Qi as the basic category of re ection of the musical heritage of China and Japan
The author considers the forms of the basic vibratory ether-pneuma substance (in Chinese philosophy – qi; Japanese – ki/ke) of the universe as the initial element of the musical heritage of China and Japan. Since “sounds, following the pneuma qi and numbers are somewhat between the world of unformed objects… (the world of the inmost) and the world of formed objects...” (M. V. Isaeva), acousticians sought for not so much an equal temperament of the lü-lü (Jap. – ju ni ritsu) system in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, as it is considered to be, but mathematical calculations of minimal mode-acoustic elds (term by E. M. Alkon), adequate to continually-discrete structures of ether/pneuma.