[Illustration: musical notes.]
attributed to Terpander, was long the norm for stringing and tuning
the lyre. When the disjunct scale
[Illustration: musical notes.]
the octave scale attributed to Pythagoras, was admitted, to preserve
the time-honoured seven strings one note had to be omitted; it was
therefore customary to omit the C, which in Greek practice was a
dissonance. The Greek names for the strings of seven and eight
stringed lyres, the first note being highest in pitch and nearest the
player, were as follows: _Nete_, _Paranete_, _Paramese_; _Mese_,
_Lichanos_, _Parhypate_, _Hypate_; or _Nete_, _Paranete_, _Trite_,
_Paramese_; _Mese_, _Lichanos_, _Parhypate_, _Hypate_--the last four
from Mese to Hypate being the finger tetrachord, the others touched
with the plectrum. The highest string in pitch was called the last,
[Greek: neate]; the lowest in pitch was called the highest, [Greek:
hypate], because it was, in theory at least, the longest string. The
keynote and thumb string was [Greek: mese], middle; the next lower was
[Greek: lichanos], the first finger or lick-finger string; [Greek:
trite], the third, being in the plectrum division, was also known as
[Greek: oxeia], sharp, perhaps from the dissonant quality to which we
have referred as the cause of its omission. The plectrum and finger
tetrachords together were [Greek: diapason], through all; in the
disjunct scale, an octave.
In transcribing the Greek notes into our notation, the absolute pitch
cannot be represented; the relative positions of the semitones are
alone determined. We have already quoted the scale of Pythagoras, the
Dorian or true Greek succession:--
[Illustration: musical notes.]
Shifting the semitone one degree upwards in each tetrachord, we have
the Phrygian
[Illustration: musical notes.]