[Dixielandjazz] Circle of 5ths

[John Farrell]

Some of the responses to this thread have been interesting. One, Steve
Barbone's, suggested that if by now I did not know what a circle of 5ths was
then I must be suffering from arrested musical development - in fact my
original question to the list was not what it was, but why it was it so
called when the intervals employed were 4ths.

Another suggestion was that "5ths" indicated the number of chromatically
ascending notes required to progress to the subdominant key (five).  A novel
notion but I don't buy it.

Several listmates have said that the circle of 5ths is also known as a
circle of fourths, the latter according with my contention. Others pointed
out that the 5th refers to the relationship of the dominant note, while this
has an authoritative ring it seems to me to be an unnecessarily clumsy
system of identifying a simple harmonic progression.

Had the notorious Joe McCarthy been musically inclined he might have branded
some of his victims The Circle Of Fifths.

John Farrell
http://homepages.tesco.net/~stridepiano/midifiles.htm