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Aristoxenus was a disciple of Aristotle who flourished in the 4th century BC. He introduced a radically different model for creating scales, and the nature of his scales deviated sharply from his predecessors. His system was based on seven "octave species" named after Greek regions and ethnicities – Dorian, Lydian, etc.
Elementa harmonica (Ἁρμονικὰ στοιχεῖα in Greek; Elements of Harmonics in English) is a treatise on the subject of musical scales by Aristoxenus, of which considerable amounts are extant. The work dates to the second half of the 4th century BC. [1]
Aristoxenus was born at Tarentum (in modern-day Apulia, southern Italy) in Magna Graecia, and was the son of a learned musician named Spintharus (otherwise Mnesias). [2] He learned music from his father, and having then been instructed by Lamprus of Erythrae and Xenophilus the Pythagorean, he finally became a pupil of Aristotle, [3] whom he appears to have rivaled in the variety of his studies.
Aristoxenus describes the diatonic genus (Ancient Greek: διατονικὸν γένος) as the oldest and most natural of the genera. [6]It is the division of the tetrachord from which the modern diatonic scale evolved.
From the descriptions that have come down to us through the writings of those such as Plato, Aristoxenus [30] and, later, Boethius, [31] we can say with some caution that the ancient Greeks, at least before Plato, heard music that was primarily monophonic; that is, music built on single melodies based on a system of modes / scales, themselves ...
The most important of all the consonant species was the octave species, because "from the species of the consonance of the diapason arise what are called modes". [5] The basis of the octave species was the smaller category of species of the perfect fourth, or diatessaron; when filled in with two intermediary notes, the resulting four notes and three consecutive intervals constitute a ...
[citation needed] From that, we can list the scales and the triad qualities and the seventh chord qualities in each scale as degrees of Dorian mode and Aeolian dominant scale (Dorian ♯3 ♭6 scale) and Neapolitan major scale (Dorian ♭2 ♯7 scale) and double harmonic scale (Dorian ♭2 ♯3 ♭6 ♯7 scale) and the two types of Dorian ...
Mixolydian mode may refer to one of three things: the name applied to one of the ancient Greek harmoniai or tonoi, based on a particular octave species or scale; one of the medieval church modes; or a modern musical mode or diatonic scale, related to the medieval mode. (The Hypomixolydian mode of medieval music, by contrast, has no modern ...