Scales

This morning I read a (not entirely impressed) review of a recent volume of essays dedicated to the study of medieval scales, and scale changes. The idea behind the collection, apparently, is that an attention to the quotidian, political, cultural, and cosmic scales used in late antiquity might help us to understand that period more fully. In other words, we may think in terms of ounces, and feet, and four-year terms and transatlantic flights - but when we approach sixth-century Spain, we had better realize that those lenses are not entirely universal.

Such a point seems reasonable enough to me, for I'm constantly in contact with at least one person whose sense of scale is considerably different from mine. Cleo's constantly announcing, for instance, that she is about to bounce 'really high' on the bed: the resulting leaps carry her a modest two or three inches above the mattress. At the same time, though, she seems to think of West Virginia, to which she's been several dozen times, as around the corner, instead of a two-hour drive. In a weird way, then, hanging out with Cleo is something like chatting with Einstein - one's notions of space and time are constantly challenged.

But if our scales thus differ in radical ways, there's another way in which our scales more or less match exactly. That's in the realm of music, where we each listen to melodies - recently, the soft lilting songs on our Music Together CD - that are built around standard 8-note keys. Sure, Cleo doesn't know what a scale is yet, but her teacher sure is trying to get her to feel it: each week, she stresses the tonic, or the home note, and sustains it in a hum as the encircled children lean and fall and ignore her, to right and left. And maybe it works: at a few points over the past two weeks, I've heard Cleo begin to imitate melodies in her singing. Sure, it's a rough semblance, but that makes sense, too: after all, she's my child, and I've got an ear that's as tin as can be. No Mozart, I'm afraid, in this family. But at least a common framework: a scale that's shared, both in theory and in the air about us.