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Of course it is unlikely that a specific standard was maintained everywhere at all times without error; but any fluctuation seems to have been small. |
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We have some thirty-four vocal pieces for which we can make an assessment of the range on the notation-scale within which the melody disported itself. In six the compass is less than a seventh, so far as can be seen from the notes preserved; it may of course really have been wider in some cases. In twenty-two pieces it is between a seventh and a ninth. In one it is a tenth, and in the remaining five it is an eleventh or a twelfth. There seems a clear division between the second and last groups, the latter being presumably compositions for professional vocalists (as is clearly the case with two of them, the Delphic paeans 12-13). |
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We will leave aside the first group, which afford little basis for inference, and consider the second, the twenty-two pieces with a compass of between a seventh and a ninth. Figure 9.4 shows how they |
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lie, if we give the notation symbols their conventional equivalents, M = *c' etc.57 It is apparent to the eye that the preponderant block of melodies occupies the octave *f-*f'. This is precisely the octave covered by the original alphabet in the vocal notation, and it is also the octave specified by Ptolemy as the most generally convenient for singing.58 We must bear in mind that the ancients did not formally distinguish between tenor, baritone, and bass voices; in choral music all had to sing the same notes. This octave, then, must be identified |
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57 It will be recalled that these equivalents were not chosen to represent a hypo-thetical absolute pitch, but merely to match the sequence of tones and semitones in the diatonic scale built into the notation system. In what follows, to avoid any confusion, I bestow an asterisk on these conventional equivalents to distinguish them from the real pitches we are now trying to establish. |
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58Harm. 2. 11, 'to allow the voice to move about and exercise itself comfortably upon melodies of middling compass, for the most part, going out only infrequently to the extremes because of the hard work and force involved in slackening or tension that goes beyond the norm' (trans. Barker. GMW ii. 338). |
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