6th century BCEReputable sourceWell documented
Pythagoras and the Harmony of the Spheres
On the timeline · around 6th century BCE · Prehistory & Antiquity
What happened
The followers of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras discovered that the notes people find harmonious correspond to simple whole-number ratios: the octave to a string length of 2:1, the perfect fifth to 3:2, the fourth to 4:3. From this they imagined the cosmos itself as ordered by musical proportion — the 'harmony of the spheres.'
Why it matters
The idea that music is governed by mathematics became the foundation of Western music theory for two thousand years, and linked music forever to number, astronomy, and the belief that the universe is fundamentally harmonious.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Pythagoras · Reputable source
Related timelines
- History of Mathematics → — Music built on whole-number ratios