Talk:Musical system of ancient Greece

Initial Move from Mode Article
Please note, this is under heave revision and will be for about another week. Much material (for instance octave species) needs to be cross referenced and so on and on.

This is an attempt to free up the mode article from too much information about the Greek modes, at the same time as giving them a proper place for discussion within the system. Please comment !Mwasheim (talk) 16:32, 17 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Article intended as competing with Music of Ancient Greece.--Wetman (talk) 21:46, 19 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Whether that is intended as a question or a statement, I have to say it does not look like it to me. The article "Music of Ancient Greece" contains nothing at all on Greek music theory, which is the subject of the present article. From the way things are shaping up, if this material were to be merged with "Music of ancient Greece", it would nearly double it in size. Fair enough, maybe that should be considered, but there are plenty of examples on Wikipedia where a separate article exists for a specialized sub-topic.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 05:29, 20 November 2009 (UTC)


 * my intention was by no means 'competitive' :) Comparable articles in the German Wikipedia cover the cultural and theoretical aspects inclusively. The theory in that case is reduced. My intention was to provide a place for elaborating the information about that which in the greek musical system we still think of as modes and which provided a model for later musical systems. This is a complicated subject. In any case, I'm still gathering material and would be happy to incorporate that which is appropriate (probably discussions of ethos, melos and the Philosophers belongs properly in Music of Ancient greece) into other articles. Mwasheim (talk) 20:20, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Aristoxenos, position, etc
Just to ward of premature editing, Aristoxenos is preceeded by other classifications (a synthetic one which weighs Pythagoras and Archytas much more so, because of the mathematics) but this is a transient state. To avoid the error of subsuming all ancient Greek systems in Aristoxenos, we MUST show other forms of classification, but I'm sorting out which can reliably be referenced. As a starting point I've used Chalmers first, since his account covers that which is more readily subject to empirical study (ie. the numerical ratios and intervals which Aristoxenos eschewed, in part if not whole). But, just as the observation which is often made of Aristoxenos that he accorded more importance to musical practice and tuning by ear can apparently (Stanford) be applied to Archytas, Aristoxenos synthesis arguably has to be placed in a more prominent position, once we have the apparatus as a whole. Mwasheim (talk) 23:42, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

harmonia
Robert Erickson "A harmonia is fundamentally a tuning (Grove Dictionary) the word may include the meaning of "scale". A definition which is true to its meaning through Plato, and the sense in which the term will be used in this paper is: an ordered array of tones. See also Musical Thought in Ancient Greece, Edward A. Lippman, New York, 1964, Ch.I." This needs to be further elaborated. The whole Mode / Tonoi / Pitch Class / Scale discussion goes awry in this regard. And it seems to be the 'turning point' of much of the polemic. The relationship of the polemic to the practice... oh, my. In so far as we are able to 'see through' Plato's polemic (or see it for that matter?!) it's a matter of worth some effort IF as Erickson (or John Chalmers, Irving Wilson, et. al.) efforts to produce actual music using the available evidence leads us to a 'more accurate' representation of the music that 4th century Greeks actually heard. On the other hand, Chalmer's emphasizes the 'purely' generative which also has it's merits. But that's ALL outside of the scope of the wikipedia but for the part which actually explains the fragments we have.Mwasheim (talk) 22:05, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It must be said at once that scholarship on the harmoniai has moved on a long way since 1964. The respected Prof. Lippman is an author I am familiar with, as is the composer Robert Erickson (though he was not especially noted as a specialist an ancient Greek music theory, and must surely have been relying on more expert opinions than his own). The most reliable writers of recent years are Mathiesen, Bélis, Pöhlmann, Solomon, Barker, and West. Let us not inadvertently unravel all their careful work by consulting outdated or less thorough writings. These later writers are not so rash as to equate harmonia with "tuning", and the Grove Dictionary to which Erickson refers has been superseded by at least two subsequent editions (with articles in this area mainly by Mathiesen).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:23, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Erickson as I understand it was searching for ways of using Greek notions of Harmony in actual music making and not making any scholarly claims... I certainly didn't mean to endorse the view that scale is solely tuning or scale. As for the experts, no debate, I'm reading Pöhlmann at the moment. What's missing in the glosses we have of that expert work is a clear presentation of the system (I mean in wikipedia, even old works like Macran's Aristoxenos is well illustrated) and, for instance, how it relates to later modal music in the west and east. I'm generating materials at the moment and comparing older (Macran, for instance) and newer (Pöhlmann, Chalmers) sources. But a synthesis, given the divergent views of the Greek theorists is actually too much to expect. From me, I mean. But I'll try neverthelessMwasheim (talk) 18:35, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, good. The problem as I see it is that Erickson does not tell us as much about the Greek system as he does of his own compositional interests. As such, he is not the reliable reporter that, say, Mathiesen is. A caveat about Lippman, as well: He was a philosopher and an aesthetician who, I believe, had a good grasp of Ancient Greek, so his authority in areas of ethics and ethos is undoubted, I am not sure I would regard him so highly when discussing technical matters such as tuning systems, tonoi, or transposition levels.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:46, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Synemmenon tetrachord - confusing wording
This sentence is confusing: "To bridge this inconsistency, the system allowed moving the Nete one step up permitting the construction of the synemmenon ('conjunct') tetrachord."

Is the "Nete" here the Nete of the Diezeugmenon? If so, then isn't it moved down one step (from E to D), not up? 24.242.253.206 (talk) 20:52, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

A Later Addition: The whole discussion of the Greater and Lesser Perfect Systems is extremely confusing. It might be inconsistent, but I think the main problem is that it is too condensed--it leaves out things which are difficult if not impossible for readers to infer for themselves. I have tried to do just that; the result are below. I have done no consultation in primary sources--this is me trying to interpret the article-- so I am not going to insert it as an edit; I'm just putting it out to see if more deeply-informed people take it up. Here it is, starting from the first mention of the Greater Perfect System:

The Greater Perfect System (systema teleion meizon) was composed of four stacked tetrachords called the (from bottom to top) Hypaton, Meson, Diezeugmenon and Hyperbolaion tetrachords (see the right hand side of the diagram). Each of these tetrachords contains the two fixed notes that bound it. [This is unchanged. What follows diverges right away.]

The system is composed of two full octaves (a1 to a and a to A), with intervals 1-1-1/2-1-1-1/2-(1) going down in pitch. Each octave is composed of two like tetrachords (1-1-1/2 going down) connected by one common tone, the Synaphe; the lowest notes (the a and A) are added. At the position of the note Paramese (i.e. b, the lowest note in the Diezeugmenon tetrachord) the system encounters a boundary. The proper internal divisions of the lower full octave (a to A) must be retained. To retain the proper internal divisions of the tetrachords as well (see below for more detail), so that the tetrachord Meson not consist of three whole tone steps (b-a-g-f), the tetrachord Meson can begin not on that b but on the a exactly one octave below a1. The proper distribution of all the remaining notes, from a to A, immediately follows. However, the new interval b to a is not linked to the proper internal structure of any tetrachord. To remedy this, an interstitial b-flat, the Diazeuxis ('dividing') was introduced between the notes Paramése and Mese. The tetrachord Diezeugmenon is the 'divided'. This interstitial b-flat allowed moving the note Nete one step, to d1, permitting the construction of the synemmenon ('conjunct') tetrachord (see the far left of the diagram). By permitting both the b and the b-flat, all five tetrachords become interlocked with shared tones and the entire system is governed by the 1-1-1/2 interval tetrachord pattern.

The use of the synemmenon tetrachord with the b-flat also yielded an octave, d1-to-d, with the same arrangement of intervals as the original two full octaves. It thus effected a modulation of the system, hence the name systema metabolon, the modulating system, also the Lesser Perfect System. [and so on...] HHHEB3 (talk) 21:48, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Aristoxenus' tonoi
The section "Aristoxenus's tonoi" shows the tone names assigned to a range from F to F, instead of A to A, without any explanation why. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.242.253.206 (talk) 21:49, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Why would A to A be preferable? Or to consider another possibility, which authorities use A to A? Presumably the two cited ones use F to F.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:58, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
 * OK. Checking those two sources, Mathiesen uses F to f, while Solomon uses A to a. I have amended the passage to make this clear, though neither author gives a reason for his choice. It is of course arbitrary (the article uses the word "nominal"), and could just as easily be displayed as c♯  to c♯ ' .—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:09, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Indeed, but might I propose they be swapped, with Solomon's A to a in the table, and Mathiesen F to f in parentheses? Then it would then be perfect. As it is now, there's a sudden context switch that might throw off a reader, who has to switch mental gears.  Up to this point, 'A' signifies, as it does in the Latin modal system, any note that classifies as proslambanomenos or mese on account of the relative intervals and tetrachords around it.  But Mathiesen's table from F to f seems to take 'A' in the modern sense of 220/440.  If the reader doesn't realize this, he might interpret the tabel as saying the 'High Hypodorian' is on the mese and the Hypodorian on the trite mese.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.242.253.206 (talk) 18:58, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Greek names, Greek letters
It might be worthwhile to include their original spellings. They are otherwise hard to find on the web.

The transliteration "nete" in the diagram is accented paroxytonically, but Wiktionary has the accent on the last syllable (νητή). Is the transliteration an error? 24.242.253.206 (talk) 19:16, 31 December 2019 (UTC)