WebFacts 1
The harmonic and melodic minor scales do not appear in eighteenth-century
writings about music (although variants of scale-degrees ^6 and ^7 do appear). If you mentioned
them to Mozart and Beethoven, they would have had no knowledge of these "scales." The three
types of minor were devised later, as a teaching tool to show possible variants of scale-degrees ^6
and ^7 in minor keys, and to help students learn how to choose the correct version of those scale
degrees in composition, depending on the harmonic or melodic context. We use them for that
purpose as well.
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