Iranian scale of music can be considered as a universal scale

Abstract

Iranians divide the major tone in two: Limma (L) and a comma (C). Safi‐yud‐din (the Iranian savant virtuoso from the 13th century) was the pioneer of a school that propagated the systematic theory, taking L as unity for intervals, and divided the tone 9/8 into L L C. We see this division in the tablature of tunbur Khorasan, a typical instrument used in Iran and neighboring countries (description by Farabi, the Iranian philosopher and musicologist from the 10th century). Our researches on measuring the intervals of contemporary Iranian scale [“La Gamme de la Musique Iranienne,” Télécommunication, Paris 5, 5 (1950)] showed that there are also other divisions L C L and C L L in Iranian music. With this arrangement, the octave is divided into 27 intervals or 28 degrees. This scale can be considered as a universal scale because it contains all elements of harmonic and melodic scales. In fact the interval L + C, the characteristic of oriental music, is equal to 16/15 with the difference 1.0011292, being less than 1/50 of a semitone, a difference nondiscernable by the normal ear [V. O. Knudsen, Architectural Acoustics]. Also with the same difference 10/9 = 2L, 5/4 = 4L + C, and so on. [Work supported by ASI and PSI.]