Huitième

What it means

Huitième means “eighth” and designates in French usage the interval of the octave — the eighth interval, counting from the starting note. More usual in French, however, is octave; the ordinal form is met above all in older theoretical literature and in the series of interval names.

Musical use

The octave is the most fundamental interval of all. Its frequency ratio is 2:1, the simplest after the unison, and its two notes merge so strongly that they are felt as the same note in another register — that is why they bear the same name. On this equation rests the entire construction of the tonal system: all notes repeat at octave distances, and scales and chords are described within this frame.

For the study of composition it follows that parallel octaves are just as forbidden as parallel fifths: two voices running in parallel octaves cease to be two voices. In instrumentation, by contrast, octave doubling is a familiar means of making a line more sustaining and giving it colour.

Whoever uses French-language editions meets the interval names in this counting form — seconde, tierce, quarte, quinte, sixte, septième, octave or huitième. The naming of notes deviates in this: si corresponds to the German H (B).

In French, huitième is the ordinal number eighth; in musical contexts the word means, depending on the context, the interval of the octave or a note value. The usual French designation for octave is octave, for the eighth note croche. Where huitième turns up in sources or textbooks, the meaning is therefore to be checked from the context. In German the term is not in use; in translations it is rendered by Oktave or Achtel (eighth), depending on whether an interval or a duration is meant.

Performance practice

Intonate octaves especially carefully — deviations are more clearly audible here than with any other interval, because the merging is disturbed. With octave doublings in the ensemble, match articulation and vibrato so that one colour arises and not two lines. And, when tuning, check the octaves first, then the fifths, then the thirds.