1 No one will attempt to study this treatise on music, without some previous knowledge of the principles of Greek music, with its various moods, scales, and combinations of tetrachords. The whole subject is treated by Boeckh, De Metris Pindari (in Vol. I. 2 of his edition of Pindar); and more at length in Westphal's Harmonik und Melopöie der Griechen (in Rossbach and Westphal's Metrik, Vol. II. 1).
An elementary explanation of the ordinary scale and of the names of the notes (which are here retained without any attempt at translation) may be of use to the reader. The most ancient scale is said to have had only four notes, corresponding to the four strings of the tetrachord. But before Terpander's time two forms of the heptachord (with seven strings) were already in use. One of these was enlarged to an octachord (with eight strings) by adding the octave (called νήτη). This addition is ascribed to Terpander by Plutarch (§28); but he is said to have been unwilling to increase the number of strings permanently to eight, and to have therefore omitted the string called τρίτη, thus reducing the octachord again to a heptachord. The notes of the full octachord in this form, in the ordinary diatonic scale, are as follows:—1 | ὑπάτη | e |
2 | παρυπάτη | f |
3 | λιχανός | g |
4 | μέση | a |
5 | παραμέση | b |
6 | τρίτη | c |
7 | παρανήτη | d |
8 | νήτη | e (octave) |
1 | ὑπάτη | e |
2 | παρυπάτη | f |
3 | λιχανός | g |
4 | μέση | a |
5 | τρίτη | b |
6 | παρανήτη | c |
7 | νήτη | d |
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