Quarter-comma meantone each kind, a perfect fifth of meantone contains four diatonic and three chromatic semitones, and an octave seven diatonic and five chromatic semitones, it follows that: Thus, in Pythagorean tuning, where sequences of just fifths (frequency ratio 3:2) and octaves are used to produce the other intervals, a whole tone is and a major third is An interval of a seventeenth, consisting of sixteen diatonic and twelve chromatic semitones, such as the interval from D to F, can be equivalently obtained using either This large interval of a seventeenth contains staff positions. In Pythagorean tuning, the size of a seventeenth
Short octave composer Peter Philips wrote a pavane in which the left hand plays many parallel tenths. This is a considerable stretch for many players, and become even harder when (as in Philips's pavane), there sometimes other notes included in the chord. Of this piece harpsichord scholar Edward Kottick writes, "The sensuality of effortlessly achieving tenths is so strong, so delightful, that one cannot really claim to know the piece unless it has been played on a short-octave keyboard." A later composer who wrote music conveniently playable only on a broken-octave instrument was Joseph Haydn, whose early work for keyboard was intended