Is 'major' in a musical context a noun or an adjective?
In the question What are the notes in the D major scale?, I'm trying to work out what type of word major is.
A scale just means a sequence of notes with defined intervals between them, and these intervals are not identifiable until the scale is qualified with a name.. major, blues etc.
Is it an adjective because it describes/qualifies what 'kind' of scale, or is it a proper noun because it is an 'instance/subclass' of 'scale'?
I'm trying to think of a metaphor.. the common noun 'tree'.. brown is the adjective that describes it, and 'Cedar' is the proper noun, correct?
So for my phrase, 'major' seems to do both jobs. I'm confused...
In music, a scale is any set of musical notes ordered by fundamental frequency or pitch. A musical scale represents a division of the octave space into a certain number of scale steps, a scale step being the recognizable distance (or interval) between two successive notes of the scale.
A specific scale is defined by its characteristic interval pattern and by a special note, known as its first degree (or tonic). The name of the scale specifies both its tonic and its interval pattern. For example, C-major indicates a major scale in which C is the tonic. The A major scale is written A–B–C♯–D–E–F♯–G♯, etc.
Therefore D-major is a noun, as scale is a noun. It's like saying, This is the person, Magus.
some scales are used in jazz and modern classical music, others in common in folk music, especially in oriental music; some have limited use in liturgy, others blues, jazz, etc.
Edited to add: Now I'm really confused.
major adjective: a: having half steps between the third and fourth and the seventh and eighth degrees b : based on a major scale c : equivalent to the distance between the keynote and another tone (except the fourth and fifth) of a major scale
noun (b:) a major musical interval, scale, key, or mode
major noun (5.) Music. a major interval, chord, scale, etc.
ma·jor adjective
- important, serious, or significant. antonyms: little, trivial, minor
- Music: (of a scale) having an interval of a semitone between the third and fourth degrees and the seventh and eighth degrees. (of an interval) equivalent to that between the tonic and another note of a major scale, and greater by a semitone than the corresponding minor interval. (of a key) based on a major scale, tending to produce a bright or joyful effect. "Prelude in G Major"
noun 1. an army officer of high rank, in particular... 2. Music: a major key, interval, or scale. 3. a student's principal subject or course of study. 4. a major world organization, company, or competition; the major leagues. 5. a person of full legal age. 6. Logic: a major term or premise. 7. Bridge: short for major suit.
verb 1. specialize in (a particular subject) at a college or university.
As a musician, I treat a phrase like D major scale as the noun scale with the two adjectival modifiers D and major. I think that major is an adjective.
To support my view, I submit that you can discuss a musical scale without the modifiers D or major, but it doesn't make sense to a musician to discuss a major as a noun. That is, this sentence is grammatically correct:
I practiced the scale for 15 minutes.
But this one isn't:
I practiced the major for 15 minutes.
As for the argument that D major scale can be treated as a single compound noun: Isn't the point of an adjective to specify what type of noun you're dealing with? So it's true that a scale has a root (like D) and a quality (like major). However, both the root and the quality are more appropriately treated as modifiers of the noun scale rather than parts of a compound noun.
For phrases like "Play this piece in D major," @Janus Bahs Jacquet posted this comment arguing that D major is a noun-like term D with the adjective major:
To me, ‘major’ is an postpositive adjective modifying the noun (or nominal element, anyway) ‘D’. (This is how the OED treats it, too.) In ‘C♯ dorian’, I would also think of ‘dorian’ as an adjective, just like I would when talking of ‘columns Doric and Corinthian’, or indeed of ‘sergeants-major’. –