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Tetrachord
In music theory, a tetrachord (; ) is a series of four notes separated by three interval (music), intervals. In traditional music theory, a tetrachord always spanned the interval of a perfect fourth, a 4:3 frequency proportion (approx. 498 cent (music), cents)—but in modern use it means any four-note segment of a scale (music), scale or tone row, not necessarily related to a particular tuning system. History The name comes from ''tetra'' (from Greek—"four of something") and ''chord'' (from Greek ''chordon''—"string" or "note"). In ancient Greek music theory, ''tetrachord'' signified a segment of the Musical system of ancient Greece#Systema ametabolon, an overview of the tone system, greater and lesser perfect systems bounded by ''immovable'' notes (); the notes between these were ''movable'' (). It literally means ''four strings'', originally in reference to harp-like instruments such as the lyre or the kithara, with the implicit understanding that the four strings produced a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genus (music)
In the musical system of ancient Greece, genus (Greek: γένος 'genos'' pl. γένη 'genē'' Latin: ''genus'', pl. ''genera'' "type, kind") is a term used to describe certain classes of intonations of the two movable notes within a tetrachord. The tetrachordal system was inherited by the Latin medieval theory of scales and by the modal theory of Byzantine music; it may have been one source of the later theory of the jins of Arabic music. In addition, Aristoxenus (in his fragmentary treatise on rhythm) calls some patterns of rhythm "genera". Tetrachords According to the system of Aristoxenus and his followers— Cleonides, Bacchius, Gaudentius, Alypius, Bryennius, and Aristides Quintilianus—the paradigmatic tetrachord was bounded by the fixed tones ''hypate'' and ''mese'', which are a perfect fourth apart and do not vary from one genus to another. Between these are two movable notes, called ''parhypate'' and ''lichanos''. The upper tone, lichanos, can vary over the ran ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pyknon
Pyknon (from ), sometimes also transliterated as pycnon (from close, close-packed, crowded, condensed; ) in the music theory of Antiquity is a structural property of any tetrachord in which a composite of two smaller intervals is less than the remaining ( incomposite) interval. The makeup of the ''pyknon'' serves to identify the melodic genus (also called "genus of a tetrachord") and the octave species made by compounding two such tetrachords, and the rules governing the ways in which such compounds may be made centre on the relationships of the two ''pykna'' involved. Definition The ''pyknon'' was an important criterion in the classification of melodic genera (). The Greek word πυκνόν is an adjective meaning "close", "compact", "close-packed", or "crowded". In Ancient Greek music theory, this term is used to describe a pair of intervals within a tetrachord, the sum of which is less than the remainder of the tetrachord. Although in modern usage, a tetrachord may be ''any'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musical System Of Ancient Greece
The musical system of ancient Greece evolved over a period of more than 500 years from simple scales of tetrachords, or divisions of the perfect fourth, into several complex systems encompassing tetrachords and octaves, as well as octave scales divided into seven to thirteen intervals. Any discussion of the music of ancient Greece, theoretical, philosophical or aesthetic, is fraught with two problems: there are few examples of written music, and there are many, sometimes fragmentary, theoretical and philosophical accounts. The empirical research of scholars like Richard Crocker, C. André Barbera, and John Chalmers has made it possible to look at the ancient Greek systems as a whole without regard to the tastes of any one ancient theorist. The primary genera they examine are those of Pythagoras and the Pythagorean school, Archytas, Aristoxenos, and Ptolemy (including his versions of the genera of Didymus the Musician, Didymos and Eratosthenes). Overview of the first complete to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Incomposite Interval
An incomposite interval (; ) is a concept in the Ancient Greek theory of music concerning melodic musical intervals In music theory, an interval is a difference in pitch between two sounds. An interval may be described as horizontal, linear, or melodic if it refers to successively sounding tones, such as two adjacent pitches in a melody, and vertical or har ... () between neighbouring notes in a tetrachord or Scale (music), scale which, for that reason, do not encompass smaller intervals. ( means "uncompounded".) Aristoxenus (floruit, fl. 335 BCE) defines melodically incomposite intervals in the following context: In another place, Aristoxenus clarifies that It is thus not an issue of the voice being physically incapable of singing a note within an incomposite interval. For example, in the Genus (music)#Enharmonic, enharmonic genus the distance from the neighbouring scale degrees ''lichanos'' () to ''mesē'' () is a ditone—a gap equivalent to the Major third, major-third i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pythagorean Tuning
Pythagorean tuning is a system of musical tuning in which the frequency ratios of all intervals are determined by choosing a sequence of fifthsBruce Benward and Marilyn Nadine Saker (2003). ''Music: In Theory and Practice'', seventh edition, 2 vols. (Boston: McGraw-Hill). Vol. I: p. 56. which are " pure" or perfect, with ratio 3:2. This is chosen because it is the next harmonic of a vibrating string, after the octave (which is the ratio 2:1), and hence is the next most consonant "pure" interval, and the easiest to tune by ear. As Novalis put it, "The musical proportions seem to me to be particularly correct natural proportions." Alternatively, it can be described as the tuning of the syntonic temperament in which the generator is the ratio 3:2 (i.e., the untempered perfect fifth), which is ≈ 702 cents wide. The system dates back to Ancient Mesopotamia;. (See .) It is named, and has been widely misattributed, to Ancient Greeks, notably Pythagoras (six ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Enharmonic Tetrachord Pythagorean Tuning
In music, two written notes have enharmonic equivalence if they produce the same pitch but are notated differently. Similarly, written intervals, chords, or key signatures are considered enharmonic if they represent identical pitches that are notated differently. The term derives from Latin , in turn from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek (), from ('in') and ('harmony'). Definition The predominant tuning system in Western music is twelve-tone equal temperament (12 ), where each octave is divided into twelve equivalent half steps or semitones. The notes F and G are a whole step apart, so the note one semitone above F (F) and the note one semitone below G (G) indicate the same pitch. These written notes are ''enharmonic'', or ''enharmonically equivalent''. The choice of notation for a pitch can depend on its role in harmony; this notation keeps modern music compatible with earlier tuning systems, such as meantone temperaments. The choice can also depend on the note's readabi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quarter Tone
A quarter tone is a pitch halfway between the usual notes of a chromatic scale or an interval about half as wide (orally, or logarithmically) as a semitone, which itself is half a whole tone. Quarter tones divide the octave by 50 cents each, and have 24 different pitches. Quarter tones have their roots in the music of the Middle East and more specifically in Persian traditional music. However, the first evidenced proposal of the equally-tempered quarter tone scale, or 24 equal temperament, was made by 19th-century music theorists Heinrich Richter in 1823 Julian Rushton, "Quarter-Tone", ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001). and Mikhail Mishaqa about 1840. Composers who have written music using this scale include: Pierre Boulez, Julián Carrillo, Mildred Couper, George Enescu, Alberto Ginastera, Gérard Grisey, Alois Hába, Ljubica Marić, Charles Ives, Tristan Murail, Kr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cents (music)
The cent is a logarithmic unit of measure used for musical intervals. Twelve-tone equal temperament divides the octave into 12 semitones of 100 cents each. Typically, cents are used to express small intervals, to check intonation, or to compare the sizes of comparable intervals in different tuning systems. For humans, a single cent is too small to be perceived between successive notes. Cents, as described by Alexander John Ellis, follow a tradition of measuring intervals by logarithms that began with Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz in the 17th century. Ellis chose to base his measures on the hundredth part of a semitone, \sqrt200/math>, at Robert Holford Macdowell Bosanquet's suggestion. Making extensive measurements of musical instruments from around the world, Ellis used cents to report and compare the scales employed, and further described and utilized the system in his 1875 edition of Hermann von Helmholtz's ''On the Sensations of Tone''. It has become the standard method ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archytas
Archytas (; ; 435/410–360/350 BC) was an Ancient Greek mathematician, music theorist, statesman, and strategist from the ancient city of Taras (Tarentum) in Southern Italy. He was a scientist and philosopher affiliated with the Pythagorean school and famous for being the reputed founder of mathematical mechanics and a friend of Plato. As a Pythagorean, Archytas believed that arithmetic (logistic), rather than geometry, provided the basis for satisfactory proofs, and developed the most famous argument for the infinity of the universe in antiquity. Life Archytas was born in Tarentum, a Greek city in the Italian Peninsula that was part of Magna Graecia, and was the son of Hestiaeus. He was presumably taught by Philolaus, and taught mathematics to Eudoxus of Cnidus and to Eudoxus' student, Menaechmus. Politically and militarily, Archytas appears to have been the dominant figure in Tarentum in his generation, somewhat comparable to Pericles in Athens a half-century earlier. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Music Theory
Music theory is the study of theoretical frameworks for understanding the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory": The first is the "Elements of music, rudiments", that are needed to understand Musical notation, music notation (key signatures, time signatures, and Chord chart, rhythmic notation); the second is learning scholars' views on music from Ancient history, antiquity to the present; the third is a sub-topic of musicology that "seeks to define processes and general principles in music". The musicological approach to theory differs from music analysis "in that it takes as its starting-point not the individual work or performance but the fundamental materials from which it is built." Music theory is frequently concerned with describing how musicians and composers make music, including Musical tuning, tuning systems and composition methods among other topics. Because of the ever-expan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diatonic Scale
In music theory a diatonic scale is a heptatonic scale, heptatonic (seven-note) scale that includes five whole steps (whole tones) and two half steps (semitones) in each octave, in which the two half steps are separated from each other by either two or three whole steps. In other words, the half steps are maximally separated from each other. The seven pitch (music), pitches of any diatonic scale can also be obtained by using a Interval cycle, chain of six perfect fifths. For instance, the seven natural (music), natural pitch classes that form the C-major scale can be obtained from a stack of perfect fifths starting from F: :F–C–G–D–A–E–B. Any sequence of seven successive natural notes, such as C–D–E–F–G–A–B, and any Transposition (music), transposition thereof, is a diatonic scale. Modern musical keyboards are designed so that the white-key notes form a diatonic scale, though transpositions of this diatonic scale require one or more black keys. A diaton ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Didymos Chromatic Tetrachord
Didymos may refer to: * 65803 Didymos, a near-Earth asteroid * Didymos (music theorist), ancient Greek music theorist * Several other ancient Greeks more commonly spelt ''Didymus''; see Didymus (other) * Didymos I (1921–2014), Oriental Orthodox bishop See also * * Didimus ''Didimus'' is a genus of beetles of the family Passalidae Passalidae is a family of beetles known variously as "bessbugs", "bess beetles", "betsy beetles", "betsy bugs", or "horned passalus beetles". Nearly all of the 500-odd species are tro ..., a genus of beetles * Didymo (''Didymosphenia geminata''), a species of diatom * Didymoi, Roman fortlet in Egypt * * Didymus (other) {{Disambiguation, hndis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
