Interval Strength
David Cope (1997) suggests the concept of interval strength, in which an interval's strength, consonance, or stability (see consonance and dissonance) is determined by its approximation to a lower and stronger, or higher and weaker, position in the harmonic series. See also: Lipps–Meyer law.
Thus, an equal tempered perfect fifth ( play) is stronger than an equal tempered minor third ( play), since they approximate a just perfect fifth ( play) and just minor third ( play), respectively. The just minor third appears between harmonics 5 and 6 while the just fifth appears lower, between harmonics 2 and 3.
Read more about this topic: Harmonic Series (music)
Famous quotes containing the words interval and/or strength:
“[I have] been in love with one princess or another almost all my life, and I hope I shall go on so, till I die, being firmly persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“The essence of the modern state is that the universal be bound up with the complete freedom of its particular members and with private well-being, that thus the interests of family and civil society must concentrate themselves on the state.... It is only when both these moments subsist in their strength that the state can be regarded as articulated and genuinely organized.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)