The Sound of Boston

I spent this beeeeeeautiful summery evening figuring out the piano part for Augustana's Boston. I've always liked this song because its sound is so clear and the piano part makes me think of bells- at least in the version that I have (apparently there is an original version out there with a different-sounding intro). So this evening, after an impromptu viewing of La vita e bella (*tear!*), I decided to decode the piano part by ear, and that is how I discovered that this song is chock-full of perfect 4ths and 5ths!...

Okay, so to explain, perfect 4ths and 5ths are types of intervals in music. Intervals in general can be described as having a certain sound quality- sad, happy, gloomy, threathening, jarring, to use normal language. To the human ear, though, perfect 4ths and 5ths (and octaves) have the purest, most consonant sound, and the purity of these particular intervals was recognized even way back when, by Pythagoras. In fact, Pythagoras was so taken by the connection between math and musical intervals that he became convinced that the structure of the universe had to reflect these divine, harmonious ratios in the distances between its planets, sun, and moon. His "Music of the Spheres" model of the universe is simultaneously outrageous and full of incredible forethought, in my opinion, given the whole string theory thing. I'm going to refrain from attributing any sort of divinity to these musical intervals, but it is cool to think that the beauty of Augustana's song can be explained by its containing a bunch of these especially pure-sounding intervals.