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Echoes of this old pentatonic style can still be found in certain musical texts from the third and second centuries BC. |
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Aristoxenus went wrong, however, in supposing that Olympus arrived at his e f a trichord by starting from the diatonic e f g a and leaving out a note.6 On the contrary, the diatonic system represents the filling in of the wide interval in the trichord by means of a second infix.7 The enharmonic and diatonic genera are to be seen as alternative developments from the same pentatonic matrix: |
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As for the chromatic (e f a), it seems to be analogous to the enharmonic, only based on a primary division of the fourth into tone + minor third rather than semitone + major third. As in the en-harmonic, it is the smaller of the two intervals that is filled in by a secondary infix, creating a cluster of notes, the pyknon, while the larger interval remains inviolate. |
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The advance of diatonicism |
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In the fifth century BC, music of a serious character appears to have been normally of the enharmonic type. This genus is reported to have been typical of Simonides, Pindar, tragedy, and the old style generally.8 Old tunes attributed to Olympus and Polymnestus were enharmonic or came to be played enharmonically.9 A set of six 'very ancient' (no doubt fifth-century) scales described by Aristides Quintilianus are all enharmonic.10 Aristoxenus says that theoreticians before him had concerned themselves exclusively with this genus.11 The name 'enharmonic' itself implies its prime status, as it means 'in tune'; the enharmonic genus is quite often referred to simply as |
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6 Loc. cit. Aristoxenus held the diatonic genus to be the most natural and the first to have been discovered (Harm. 1. 19). |
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7 Cf. Sachs, WM 64f.; Kunst, 43. |
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8 Alcidamas(?) in PHib. 13. 20. Plut. De audiendo 46b(?), ps.-Plut. De mus. 1137d-f, 1145a. Psell. De trag. 5. |
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9 Polymnestus, a 7th-c. piper from Colophon, is said to have widened (or created by widening) certain intervals of 3/4 tone falling and 1 1/4 tone rising, called respectively eklysis (release) and ekbole (discharge): they were uncommon, and occurred only in the enharmonic genus (ps.-Plut. De mus. 1141b, Aristid. Quint. p. 28. 1, Bacchius, Harm. 36-7, 41-2). |
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10 Aristid. Quint. p. 18. 5ff. See below, p. 174. |
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11 Aristox. Harm. 1. 2, 2. 35, ps.-Plut. De mus. 1143e. |
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