ABSTRACT
The music of the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods was based almost exclusively on the major and minor scales with which we are all familiar. Though these scales have not been discarded altogether, composers since the early twentieth century have also made use of a large number of other scale formations. Not all of these scale formations are new-in fact, some of them had been used long before the tonal era and had since fallen out of fashion. But new or old, these scales were all unfamiliar to audiences accustomed to major/ minor tonality, and so they helped composers to distance themselves from the older style.
