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harmonia, 'the (standard) tuning', whereas the chromatic genus, chroma for short, is marked by its name as a kind of deviation, a 'colouring'. Chromatic was associated with professional citharodes, probably since about the mid-fifth century.12 Modernists such as Euripides and Agathon made some use of it in tragedy, but it remained abnormal there.13 Some maintained that it made men soft and effeminate, whereas enharmonic music made them manly.14 |
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As for diatonic, we hear that some tragic enharmonic had an admixture of diatonic,15 and that dithyrambic poets like Timotheus, Philoxenus, and Telestes were liable to modulate between all three genera.16 Pure diatonic music, however, may have been typical only of certain regions of the Greek world at this period. A sophist, perhaps Alcidamas, claims that everyone knows that diatonic music is to be found among the Aetolians, the Dolopes, and all the tribes that sacrifice at Thermopylae.17 In the South Italian Pythagorean school it seems to have been the diatonic genus, not the enharmonic, that enjoyed the primary status in musical theory.18 |
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By the late fourth century enharmonic had lost a good deal of ground. Aristoxenus upheld it as being the most sophisticated and beautiful of the genera, but lamented the fact that it was now largely neglected in favour of the chromatic, which people found easier to appreciate and more ingratiating.19 The musical fragments from the third and second centuries BC show a mixture of chromatic and diatonic.20 Those from the Roman period are almost wholly diatonic.21 There is some evidence for a marginal survival of enharmonic. Dionysius of Halicarnassus writes that when he reads Isocrates' speeches he becomes calm and solemn in mood, 'like |
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12 Praxidamas ap. Phot./Sud. s.v. chiazein (Ar. fr. 930), fake Laconian decree about Timotheus in Boethius, Inst. Mus. 1. 1 p. 182. 12 Friedl.; Dion. Hal. Comp 132; ps.-Plut. De mus. 1137ef. |
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13 Plut. Quaest. conv. 645de, Psell. De trag. 5; ps.-Plut. loc. cit. |
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14 See pp. 247f. |
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15 Psell. loc. cit. |
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16 Dion. Hal. Comp. 132. |
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17PHib. 13. 17ff. The statement may mean that diatonic songs were sung at the meetings of the Amphictionic League. |
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18 Philolaus fr. 6, cf. Pl. Tim. 35b-36b. Philolaus in fact considered all three genera, and so did Archytas and his fellow-Tarentine Aristoxenus; but thereby they certainly gave the diatonic more attention than it had had. |
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19Harm. 1. 23 and ap. ps.-Plut. De mus. 1145a; echoed by Theon Smyrn. p. 55. 15-56. 3. |
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20 Ch. 10, nos. 7-13. |
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21 Ch. 10, nos. 15-51. |
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