The semantic system is based on a microtonal musical scale tuned in just intonation, developed by Alain Daniélou. For Daniélou, the subtleties of the intervals of music of oral traditions cannot be expressed using the equal temperament tuning system of 12 notes per octave, which has been the prevalent system in Western culture for around two centuries. This "artificial" musical scale was developed as a compromise, to standardise musical instruments by reducing the number of notes they could play, but it also reduced the possibilities of expression for both composers and musicians. Daniélou draws attention to the fact that a musical culture that adopts a system of equal temperament thereby sacrifices the possibility of expressing all but the most general significations inherent in a musical language. » After many years spent researching and leading experiments in the world of Indian modal music, Daniélou published a book entitled Sémantique Musicale in which he proposes one of the most elaborated microtonal scales of just intonation. According to him, the human ear is able to identify and classify pitches by using binary, ternary and quinary frequency ratios as a reference point. This theory gives rise to the unequal division of the octave into 53 notes, with frequency ratios composed solely of products of powers of the prime numbers 2, 3 and 5.
Underlying theory
Alain Daniélou and ethnomusicology
Alain Daniélou was an ethnomusicologist who, after studying singing with Charles Panzéra and composition with Max d'Ollone, settled in India. He dedicated his work to the study of Hindu music and religion. Following a long collaboration with the University of Santiniketan in Bengal, Tagore offered him the position of head of the music department, which was in charge of broadcasting the poet's songs. He settled in Varanasi in 1935, where he was appointed director of the department of musicology of Banaras Hindu University in 1949. He was director of the Adyar Library and Research Centre in Madras from 1954 to 1956. He was a member of the French Institute of Pondicherry from 1957 to 1958, of the École française d'Extrême-Orient in 1959 and the Unesco International Music Council in 1960. Danielou founded an International Institute for Comparative Music Studies first in Berlin, then in Venice in 1969, and was director of both of them. He also created in 1961 the Unesco Collection of Traditional Music of the World, for which he was responsible for twenty years. Alongside personalities such as the violinist Yehudi Menuhin and the sitar player Ravi Shankar, to whom he was close, he played a decisive role in the recognition of classical Indian music not as traditional folk music, which it had been considered as until then, but as a truly savant art, just as much as Western music.
Reference works In 1926, at the age of 19, Daniélou received a scholarship for a research trip to Algeria to study Arabic music. During this time he became aware of the limits and, to a certain degree, the aberration of a system that divides the octave into 12 equal semitones, and does not therefore enable musicians to interpret Arabic music, nor most types of music other than Western music. He took up the cause in the footsteps of a number of illustrious predecessors such as Zarlino, Werckmeister, Mercator, Holder and Helmholtz. His discovery of Indian music a few years later strengthened his commitment to this approach. He is the author of a number of reference works on the subject. In La Sémantique Musicale he writes, "The human brain immediately classifies factors 2, 3 and 5, and certain of their multiples and products, even quite high ones, yet this mechanism ceases to operate when faced with prime numbers above 5. Each interval of the scale we can consider as 'natural' (since it is based on ratios of whole numbers), has its own associated emotion or feeling." These intervals generate an emotional reaction within humans that is not only precise, but apparently universal. Daniélou goes on to say, "The Hindu theory of shrutis, or intervals, and classes of shrutis and jatis, assigns a specific expressive content to each interval and organises them into categories that can easily—and only—be explained by the nature of their numerical ratio to the 2-3-5 cycles." Moreover, the simpler the fraction ratio of the interval (i.e. the less it contains multiples or products of the prime factors 2, 3 and 5), the greater "emotional charge" the interval carries. The work of Daniélou has influenced many composers, including Lou Harrison, as well as other musicologists, such as the Canadian Mieczyslaw Kolinski. In Le chemin du Labyrinthe he writes :« In 1991, the Cervo music festival (near Genoa) awarded me a prize in recognition of my work in the fields of ethnomusicology, philosophy, psychology, psycho-acoustics, linguistics and cybernetics, providing fundamental impetus for new music in the second half of the twentieth century. »
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