Contents

Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century

WHY WE WILL NEVER KNOW HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Chapter:
CHAPTER 1 The Curtain Goes Up
Source:
MUSIC FROM THE EARLIEST NOTATIONS TO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Author(s):
Richard Taruskin

Yet even if the ancient Greek catalogue of lyre tunings was conceptually foreign, hence irrelevant, to the modal structure of Gregorian chant, the attempt to codify medieval modal theory according to Greek ideas of order was not wholly misplaced. The Greek system and the Gregorian corpus did have one thing self-evidently in common. They both employed what some scholars now call the “diatonic pitch set,” the field of pitches and pitch relationships reducible to a specific arrangement of tones and semitones (“whole steps” and “half steps”), of which the familiar major and minor scales are among the possible representations.

Citation (MLA):
Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 1 The Curtain Goes Up." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 7 Feb. 2025. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-001015.xml>.
Citation (APA):
Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 1 The Curtain Goes Up. In Oxford University Press, Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century. New York, USA. Retrieved 7 Feb. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-001015.xml
Citation (Chicago):
Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 1 The Curtain Goes Up." In Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 7 Feb. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-001015.xml
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