94) that the Mesopotamian musical system was based on
heptatonic diatonic scales.
But when Egyptian
heptatonic modes meet Ethiopian pentatonic scales, things get interesting.
Group A tunes he characterizes as 'major,
heptatonic, and fairly equally divided between plagal and authentic examples.
While I have a few quibbles about details in A Geometry of Music (occasionally confusing diagrams, a moderately unsympathetic stance regarding Schoenberg, a somewhat fuzzy concept of "macroharmonic consistency," a slightly haphazard approach to the catalogue of
heptatonic scales and so on), on balance I think the book a masterstroke, well worth the intellectual effort that it demands.--Reviewed by Christopher Taylor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
pentatonic system, instead of the
heptatonic method, to create this magical touch of Sudanese music,Ao Othman told TheWeek before his performance at the Sudanese Community Social Club in Muscat on October 29.
Scholarly publications have devoted much attention to comparing musical lexicons (for example, the terms daqu and chong neghme [a movement in a muqam suite], both meaning "large pieces"), formal structures (for example, the metrically-defined compound tri-partite form), and modal theories (for example, various configurations of
heptatonic scales commonly found in both genres), frequently leading to the conclusion that the musical and cultural connections are undeniably close.
When performers from these two places come together, the social and musical tension is resolved in the interest of solidarity by performing the
heptatonic combination of these two local modes (C D Eb F G A Bb).
They are, of course, not pentatonic at all, as they are formed by addition of tetrachords to form
heptatonic scales.
In the
heptatonic pelog tuning system, the numbers are 1 through 7.
Fully
heptatonic scales were common in the Tang and Yuan, and may still be seen in scores of instrumental music today, although current taste tends to convert them to pentatonic melodies.
In the melodic notation adopted by pre-Islamic theoretical sources, the degrees of a
heptatonic general scale are denoted by seven syllables: sa, ri, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni (ex.1).