For Monty, and anyone who's interested, I've posted a page summarizing the
basics of the system of naming intervals used in Western music theory
(Major, minor, Perfect, etc.).
http://home.att.net/~shakuhachi/INTERVALS.htm
Don't know much more about it myself. It's not terribly difficult in itself
but analyzing the relationships between the intervals and their
combinations leads to complexities far beyond my scant knowledge of theory.
To some extent, Western music has been a four hundred year exploration of
these relationships.
In the context of Japanese music, if Re follows Ro in a piece, for
instance, is it really correct to think of them as a Perfect 4th? That
would seem to indicate the presence of a harmonic basis to the music which
doesn't exist. It is convenient to name the intervals when discussing the
performance of a piece but they are structures of an entirely different
kind of music.
--bmak
Brian
bmak@att.net
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