more on vibrations

Here's an interesting passage from Danielou's book, "Music and the
Power of Sound:"
"If we follow the endless development of the series of 5ths, it will
lead us, octave after octave, into vibratory regions that no longer
belong to the realm of perceptible sounds and where the various
successions and groupings of vibrations will take ever new and
unexpected forms. These particular properties of the vibratory scale
constitute the key that reveals the difference in the nature of the
vibrations at different stages, perceived as sound, light, touch, taste,
or smell, and finally the structure of matter and of the atom itself, as
envisaged by the Indian grammarians."
And: "Western readers should be warned against making any hasty
judgements about the practical value of the correspondences attributed
to musical notes by the Chinese or Indians. These attributions are by no
means arbitrary and are perfectly in accordance with the inevitable
significance of musical intervals, although they often refer to certain
kinds of correspondences that we are not accustomed to consider." These
are ideas and concepts worthy of a lot of study and reflection, I
believe....Hstick

Neil Haverstick, quoting Danielou, wrote:

> "If we follow the endless development of the series of 5ths, it will
> lead us, octave after octave, into vibratory regions that no longer
> belong to the realm of perceptible sounds and where the various
> successions and groupings of vibrations will take ever new and
> unexpected forms. These particular properties of the vibratory scale
> constitute the key that reveals the difference in the nature of the
> vibrations at different stages, perceived as sound, light, touch, taste,
> or smell, ..."

Well, I don't know the context from which this was taken, but he seems to be saying that the key difference between sound and light, etc., is frequency of vibration. If he thinks that mechanical vibrations of the air at the frequency of light would be perceptible as light, he is mistaken. Sound is vibration of a mass, whereas light is vibration of an electromagnetic field. The two phenomena are unrelated aside from the fact that they are vibratory. As far as I know, taste and smell are
not vibrational phenomena. The sense of touch consists of the transmission of motion or pressure on the skin, so, although it can sense certain vibrations, it is not basically a vibrational sense. I don't believe there is any known application of the principle of the circle of fifths to any type of vibration other than sound. Even in sound it seems irrelevant outside of the field of music, and may not even apply to all types of music.

But even if he were right, notice that he is talking theoretically here, not existentially. He's not referring to the circle of fifths as a thing, but rather as an idea; a way of describing phenomena, not a phenomenon itself. The circle of fifths does not literally lead us out onto some mystical plane where all the senses bleed into one. It's only an abstract reference system for identifying relationships between real tones. Fifths don't make music, people make music.

I, too, believe that the ancient Chinese and Indians may have had some valuable knowledge about music that has long been ignored by the West. Their ideas about the significance of intervals and frequencies may have something to it, or may at least point us in a fertile direction for exploration; so it is worthy of study and reflection. However, any study and reflection which uses faulty reasoning will not lead to enlightenment. None of us thinks perfectly clearly all the time. One of
the valuable functions of this list is to help each other maintain sound reasoning and methodology. One need not be a scientist or mathematician to learn to recognize logical fallacies.

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David J. Finnamore
Nashville, TN, USA
http://members.xoom.com/dfinn.1
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