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This completed a system consisting of two octaves with Mese at the centre. The latest addition received the name Proslambanomenos, 'the note we take as an extra'. Its masculine form shows that its inventor had forgotten all idea of a string (chorde); he was thinking of it simply as a note (phthongos). |
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The whole scheme, which was to remain canonical, is set out in Fig. 8.1. Of the 'movable' notes whose positions varied in different genera, Lichanos was treated as especially diagnostic of genus, and as a note-name it is sometimes augmented or replaced by enharmonios, chromatike, or diatonos, depending on its actual station. The same happens more rarely with Paranete. Now, none of these notes had a fixed pitch in absolute terms. What a note's name defined was its position in an intervallic series; we can compare the do-re-mi of the sol-fa system. Paramese, for example, was not 'b' but 'that note above which the scale (in the diatonic genus) goes S T T and below which it descends T T T S'. A singer pitched his |
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FIG. 8.1.
The comprehensive notation
scheme (the Unmodulating System) |
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