystical appreciation of the numerical nature of the Universe.
Sources
- 2008: Ian Stewart: Taming the Infinite ... (previous) ... (next): Chapter $2$: The Logic of Shape: Pythagoras