One of my favorite memories was when I was discussing my first semester schedule with him. I was interested in taking a high level signal processing course. I asked him if that was OK, considering I had never taken the prerequisites.

He laughed and responded, "if we accepted you to this program, it's because we thought you can do pretty much whatever you want. So maybe you'll want to go to the library and read a textbook, but sure, you can do it."

And so I did. It was tough, but I pulled it off, and it taught me I had a gear I never had to exercise up until that point.

He was a great guy.

Although, I must admit, as a doomer, I'm pleasantly surprised things aren't already worse than they are.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49173831

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

Centuries before we had major and minor tonality, we had the diatonic scale.

Through the Renaissance, thirds began to be accepted as stable consonances, and from that, you get tertian chords (triads and seventh chords from stacked thirds, and their inversions). In the diatonic scale, you only have 3 types of tertian triad: 3 major, 3 minor, and 1 diminished. The diminished triad was not accepted as a stable consonance.

In another post, I summarize the history of the development of major tonality out of the convention of the authentic cadence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49095594

I have come to believe that minor tonality is quite simply a result of "what if we used a minor chord as the tonic, instead?" Note that the minor chord already existed and had been in use for quite some time. The conventions of minor tonality (the tonal use of Aeolian and Dorian modes, minor key signature, the raised seventh degree, relative and paralellel key conventions, etc), however, developed as a contrast to major tonality.

I'm not discounting your neurological explanation, I haven't read your whole paper yet, but just pointing towards historical contingency as another way to see it.

Harmony is derived from composing music with multiple melodic parts. This is most obvious with counterpoint, but even pop/rock music can be seen this way. The essence of pop/rock is a melody and bass line as the two primary parts, and the rest of the instrumentation often plays harmonies that imply inner voices.

The transitional period where this happened is roughly in the 1600s.

It's a challenging read, but extremely thorough and enlightening. Tymoczko wrote a follow up that extends and reformulates his theories, but I haven't gotten through it yet.

But hopefully I'll get around to reading this at some point. It's one of my favorite topics. I wrote up my own attempt to explain the Western music system here: https://fakestoryofmusic.com

I've also been working on something smaller that focuses on major/minor tonality, specifically. But it's further from being in a place where I want to share it.

But also, pre-imperial Rome, a number of times. The Conflicts of the Orders, the entire late-Republican period from the Gracchi to the final demise of the Republic under Augustus.

And then the Eastern Empire had to reinvent itself multiple times. The near-collapse to the Caliphate. The Norman invasions of the Balkans and the First Crusade. The Fourth Crusade and its aftermath.

---

Then in the West, you have a couple brief periods where Rome isn't subject to Eastern Imperial overlordship. Justinian fully reconquers it in the late 500s, and Rome stays nominally part of the Eastern Empire until its brief loss to the Lombards in the 750s. But Charlemange's father, Pepin the Short, reconquered Rome and confirmed the Pope's authority over it. A couple decades later, Charlemagne is crowned Emperor of the Romans. And Rome exists under a constantly shifting balance of authority between Popes and Emperors until the Italian Unification in the late 1800s.

It should also be noted that even before the end of the Western Imperial line in 476, Rome rarely served as the actual home of the emperors since the late 200s.

---

So there's an interesting question of whether Rome ever did really fall, before the modern period. I would say "yes", in the sense that after the mid-400s, you never again have a sense of authority over the Mediterranean basin eminating from Rome (or the northern half of Italy). That's what people think of when they think of Rome. There are only brief periods of anything like that, and you never again have multi-generational, institutional authority.

But in other ways, there really is a continual reinvention of political systems that trace their lineage and cultural power to Rome. In that sense, it's kind of like China, which is similarly not really a continuous institution.

Unless the mechanism is understood, my assumption is that this is a moving target.

But I avoid unnecessary emotion in my prompts because I don't want potentially distracting activations. Kind of like communicating with humans.