A Classification of Musical Scales

Author(s): J. Murray Barbour

Source: Bulletin of the American Musicological Society, No. 2 (Jun., 1937), p. 24
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/829182
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BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICALSOCIETY

24

Music, these arrangements were presented, and for the sake of further comparison the following additional arrangements (not found in the L. P.) were also
performed: (i) an organ arrangement in the Kleber tablature-book (probably
by Paul Hofhaimer); (2) another organ arrangement from the same MS.; and
(3) a four-part arrangement from a MS. in the Proske Library in Regensburg.

A Classificationof Musical Scales

J. Murray Barbour (WNY)
(DECEMBER6TH, I936, ITHACA,N. Y.)
The material of this paper is explanatory and supplementary to the
author's article, "Synthetic Musical Scales", in The American Mathematical
Monthly for March, 1929, XXXVI, 3, pp. I55-I60.
NOTE:

THEREAREseveral approaches to the study of scales: the mathematical

obtain all possible scales; the musical-to show their actual or

potential use by composers and theorists; the musico-mathematicalto classify them in order of utility. (The terms Scale, Mode, and Key
must be sharply differentiated.)
The sixty-six heptatonic scales are to be notated as "harp scales"using the ordinary musical alphabet. As a preliminary to classification,
the scales may be represented by the number of semitones in successive intervals, or by their quintal leaps-the number of perfect
fifths in intervals when arranged as in an unlimited scale of fifths.
Every scale is capable of three transformations: the inverse, with
intervals in reverse order; the conjugate, with semitonal and quintal
leaps interchanged; and the inverse of the conjugate. A scale may be
self-inverse or self-conjugate or both. All scales are either self-inverse
or differ from some self-inverse scale by at most two semitones.
A complementary scale contains all the notes in the octave not in
the scale itself. Hence the complement of any heptatonic scale is a
pentatonic scale. All complementary scales in any double system
(tetratonic-octatonic, tritonic-nonatonic, etc.) have total mean-square
interval deviations which differ by a constant. A classification of
heptatonic scales according to this total deviation agrees completely
with an index obtained from quintal leaps. The concept of complementariness points the way to a correct notation for pentatonic scales,
and is capable of application to other double systems.
-to

Many tables and graphs of scale-systems were shown.

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