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The Greeks and the music

The verbal relationship suggests that among the Greeks music was conceived as something common to all activities that concerned the pursuit of beauty and truth. In the teachings of Pythagoras and his followers music and arithmetic were not separate disciplines; The numbers were considered the key of the whole spiritual and physical universe; Thus, the system of sounds and musical rhythms, being governed by number, exemplified the harmony of the cosmos and corresponded to this harmony. It was Plato who, in the Timaeus (the best known of all his dialogues in the Middle Ages) and in the Republic, expounded this doctrine in a more complete and systematic way.


MUSIC IN LIFE AND IN THE THOUGHT OF ANCIENT GREECE


Greek mythology attributed to music divine origin and designated as its inventors and first interpreters gods and demigods, like Apollo, Amphion and Orpheus. In this obscure prehistoric world, music had magical powers: people thought it was capable of curing disease, purifying body and spirit, and working miracles in the realm of Nature. Also in the Old Testament the same powers were attributed to music: just remember the episode in which David heals the folly of Saul playing harp (1 Samuel 16: 14-23) or the sound of trumpets and voices that overturned the walls of Jericho (Joshua 6: 12-20)

Tetracordes


Two tetracordes could be combined in two different ways to form heptacordes (seven note systems) and one or two octave systems. If the last note of one tetracorde was also the first of another, the tetracordes were said to be sets; If they were separated by an entire tone, were disjoint (see example 1.2, where T = integer and m = halftone). Hence it derived, over time, the complete perfect system - a two-octave scale composed of alternately set and disjoint tetracords, as seen in Example 1.3. The most serious of this system, since it was outside the tetracord system, was considered a supplementary tone (proslambanomenos).

Aristoxene


Aristoxene argued that the true method for determining intervals was through the ear, and not of numerical quotients, as the followers of Pythagoras thought. However, to describe the amplitude of intervals smaller than the fourth divided the whole tone into twelve equal parts and used these as units of measure. From the descriptions of Aristoxene and some texts of later theoreticians we can infer that the ancient Greeks, like most of the eastern peoples, still in our day, made current use of intervals smaller than the halftone. And indeed we find such microtons in the fragment of Euripides


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