The forefather you mention was Pathagorus, probably not spelled right. The pathagorian scale should sound familiar.
The idea Pathagorus had back in those days (many many days ago) was that certain notes played together would condemn your soul to hell just by playing them. No shit. The catholic church backed him on this, and forbid any of the forbidden notes/chords to be played. Not only could you be condemned to hell, but they would execute you for playing them. The entire system that our music is based on is based entirely on math. Pathagorus wasn't even a musician. As a matter of fact, no one that was smart in those days WAS a musician. All musisians were slaves and poverty stricken, and a man of class wouldn't be caught dead playing an instrument or writing music because that was what slaves did. Not people of GOOD blood. The catholic church was so insistent that they would only allow what was known as plainchant... Chanting one note at a time, or monophonic.
If someone was going nuts, say, breaking shit in the city square, they would assume that that person had heard a bad chord and was possesed, and they would "cure" him by playing proper music for him. If that didn't work, kill the fucker. Funny, huh?
Another note... Pathagorus truly had nothing to do with music or really any knowledge of it, only of math. The math for our system worked out in a way as to NOT condemn our souls to hell for all eternity, so that was the system that came about. Pretty sad that our system wasn't even developed by a musician. As a matter of comparisons... check out Indian music. Its based on a 40 note scale instead of 12. ( I think 40) To us, it sounds way out of whack and out of tune. Thats because we're used to having 12 notes, A to A, and nothing in between. They have 40 possibilities between each octave. Crazy shit.
This is a tad off topic, but thought I'd share it here!
Peace,
Paul
