Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 1 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"Plutarch
Philosophy
Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 1 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"
Plutarch
Classical literature; Essays; Ethics; Philosophy
11. Olympus, by the report of Aristoxenus, is supposed by the musicians
to have been the inventor of the enharmonic species of music; for
before him there was no other than the diatonic and chromatic. And
it is thought that the invention of the enharmonic species was thus
brought to pass:[57] for that Olympus before altogether composing
and playing in the diatonic species, and having frequent occasion
to shift to the diatonic parhypate, sometimes from the paramese and
sometimes from the mese, skipping the diatonic lichanos, he found
the beauty that appeared in the new character; and thus, admiring a
conjunction or scheme so agreeable to proportion, he made this new
species in the Doric mood. For now he held no longer to what belonged
either to the diatonic or to the chromatic, but he was already come to
the enharmonic. And the first foundations of enharmonic music which
he laid were these: in enharmonics the first thing that appears is
the spondiasmus,[58] to which none of the divisions of the tetrachord
seems properly to belong, unless any one will take the more intense
spondiasmus to be diatonic. But he that maintained this would maintain
a falsehood and an absurdity in harmony; a falsehood, because it would
be less by a diesis than is required by the leading note; an absurdity
in harmony, because, even if we should place the proper nature of the
more intense spondiasmus in the simple chromatic, it would then come to
pass, that two double tones would follow in order, the one compounded,
the other uncompounded. For the thick enharmonic now used in the middle
notes does not seem to be the invention of the fore-mentioned author.
But this is more easily understood by hearing any musician play in the
ancient style; for then you shall find the semi-tone in the middle
parts to be uncompounded.
These were the beginnings of enharmonic music; afterwards the semitone
was also divided, as well in the Phrygian as Lydian moods. But Olympus
seems to have advanced music by producing something never known or
heard of before, and to have gained to himself the honor of being the
most excellent, not only in the Grecian but in all other music.
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