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A not so philosophical essay by

MARILINA TZELEPI
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Greece was a country with great importance in many fields. Greek antiquity
affected the history of the world. Among the great men that lived and taught at the time
of the so-called “Golden Century” was Pythagoras, who contributed not only to fields
such those of mathematics, astronomy and philosophy, but also to the field of music. His
conclusions regarding music intervals and harmony were drawn from various sources:
observation as well as his deeper philosophical views.

The principal belief of the Pythagorean School, although there are no written
works of it, was that numbers were of utmost importance; they were a guide to the
interpretation of the world. This philosophical idea of course applied to music, as viewed
and explored by Pythagoras; he discovered the numerical ratios which determine the
concordant intervals of the musical scale. Another doctrine popular between Pythagoras
and his followers was that regarding the “harmony of the spheres”. Because of his
philosophical and scientific findings and beliefs, Pythagoras became a legendary figure
and his followers from the 5th century on are considered to be one of the principal Greek
musical theory schools.

I. Pythagoras and the music intervals: Exploration and definition of the ratios
One of Pythagoras’ main contributions to music theory was the definition of the
pitches. He abandoned the judgment of hearing, and turned to the weights of rules.
Assessing all the instruments as unreliable, he was seeking a way to acquire trough
reason, a full knowledge of the criteria for consonances. He observed once, passing in
front of a blacksmith, that the different hammers produced different sounds (notes). After
some experimenting, he realized that the different notes were produced according to the
weight of the hammer; number (in this case “amount of weight”) seemed to govern
musical tone. The hammers, which sounded together the consonance of the diapason,
were found to be double in weight. He further determined that the same one, the one that
was the double of the second, was the sesquitertian of another, with which it sounded a
diatessaron. The same one was the sesquitertian of another, with which it sounded a
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diatessaron, and also of another, with which it sounded a diapente. From this observation
he came up with the ratios
12:9:8:6
Out of the above numerical sequence, Pythagoras drew the ratios of the principal
intervals of the musical scale:
Octave à 2:1 (from 12:6)
Fifth à 3:2 (from 12:8)
Fourth à 4:3 (from 12:9)
Major tone à 9:8, the difference between the 5th and the 4th

He observed that if one takes two strings in the same degree of tension, and then
divides one of them exactly in half, when they are plucked the pitch of the shorter string
is exactly one octave higher than the longer (ex.1). Again, number (in this case, “amount
of space”) seems to govern musical tone.

Ex.1 The string relation 2:3, called a FIFTH

Ex.2 The string relation 3:4, called a FOURTH

Based on all of the above, the musical notation of the Greeks can be expressed
mathematically as 1:2:3:4. Below, we can see another diagram of the intervals expressed
by Pythagoras:
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Another consonance that was recognized by Pythagoras was the octave plus a
fifth (13th), where 9:18 = 1:2, an octave, and 18:27 = 2:3, a fifth:

The triangular figure of numbers in the shape of the Greek letter Lambda (Λ) is
the Tetrad of the Pythagoreans. Plato, in his dissertation on the Composition of the Soul,
explains the Tetrad to be a set of numbers whose relationships with each other seemed to
summarize all the inter-dependent harmonies within the universe of space and time.

So, the Pythagoreans had established the relationship between music and
space/number. Especially the School of Plato and the subsequent Neo-Platonists took up
this notion. Nothing of the writings of Pythagoras has survived, and the credit for
recording and developing his ideas is given to the Platonists.

II. Music of the Spheres

Pythagoras taught that each of the seven planets produced by its orbit a particular
note according to its distance from the still center, which was Earth. The distance in each
case was like the subdivisions of the string referred to above. This philosophy was called
Musica Mundana (Music of the Spheres). Pythagoras believed that the sound produced
by all this was so extraordinary that the human ear was unable to hear it. This music was
believed to be everywhere and to govern all temporal cycles, such as the seasons and
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biological cycles, as well as all the rhythms of nature. Musica Mundana , together with its
mathematical laws of proportion, is the sound of the harmony of the created being of the
universe, the harmony that Plato called the “one visible living being, containing within
itself all living beings of the same natural order”. Certain well-known theorists later on
during the course of the history of music theory rejected the “Music of the Spheres”
philosophy as being absurd.

III. The effect of the modes on people

Pythagoreans believed that different musical modes have different effects on the
person that hears them. Pythagoras was believed to have once cured a young man from
his drunkenness by prescribing a melody in Hypophrygian mode. Also, at the healing
centers of Asclepieion (Ασκληπιείον) at Pergamos and Epidavros in Greece, patients
underwent therapy accompanied by music. The Roman statesman, philosopher and
mathematician Boethius (480-524 AD) explained that the soul and the body are subject
to the same laws of proportion that govern music and the cosmos itself. He stated: “We
are happiest when we conform to these laws because we love similarity, but hate and
resent dissimilarity” (De Institutione Musica, 1,1. From Uberto Eco, Art and Beauty in
the Middle ages, p.31).

IV. Conclusions

All the above-mentioned have been crucial to the evolution and flourishing of
music. Pythagoras and his followers were responsible for naming the intervals, the
pitches, talking about the modes and the relationship of music to numbers in general.
Pythagorean intonation (which is a topic not discussed here) set the basis for further
developments in the area of music harmony. However, the question still remains up to
what extent music should be based upon mathematics (numbers). Some agree, others not.
Leon Batista Alberti, in Chapter V of Book IX of his Ten Books of Architecture (1452),
states that “the same Numbers, by means of which the agreement of sounds affects our
Ears with delight, are the very same which please our Eyes and Mind. We shall therefore
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borrow all our rules for the Finishing of our Proportions, from the Musicians, who are
the greatest Masters of this Sort of Numbers, and from those Things wherein Nature
shows herself most excellent and complete”. The truth lies somewhere in the middle; it is
all about finding what the Greeks called “χρυσή τοµή” (chryse tome = golden point).

Sketch of Pythagoras in Boethius’ work

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1. Mattei, Jean-Francois: Pythagore et les Pythagoriciens, Presses Universitaires

de France, Deuxieme Edition, 1996

2. Mattei, Jean-Francois: La naissance de la raison en Grece, Actes du congres de

Nice de mai 1987, Paris, PUF, 1990.

3. Plato: The Timaeus: The Composition of the Soul

4. Sadie, Stanley: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Vol.9,
Grove’s Dictionaries of Music INC, NY 1980