Perfectible Harmony - in Sound

Elsewhere on this website ( Perfectible Harmony - as Natural Phenomenon ) I decribed the
complex nature of sound in general and of harmonic sound in particular.
It's often been theorized that the elements of music derive from the
overtone series of harmonic sound. I'm not aware of a similar theory where oral
language derives from the same overtone series but have a strong hunch that
it does and think it would be an interesting area for scientific research.
But could either be derived if the derivations weren't driven by desire?
A desire to attain the highest qualitative state as represented by the harmonic series.

To show derivation we'd need to get into the science and math of sound.
Cold, hard, concrete facts.

To show desire on the other hand I think all we'd need to do is consider that for the most part,
we don't simply sing and talk. Rather .. we make an effort to sing and talk well.
Forget about cultural standards like high and low language or proper and slang.
Nobody spends hours studying and practicing music to play out of tune.
Nor does anybody speak "street" of "ivory tower" without an effort to get the
sound, flow and feel of the language right. Don't matter if it's Madarin, German,
British noble or gutter rat . . . knowing the vocabulary is only a starting point and
secondary to the tonal quality of oration if you want to speak authentically and fluently.

Tonal quality in language is infinitely more complex than tonal quality in music, but
the same basic principle applies. Each phoneme of a word is distinguished by the
interaction of its overtones. The phoneme is recognized more clearly the closer it
comes to an unachievable though approachable ideal of the overtone structure of
that particular phoneme. The ideal is perfection . . . the approach is perfectibility.

The timbre of a musical note is likewise distinguished by its overtone structure.
There is no universally perfect trumpet sound, but the quality of its tone is more
pronouncedly a trumpet as it approaches a seemingly illusive perfect trumpet tone.
It's only seemingly illusive though because every trumpet player approaches perfection
on their own personal arc of perfectibility. Miles Davis or Alison Balsom can only sound
perfectly like Miles Davis or Alison Balsom and even then their tone can only be perfect
for the moment and context they're playing in. And their degree of perfectly sounding like
Miles Davis or Alison Balsom is relative to who else they're playing with.
That's what makes live music exciting ... to the degree a listener can empathisize.

What binds all of the performers and listeners together is the score they're performing.
Each performer is not only trying to express their own self through the perfectible timbre of
their instrument but according to the intonation of their part in a score. Intonation is the
measured distance between two notes whether they occur successively in a melody of concurrently
in a chord. Intonation is the one place within the aural realm where we can attain perfection.
A leap of a fifth, or a note sung a fifth above will always be 3/2 times the frequency of the
note that preceded it or sounds below it ... if it is intoned perfectly.

I can already hear the arguments that nobody can sing exactly 3/2 all of the time;
and that sometime you might want that note a little sharper or flatter for
expressive purposes. I agree with that, but would also add that unless those
deviances are extremely minor or else resolve to a perfect state its heard as a poor
performance. I'll also point out that when we do hear melody with a second voice
exactly 3/2 distant from the first it takes on an inexplicable transcendent quality.
You only need to think about the heightened affect of a verse of Gregorian chant
sung in organum to get a sense of perfectibility attaining perfection.

Jazz, blue, rock and other improvising musicians can also recognize perfectibility
attaining perfection when they get that sense of being "in the zone". Those rare times
when everything clicks and nothing can go wrong as long as they don't think about what
they're doing and just trust the moment to their inner selves.