Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2015 June 30

= June 30 =

Britney Spears - Scandal
I remember that there was an old scandal (between 1997-2000 I think) of britney because she was topless in clip - I think the clip was "Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know". However I didn't find any newpaper on the internet, not in wikipedia - and felt hopeless - perhaps I wrong... I also remember that her mother sued the company because Spears was a teenage - Someone remember it? what was the song? The best would be a link to newspaper... --84.228.228.76 (talk) 15:54, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Non-standard ways to qualify musical intervals?
I seem to remember reading (possibly in one of Rameau's own theoretical writings) that he proposed somewhere to call (what we call) a major 7th an augmented 7th. For consistency's sake the consequences would have to be (what we call) a minor 7th would have to be called just a 7th, or a possibly a perfect 7th ("une 7ème juste"), (what we call) a minor 2nd would have to be called a diminished 2nd and (what we call) a major 2nd would have to be called just a 2nd, or a perfect 2nd ("une 2nde juste"). But strangely I don't recall reading explicit statements to that effect.

So was it all a bad dream, or am I really remembering something?

Note that such a system (whether it was really proposed or used by anyone or was just a hallucination of mine) would be just as self-consistent as our usual system (the inversion of minor would be major, the inversion of diminished would be augmented, the inversion of perfect would be perfect, diminished would be one chromatic semitone below minor or perfect, augmented would be one chromatic semitone above major or perfect and diminished, minor, perfect, major, augmented would follow each other on the cycle of rising 5th). But in such a system only the 3rd and the 6th could be minor or major, all other intervals would be perfect (or diminished, augmented, etc.) So it wouldn't be enough to dismiss this on the grounds that Rameau couldn't have proposed such an absurd system. In fact as far as I can recall he justifies his proposal carefully. On the other hand that too could be part of a midsummer nightmare.

Note also that there already is an alternative system to our usual system that I have without any doubt seen used by some continental Europeans and that goes in the other direction: in that system (what we call) a perfect 4th is called a minor 4th, (what we call) an augmented 4th is called a major 4th, (what we call) a diminished 5th is called a minor 5th, (what we call) a perfect 5th is called a major 5th, and so on. That system too is completely coherent but there the only perfect interval is the unison, all other are either major or minor (or diminshed, augmented, etc.)

Does any of this ring a bell?

Contact Basemetal   here  16:48, 30 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Minor and major 4th (i.e. perfect and augmented 4th) were used by Mozart, as can be seen in a chart of intervals in Thomas Attwood's theoretical and compositional studies with him. However, he calls the diminished and perfect 5th respectively the false and true 5ths. The modification making them minor and major 5ths makes it more coherent, but I haven't seen it. If you find it, a link would be highly appreciated!
 * Calling the minor 7th a "perfect 7th" is a bit odd, to me. I'd prefer to let "minor 7th" denote the 12-ET interval, close to 9:5 (the 5-limit one) or 16:9 (the Pythagorean one), and let "perfect 7th" mean the harmonic seventh 7:4. But since 7-limit tuning mentions that Rameau considered 7:4 to be a dissonant interval, I have a hard time imagining why he would call it a perfect 7th, so I confess that I am at a loss. Double sharp (talk) 14:57, 1 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Here, on p. 22 you can see the guy uses minor and perfect 5ths (for our diminished and perfect 5ths) and major and perfect 4ths (for our augmented and perfect 4ths). Actually in French they're not "perfect" but "true" ("juste"). So not exactly Mozart's system. Not exactly what I remembered and what you're asking a link for either. Yet for some reason that little work was one of the places I thought I remembered minor/major 5ths and major/minor 4ths. So this is not  the  link you wanted but it's going in the right direction  I'll keep looking. I'm almost certain I've seen minor/major 4ths and minor/major 5ths, if not here (obviously) then elsewhere. As to Rameau like I said I am really not sure. From what I faintly remember he wanted to avoid having the augmented 7th ("septième superflue"? that would be ironic!) be the interval that's enharmonic to the 8ve because he was claiming that interval "doesn't exist" (?) and proposed renaming our major 7th into augmented 7th and that was his main motivation. One of the thing I seem to remember is that I came away thinking it was a "good" feature of this system that only the 3rd and the 6th could be major/minor. Note also what I remember is it was a speculative proposal, not the system he actually used. But all of this is so blurred that I really can't seriously affirm anything. Maybe one day I'll wade through "Traité de l'harmonie" and "Nouveau système" here to try and figure out what the hell it is I'm talking about. Contact  Basemetal   here  16:55, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
 * To be fair, the modern augmented seventh is rare to non-existent in modern harmony. It would technically qualify as a dissonance, being an augmented interval, but it is a real tour de force to make a perfect octave function as a dissonance! I have not seen this tried much in tonal harmony outside Alkan (which is of course in character of him, a renowned hater of enharmonic spellings). Double sharp (talk) 08:54, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: The observations in my first post about the coherence of those non-standard systems for qualifying musical intervals, the relation between them and the order of intervals on the circle of 5ths, etc only make sense if we're only talking Pythagorean intervals but those observations about coherence, etc are entirely mine, they don't belong to Rameau's discussion (or anyone else's). So it is entirely possible that certain proposals on qualifying musical intervals concern themselves with natural intervals that are outside the Pythagorean system just like you're suggesting. Contact Basemetal   here  17:14, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Here you can read at the bottom of the page (which is p. 721 of the book): "La quinte diminuée se nomme quelquefois quinte mineure, et la quinte juste, quinte majeure". If you Google the equivalent of "major fifth" and "minor fifth" in continental European languages ("quinte majeure", "quinte mineure" in French, "große Quinte", "kleine Quinte" in German, etc) you may be able to find other examples. In any case that's how I located the link I've just given here. Of course you're bound to find relatively old sources as I believe nowadays the English usage has become pretty much universal ("quarte juste", "quarte augmentée", "quinte diminuée", "quinte juste" in French, "reine Quarte", "übermäßige Quarte", "verminderte Quinte", "reine Quinte" in German, and so on) Contact Basemetal   here  00:05, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Another possible reason for the decline of these terms, now that quarter tones are pretty much a standard device now, is that major fourth seems to have been redefined as the C-F interval (almost exactly 11:8), and minor fifth means its inversion C-G. (The system at Quarter tone is not consistent; C-G is a minor fifth, but C-C is a semidiminished octave. I wonder how one could construct a consistent system?) Double sharp (talk) 09:02, 5 July 2015 (UTC)