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Mese to suit his voice's compass.11 Theorists pitched it, as we shall see, according to a formula, to bring different segments of the whole system within a particular pitch-range. By doing this they could extract from the system any regularly-formed scale in actual use. And that was what the system in its extended form was designed for, not to cater for two-octave melodies, which probably did not exist. |
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'System', systema, literally 'constitution', is in fact the Greek theorists' word for any articulated scale or scale-section (tetrachord, pentachord, etc.). A grand scale that comprehended others they called a 'complete' (teleion) system, or as it is conventionally rendered, a 'perfect' system. The two scales running from Proslam-banomenos, one to Nete hyperbolaion and the other to Nete synem-menon, were known respectively as the Greater and the Lesser Perfect System. The combination of the two, as in the diagram above, was called the Unmodulating (ametabolon) System, because with it one could pretend that music which oscillated between the two alternative paths above Mese was not really modulating but simply using different parts of a single system.12 |
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Systematization of the modes |
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This universal scale with its unwieldy set of names was the outcome of long efforts to accommodate the various modal scales in a unified system and to define their mutual relationships. To some extent this was bound up with musicians' practical needs; many of the early theorists were practising performers. A player who had to retune his lyre in order to play a piece in a different mode would be interested in finding common ground between the scales concerned and in identifying, where possible, certain notes in one with notes in the other, so that fewer rather than more strings had to be retuned. The poet-musician Lamprocles (mid-fifth century) is said to have 'realized' that the Mixolydian scale did not have its disjunctive tone where it was generally thought to, but high up, and to have established its form as extending from Paramese down to Hypate |
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11 Above, n. 6. |
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12 Euclid, Sect. Can. 19-20, Thrasyllus ap. Theon. Smyrn. p. 92. 26, Cleon. p. 200. 10 ff., Bacchius p. 299. 1ff. (also 308. 3ff., where the tetrachord Hyper-bolaion is ignored), Gaud. p. 333. 19ff. Nicomachus pp. 256. 5-260. 4 describes the usual system but gives an unconventional, probably speculative account of its development. Cf. Barker, GMW ii. 264 n. 80. Ptolemy, Harm. 2. 5-6, differs in his terminology: he applies the title Unmodulating to the Greater Perfect System in contradistinction to the 'modulating' Lesser Perfect System. |
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