The notes were not given their names in ABC , they were first called Do Re Mi,etc. I belive the Do Re Me names has something to do with the note sounding. i.e when you hear the C note it sounds slightly like someone saying 'Do' and the note E note sounds like someone saying 'Me' , I belive people with 'Perfect Pitch' recognize notes this way. (I don't have perfect pitch, but I can recognize some notes this way too)

Then the major scale and intervals were setteled in the baroque age I think , and the fundamental scale was the 'Do maj' (Cmaj).

And when somebody decided to name those notes in ABC, I don't know why not 123 , I also don't know why the 'La' A note was chosen to be the first note, but it seems to be a very special note in western music since all of the tunings are refered to it (A 440Hz).

But logicaly, those Alphabetic names had to be set on one of the scales , and each scale in classic western music has 7 notes so the alphabetic charactars had to be from A to G, then they probably chosen the white keys of the piano which makes the C maj scale (or the A min) .


Anyway, who cares? as a mathematician ,you can use calculus perfectly without knowing how the idea of differentiation came into Isac Newton's mind, also you don't have to know anything about 'Napier' to solve logarithms.
Just be happy to be born in this age, so you can benefit from all of this knowledge around us.


[Edited by SLY on 12-03-2002 at 12:41 PM]