The World's Earliest Music: Traced to Its Beginnings in Ancient Lands by Collected Evidence of Relics, Records, History, and Musical Instruments from Greece, Etruria, Egypt, China, Through Asyria and Babylonia, to the Primitive Home, the Land of Akkad and SumerSmith, Hermann
History
The World's Earliest Music: Traced to Its Beginnings in Ancient Lands by Collected Evidence of Relics, Records, History, and Musical Instruments from Greece, Etruria, Egypt, China, Through Asyria and Babylonia, to the Primitive Home, the Land of Akkad and Sumer
Smith, Hermann
Music -- To 500 -- History and criticism
Very binding indeed were these laws, and they have exercised an
important, indeed, an imperishable influence upon the musical art in
all the centuries that have followed.
The methods of the great master-players of the cithara were in course
of time resolved into forms, very simple they were and very definite.
These are the laws of the tetrachord:—
1—between the two extremes of the strings of the
four-stringed lyre there shall be a consonance in sound
called a diatessaron.
2—between the string the highest in pitch and the string
next to it lower in pitch there shall be a separation in
the sounds equal to not less than one full tone.
3—between the third string (reckoning from the highest)
and the fourth string there shall always be a separation
in pitch equal to one hemitone.
There remained therefore the neutral ground between the second and the
third string—equal to a tone—but variable, according to the selection
of a maximum beyond the “_not less_ than a full tone” affirmed by law
2; there might be two full tones in succession, or the upper might be
increased at the expense of the lower, or on the contrary the lower
might part with some of its own fulness to increase the hemitone.
We should not imagine a written law at that early time ruling the
craft, the oral tradition would be sufficient.
Giving an account of the growth of the scale, I have put the matter in
my own way, in words, that as I think, will best fix the attention of
the general reader. Evidently for many centuries the orthodox Greek
lyre was restricted to four strings, notwithstanding the popular
adoption from time to time of an increased number of strings according
to the prevalence of Asiatic influences.
A time however came when authority accepted an increase to seven
strings. Whether Terpander, or Archilocus, or Tyrtæus, or other
poet-musicians got the innovation accepted is a question that will
remain unsolved; hearsay or history favours Terpander. Terpander let it
be.
Olympus, who was a Phrygian, and—about 630 B.C., brought asiatic flute
music into Greece,—changed this as follows, and obtained the octave on
the seven strings.
╭————————^————————╮ ╭———————^—————-╮
_e_ ‿ _f_———_g_———_a_———_b_ ‿ ———_d_———_e_
*
Notice particularly the interval _b_ ‿ ———_d_ as it plays an important
part in the history of music. It was a flute-pipe interval, older than
Terpander. Olympus was the first to introduce the disjunct form, and
from _b_ to _e_ he compasses a tetrachord.
Olympus was a contemporary of Terpander, and we may consider that the
two scales were in favour at the same time, one as the orthodox and the
other as the secular system.
Pythagoras about 530 B.C., added an eighth string, and it is evident
that the string he introduced was that of the missing _c_, since, as to
extent, the octave already existed on the lyre.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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