The Development of the Equal Temperament Scale

Evolution or Radical Change?

Early Musical Developments

Assumptions about the origins of music have recently been debunked by archeological finds and research.  Many discoveries are directly related to the major scale.  Those outlined in this section are examples of humans working to perfect an instrument’s capability of playing the major scale, and are dated well before Ancient Greece.  It is becoming more and more obvious that the ancient Greeks had many potential resources at their disposal when they made their contributions to music theory.

The oldest discovery is from China.  In the Henan province, the remains of a Neolithic village were uncovered.   Many artifacts found at this site were very advanced for their date.  Among these artifacts, over thirty flutes made from the bone of cranes were between seven and nine thousand years old.  Surprisingly, six of these flutes were in playable condition, and researchers recorded one of them playing a Chinese folk song called “Little Cabbage”.[i]

Click the image to listen.

Comparing the pitches of each flute to their carbon-dated age has shown evidence of a progression to a seven-note scale.  The earliest flutes had four or five notes from the modern major scale (the latter having the same pitches as a pentatonic scale).  The most recent flutes had either a major or mixolydian (major with a lowered seventh pitch) scale configuration.  One flute had a misplaced hole corrected with a smaller hole placed next to it.  There is also evidence of the use of a standardized pitch system by the end of this period.  A strangely configured flute with the same carbon-dated age was found near the first site.  This flute had holes placed in a manner not suitable for fingers; multiple tuning configurations were placed around its perimeter.  It was most likely used as a template for tuning various sized flutes.[ii]

Possible Template for Tuning

It was known that melodic instruments existed during this time period, but these findings have changed the timeline previously theorized for the development of music.  More evidence of the major scale being standardized before Ancient Greece was found in Egypt.  Although not as ancient as the Neolithic bone flute, this evidence has a direct link to the person thought to have “discovered” the major (also known as Pythagorean) scale.  Since Pythagoras himself spent much time in Egypt, their society’s knowledge most likely aided his work.[iii]

A team of researchers in Egypt recently decided to analyze the tonal structure of four flutes from ancient Egypt on display in museums.  Their goal was to find out if the Egyptian culture used a diatonic scale.  These flutes were no longer playable, but they were able to recreate these bamboo instruments by measuring the artifacts and analyzing depictions of musicians in hieroglyphics left by Egyptians from the same time period. 

Click the image to listen.

Three out of the four flutes played notes from the diatonic scale; two of them played all seven pitches.  The oldest of these three played a pentatonic scale.  The fourth flute played seven distinct pitches, but these formed an Arabic scale originally thought to have originated in Persia at a later time (this scale contains quarter-tones described in the previous section).  Another interesting outcome of this study was the possible standardization of pitch.  The seven-note diatonic flutes’ notes have frequencies within one hertz of each other, even though they were dated hundreds of years apart and located hundreds of kilometers away from one another.  The pentatonic flute had a different length and therefore a different starting pitch, but seems to be based on the same standard as the other diatonic flutes. [iv]

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Last modified: November 21, 2005