scale in music, any series of tones arranged in a step-by-step rising or falling order of pitch . A scale defines the interval relationship of each tone to the others upon which the composition depends. Scales further serve to classify and catalog the tonal material used in composition. A great variety of scales have been used in the past and in different cultures; no single interval is common to all of them. In the 6th cent. BC, Pythagoras defined the mathematical relationship of the perfect intervals (the octave, fourth, and fifth) and of the intervals between them (an interval being the difference in pitch between two tones). The Greek system was taken up by the Christian church, which adapted its note series to a number of modes used in medieval music, especially in plainsong . The church modes, under the impact of the composition of polyphonic vocal music, became reduced in due course to the two characteristic scales of later Western music, the major and the minor. The major scale, called diatonic, has five whole tones ( t ) and two semitones ( s ) arranged thus: ttsttts (as in the white notes on the piano keyboard taken from one C to the next C); this scale, with certain modifications, became the basis of Western musical tonality until the end of the 19th cent. The dissemination and influence of the diatonic scale was therefore very great. The minor scale is based on tsttstt. This arrangement produces the lower third, sixth, and seventh degrees that...
scale in music, any series of tones arranged in a step-by-step rising or falling order of pitch . A scale defines the interval relationship of each tone to the others upon which the composition depends. Scales further serve to classify and catalog the tonal material used in composition. A great variety of scales have been used in the past and in different cultures; no single interval is common to all of them. In the 6th cent. BC, Pythagoras defined the mathematical relationship of the perfect intervals (the octave, fourth, and fifth) and of the intervals between them (an interval being the difference in pitch between two tones). The Greek system was taken up by the Christian church, which adapted its note series to a number of modes used in medieval music, especially in plainsong . The church modes, under the impact of the composition of polyphonic vocal music, became reduced in due course to the two characteristic scales of later Western music, the major and the minor. The major scale, called diatonic, has five whole tones ( t ) and two semitones ( s ) arranged thus: ttsttts (as in the white notes on the piano keyboard taken from one C to the next C); this scale, with certain modifications, became the basis of Western musical tonality until the end of the 19th cent. The dissemination and influence of the diatonic scale was therefore very great. The minor scale is based on tsttstt. This arrangement produces the lower third, sixth, and seventh degrees that...
