MICROTONES

‘Microtone’ is a modern term, and implies the twelve theoretically uniform semitones of our equal tempered system, from which the microtones may deviate. With a slight change of nuance, however, the term will be appropriate for describing ancient Greek practice. Here too we encounter the idea of deviation from a norm, a norm based on the idea of the ‘tone’. In its most basic sense, Greek tonos denoted a single, stable pitch (= tasis). But it is its secondary meaning which is relevant here, tonos as the interval "by which a fifth exceeds a fourth", regarded as the most "intellgible" interval, being to music what the cubit was to the measurement of physical space. A series of such tonoi (and eventually ‘semitones’) are created by the alternation of fifths (3:2) and fourths (4:3), known to Aristoxenus as "taking through consonance" (hê lêpsis dia symphônias), and it is this which, according to many ancient authorities, gave diatonic music its name. Such structures, as we shall see, operated as the ‘unshaded’ point of reference for the various ‘shaded’ intonations recorded by the ancient theorists. The process is also the point of departure for equal temperament—which, from an ancient Greek perspective, could itself be regarded as a form of microtonality.

A term which does have a basis in ancient usage is ‘chromaticism’. There is, however, a confusion in some of the sources, which seems to reflect historical developments in the use of microtones. Aristoxenus used chrôma to denote the chromatic genus, the tetrachords of which, in its textbook form (the toniaion chrôma), are divided as semitone + semitone + tone and a half. Like the diatonic, then, the toniaion chrôma must be tuned through hê lêpsis dia symphônias, and this conception is also found in the chromatic of Archytas, who insisted on 9:8 tones in the face of mathematical complications (see paper). But a second metaphor of color or aspect is found in the ‘shades’ (chroai) which Aristoxenus permitted in the chromatic and diatonic genera, and frowned on in the enharmonic (see paper). At some point the distinction between the two terms became blurred—if indeed there had not always been some overlap of usage — and a number of later authors give dual definitions of chrôma which comprise both chrôma and chroa as used by Aristoxenus. Already Archytas’ chromatic featured resonant shading, while Aristoxenus has shades of the chromatic which did not require the 9:8 tone. Eratosthenes, Didymus and Ptolemy, while still recognizing a distinct chromatic genus, offer only shaded versions using either the 10:9 or 8:7 tone (see paper and Appendix). Thus the course of musical development seems paralleled by progressive terminological confusion.

These observations signal the due caution with which I use the term ‘chromaticism’ to mean 'microtonality’.

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