We have divided the octave into twelve equidistant degrees, because we had to manage somehow, and have constructed our instruments in such a way that we can never get in above or below or between them. Keyboard instruments, in particular, have so thoroughly schooled our ears that we are no longer capable of hearing anything else—incapable of hearing except through this impure medium. Yet Nature created an infinite gradation—infinite! who still knows it nowadays?[O]
THE CONTRACTED SYSTEM OF MUSIC
And within this duodecimal octave we have marked out a series of fixed intervals, seven in number, and founded thereon our entire art of music. What do I say—one series? Two such series, one for each leg: The Major and Minor Scales. When we start this series of intervals on some other degree of our semitonic ladder, we obtain a new key, and a “foreign” one, at that! How violently contracted a system arose from this initial confusion,[P] may be read in the law-books; we will not repeat it here.
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We teach four-and-twenty keys, twelve times the two Series of Seven; but, in point of fact, we have at our command only two, the major key and the minor key. The rest are merely transpositions. By means of the several transpositions we are supposed to get different shades of harmony; but this is an illusion. In England, under the reign of the high “concert pitch,” the most familiar works may be played a semitone higher than they are written, without changing their effect. Singers transpose an aria to suit their convenience, leaving untransposed what precedes and follows. Song-writers not infrequently publish their own compositions in three different pitches; in all three editions the pieces are precisely alike.
When a well-known face looks out of a window, it matters not whether it gazes down from the first story or the third.
Were it feasible to elevate or depress a landscape, far as eye can reach, by several hundred yards, the pictorial impression would neither gain nor lose by it.
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MAJOR AND MINOR
Upon the two Series of Seven, the major key and the minor key, the whole art of music has been established; one limitation brings on the other.