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Another meaning of "enharmonic"

🔗Dave Keenan <d.keenan@bigpond.net.au>

7/14/2005 6:20:41 PM

Through studying the Byzantine modes (or echoi) I have become
convinced that there is a meaning of "enharmonic" that does not appear
in Monz's encyclopedia, and may not have been previously recognised on
this list.

I have just added it to Wikipedia as follows.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enharmonic

------------
In Byzantine music, enharmonic describes a kind of tetrachord and the
echoi that contain them. As in the Greek system, enharmonic
tetrachords are distinct from diatonic and chromatic. However
Byzantine enharmonic tetrachords bear no resemblance to Greek
enharmonic tetrachords. Their largest division is between a whole-tone
and a tone-and-a-quarter in size, and their smallest is between a
quarter-tone and a semitone. These are called "improper diatonic"
tetrachords in modern western usage.
------------

For more detail on the modern western usage see
http://sonic-arts.org/chalmers/diagrams.htm

-- Dave Keenan