The Paradoxes of Octave Identities
Jen Keuler · Studia Musicologica · 1999
My study highlights an interesting phenomenon: that of the octave paradoxes. As is known, it is a commonplace in musical thinking that musical sounds an octave apart have the same pitch quality. That is indicated by the periodic repetition of pitch names by octaves. There are, however, scholarly endeavours pointing out that the awareness of the octaves as having two sounds of similar quality was the product of a historical process and there existed cultures in which the fact of octave identities was not evident, in which the octave had no distinguished role in structuring the musical relations. It is a common experience of music teachers that musically untrained people sometimes mistake the fifth or fourth for the octave. All this suggests that the recognition of octave identities is an acquired ability, without disproving that the phenomenon of the identity of octaves is based on psychoacoustic foundations. There have been animal experiments to prove that when eliciting a conditioned reflex implanted as a response to a definite pitch, the octave were sometimes confused, that is, pitches an octave apart mediate identical information to the experimental animals.' The question is: whether the similarity of the stimuli, or the pecularities of auditory sensations account for the mistaken octaves.2