User:Platonykiss/Phone (music)

Phonē (Greek: φωνή) means "sound, tone, sound of the voice", whether created by a human being or an animal. In Greek music theory (harmonics) it was specified as one step within the tone system, since tone was understood as an element of the tone system, although it was not used to call a specific element of this system. The latter was called by the opposed term phthongos (Greek: φθόγγος) which meant "distinct sound" or "human voice". Hence, one phone was the step between two phthongoi.

Homophonai
Since the tone system was organised in tetrachords by the Pythagoreans, their tetrachords were usually divided by three different intervals, there were at least 3 homophonai, intervals over one step between two phthongoi: the major (μείζων τόνος), the middle (ἐλάττων τόνος) and the minor tone (ἐλάχιστος τόνος). The only exception was Eratosthenes, whose tetrachord division used two times the whole tone (9:8) and once the half tone (256:243). The latter division was favoured by Roman Neopythagoreans like Boethius and became later part of the Carolingian reception of music theory, which combined in theoretical tonaries science reception and the function of chant manuals.

Organisation of tone systems
Byzantine chant manuals also created new terms based on the term phone: tetraphonia, triphonia, and heptaphonia. The three different tone systems resulted from possible combinations of separate and connected tetrachords.

Triphonia
The triphonic tone system (σύστημα κατὰ τριφωνίαν) was structured by tetrachords which were not separated by a whole tone (9:8) called διάζευχις. Hence the first and the last phthongos of a tetrachord had one and the same function, so that the three steps were just the ones which divide the tetrachord.

In ancient Greek treatises the "system by triphonia" was discussed as the so-called "lesser perfect system". It is assumed that already Aristoxenos knew it, but his entire description of the tone systems has not survived within the source fragments of his treatise. Alypius' Introduction to Music ( Εἰσαγωγὴ Μουσική ) offers a full description. He mentions a sequence of 15 tropoi. Latin authors who referred to the lesser perfect system without knowing Alypius, were Martianus Capella and later Cassiodorus. Despite that Cassiodorus' passage reveals an insufficient understanding, it was quoted in Aurelian of Réôme's compilation Musica disciplina.

The earliest Byzantine chant manual Hagiopolites (9th century) mentions an enharmonic phthora nana which was later described to be ruled by the triphonic system.

Tetraphonia
(τετραφωνία)

Heptaphonia
(ἑπταφωνία)