Musical system of ancient Greece

This article is about the music theory and musical intervals used in ancient Greece. For a discussion of the cultural aspects and history of ancient Greek music, see Music of ancient Greece.

The musical system of ancient Greece evolved over a period of more than 500 years from simple scales of tetrachords, or divisions of the perfect fourth, into several complex systems encompassing tetrachords and octaves, as well as octave scales divided into seven to thirteen intervals.[1]

Any discussion of the music of ancient Greece, theoretical, philosophical or aesthetic, is fraught with two problems: there are few examples of written music, and there are many, sometimes fragmentary, theoretical and philosophical accounts. The empirical research of scholars like Richard Crocker,[2][3][4] C. André Barbera,[5][6] and John Chalmers[7] has made it possible to look at the ancient Greek systems as a whole without regard to the tastes of any one ancient theorist. The primary genera they examine are those of Pythagoras and the Pythagorean school, Archytas, Aristoxenos, and Ptolemy (including his versions of the genera of Didymos and Eratosthenes).[8]

  1. ^ Chalmers 1993, ch. 6, p. 99.
  2. ^ Crocker 1963.
  3. ^ Crocker 1964.
  4. ^ Crocker 1966.
  5. ^ Barbera 1977.
  6. ^ Barbera 1984.
  7. ^ Chalmers 1993.
  8. ^ Chalmers 1993, ch. 5, pp. 48–51.