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ancients, convenient as a means of indicating particular notes, but so his language seems to implyno longer in general currency.52 We cannot date Gaudentius closely, but he probably belongs to the fourth or fifth century. The latest papyri with notation so far known, POxy. 1786 and 3161, are assigned to the latter part of the third century. Synesius, who knew how to sing Mesomedes' compositions to the lyre about 400, was presumably taught them (in Alexandria?) on the basis of the book tradition.53 Martianus Capella still equips his Muses with scores,54 and academic knowledge of notation was perpetuated by the technical literature. It was this tradition that preserved some of Mesomedes' music into the Middle Ages.55 But among practising musicians it looks as if the notations virtually ceased to be used by about the fourth century. |
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This seems the most convenient place to deal with the problem of correlating the ancient notation with absolute pitch-levels. |
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One's first instinct is to question whether there can have been any fixed correlation. The ancients, after all, were not blessed with tuning forks, and their lyre strings would not have stayed in tune for long even if they had left them taut between performances. On the other hand they did have pitch pipes, and countless other pipes whose register was more or less constant and which could serve to maintain a pitch standard. Xenophon describes a young singer at a symposium tuning his lyre to the girl piper's aulos before beginning.56 The decisive fact is that the notation system, with its elaborate array of keys, itself presupposes a fixed standard of pitch. Otherwise there would be no reason to choose one key rather than another for a given piece of music, and far fewer symbols would be needed. This complicated system with its postulate of fixed pitch was not only invented, it was adopted and operated, to the exclusion of other systems, for several hundred years. It was operated, so far as we can see, with impressive consistency, so that again and again we find different pieces of music settled in the same pitch range or close to it. |
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52 Gaud. pp. 347. 11, 349. 8, 15, 23, 350.9, 11, followed by Boeth. Inst. Mus. 4. 3. |
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53 Synes. Epist. 95. |
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54 Mart. Cap. 2. 138. He shows some knowledge of notation also at 9. 943. |
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55 Besides the writings already mentioned we should advert to the enigmatic note-table entitled 'the Common Hormasia, transferred from the Art of Music' (Pöhlmann, DAM 32-5). |
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56Symp. 3.1. |
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