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Pythagoras considered music not only as an art to he judged of by the ear, but as a science to be reduced to mathematical principles and proportions. The musical chords are said to have been discovered by him in the following manner: As he was one day reflecting on this subject, happening to pass by a blacksmith's forge where several men were successively striking with their hammers a piece of heated iron upon an anvil, he remarked that all the sounds produced by their strokes were harmonious except one. The sounds which he observed to be chords were the octave, the fifth, and the third but that sound which he perceived to lie between the third and the fifth he found to be discordant. Going into the workshop, he observed that the diversity of sounds arose, not from the forms of the hammers nor from the force with which they were struck, nor from the position of the iron, but merely from the difference of weight in the hammers. Taking, therefore the exact weight of the several hammers, he went home and suspended four strings of the same substance length and thickness, and twisted in the same degree and hung a weight at the lower end of each, respectively, equal to the weight of the hammers; upon striking the strings, he found that the musical chords of the strings corresponded with those of the hammers. Hence it is said that he proceeded to form a musical scale, and to construct stringed instruments. His scale was, after his death, engraved on brass, and preserved in the temple of Juno at Samos. Pythagoras conceived that the celestial spheres in which the planets move, striking upon the ether through which they pass, must produce a sound, and that this sound must vary according to the diversity of their magnitude, velocity, and relative distance. Taking it for granted that everything respecting the heavenly bodies is adjusted with perfect regularity, he farther imagined that all the circumstances necessary to render the sounds produced by their motions harmonious, were fixed in such exact proportions, that the most perfect harmony was produced by their revolutions. This fanciful doctrine respecting the music of the spheres gave rise is the names which Pythagoras applied to musical tones. The last note in the musical octave he called Hypate, because he supposed the sphere of Saturn, the highest planet, to give the deepest tone; and the highest note he called Neate, from the sphere of the moon, which, being the lowest or nearest the earth, he imagined produced the shrillest sound. In like manner of the rest. It was said of Pythagoras by his followers, who hesitated at no assertion, however improbable, which might seem to exalt their master's fame, that he was the only mortal so far favoured by the gods as to have been permitted to hear the celestial music of the spheres.
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