The Music Of the Spheres

摘要

During the sixth century B.C., it is said, Pythagoras heard varying rings of a blacksmith's hammers and began to question the causes of differences among their pitches. The differences seemed to be explained by differing hammer weights.Pythagoras and his followers went on to find relationships among string-length ratios and musical intervals when the strings are plucked-an octave, a forth, a fifth-pleasant to the ear. Other early philosophers-including Plato, Aristotle and later philosophers, including Copernicus and Kepler-related these musical ratios to planetary dimensions and distances in efforts to quantify universal principles. Some of their conclusions are complex, confusing and a bit of a reach. But what we know for certain is that music is omnipresent and enjoyed by everyone-elevator musicexcepted. True, we may not all enjoy the same musical genres: Rap escapes my understanding, and classical music gives some of my grandchildren headaches. Still, I encourage youth exposure to classical music, and given the chance, I introduce it in small measure because more modern music is derivative of it. It has historical importance to understanding children's current musical environment.