Jean-Philippe Rameau · section 4 of 109

CHAPTER ONE. On Music and Sound

Music is the science of sounds; consequently, sound is the principal object of music.

Music is ordinarily divided into harmony and melody, although the latter is only a part of the former, and knowledge of harmony alone is sufficient for a complete understanding of all the properties of music, as will be demonstrated below.

We shall leave the definition of sound to physics. In harmony, sound is distinguished only as low or high, without considering its strength or duration; all knowledge of harmony must rest upon the relation of high sounds to low sounds:

Low sounds are the lowest in pitch, such as those produced by male voices; high sounds are the highest in pitch, such as those produced by female voices.

The distance from a low sound to a high sound is called an interval. The various distances that may occur between one sound and another form different intervals, whose degrees take their names from the numbers of arithmetic. Thus the first degree can be designated only by unity, whence two sounds on the same degree are called a unison. Consequently, the second degree is called a second, the 3rd a third, the 4th a fourth, the 5th a fifth, the 6th a sixth, the 7th a seventh, the 8th an octave, and so forth. This assumes that the first degree is always the lowest, and that the others are formed by raising the voice successively through its natural degrees.