Subscribe to Blog via Email
February 2025 M T W T F S S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
What were the musical notes’ names in Ancient Greece?
The notes of the Ancient Greek musical system were organised into tetrachords, groups of four notes. Two tetrachords made an octave.
The central octave went:
{Hypate, Parhypate, Lichanos, Mese}, {Paramese, Trite, Paranete, Nete}
It gets rather more complicated than that; the paramese, for example, is an interstitial note, and the tetrachords keep going above and below the central octave. See Musical system of ancient Greece – Wikipedia
Leave a Reply