attributed to Terpander, was long the norm for stringing and tuning the lyre. When the disjunct scale
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, νεάτη; the lowest in pitch was called the highest, ὑπάτη, because it was, in theory at least, the longest string. The keynote and thumb string was μέση, middle; the next lower was λίχανος, the first finger or lick-finger string; τρίτη, the third, being in the plectrum division, was also known as ὀξεῖα, sharp, perhaps from the dissonant quality to which we have referred as the cause of its omission. The plectrum and finger tetrachords together were διαπασῶν, 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:—
Shifting the semitone one degree upwards in each tetrachord, we have the Phrygian
Another degree gives the Lydian
