Musical Stress

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Michaelyus
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Musical Stress

Post by Michaelyus »

Does anyone here know the pitch of the Classical Latin and Greek pitch intonation, in terms of musical intervals id est perfect fifth, minor third et cetera?

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Dacicus
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Re: Musical Stress

Post by Dacicus »

I'm not completely sure what you're asking, but I think it's perfect fourths and fifths. That's from Pythagoras, but I don't know any details.

chad
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Post by chad »

Does anyone here know the pitch of the Classical Latin and Greek pitch intonation, in terms of musical intervals id est perfect fifth, minor third et cetera?
for prose, it's about a fifth, i.e. 3 and a half tones. this comes from dionysius of halicarnassus. there's an article about the pitch accent here:

http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris ... cents.html

but this doesn't mean that an accented syllable is a fifth higher than the syllable before it. it's not that simple: the pitch slides constantly (as aristoxenus says) through many tones.

for poetry it's different. since different instruments were used to accompany the poetry, you get different pitch ranges. but for say lyric poetry--including pindar, since many of his odes indicate that there was a kithara accompaniment--a usual pitch range might be a seventh or an octave. also aristoxenus says that, when sung, the singers hold the note rather than slide constantly around as in normal non-poetic speaking.

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