How Different Instruments Shape the Music We Love

egend holds that ancient Greek philosopher and polymath Pythagoras discovered the laws of harmonics fundamental to so much of Western music by listening to blacksmith apprentices at work. As the goes, by divine will, Pythagoras happened to pass a blacksmith shop, from which he heard a cacophony of hammering, some of which sounded beautiful. He decided to investigate and found that certain ratios of the weights of two hammers playing together formed the most beautiful sounds: Two-to-one created the harmony of the octave, three-to-two the major fifth, and four-to-three