He took (unfortunately) the Greek system for his starting point, and this led him into many errors, and much lessened the permanent value of his work. He took the tetrachord (or succession of four notes) as the foundation of music, but he applied it in a most strange manner; his scale was as follows:[262]
G, A, B flat,
C, D, E, F,
G, A, B natural,
C, D, E, F sharp,
G, A, B, C sharp,
it will be readily seen that the above scale contains some incongruities, which are precisely similar to those noticed in the music of the Hindoos; that is the octave comes out a semi-tone sharp; B natural being octave to B flat, F sharp to F, etc.
Naturally, in singing it is not to be conceived that the singers took any such outlandish system as to substitute this for an octave, but it must have allowed great license to the singers, and the whole must have given rise to much ambiguity.
His improvement in the method of notation consisted (a perfect anticipation of clef and staff) in placing the letters of the notes employed, before each line of the words, and then writing each syllable of the song, opposite to (and level with) the note to which it belonged. As he adopted the clumsy Greek method of lettering (using only four letters, and placing them upright, reversed, backwards, and sideways) we will give an example with English letters.[263]
| A | a- | |||||||||
| G | da- | te | num | |||||||
| F | Lau- | mi- | de- | |||||||
| E | do- | e | ||||||||
| D | cœlis |