Pitch Accent

[Gabrielwelter]

Hi everybody; I've been sudying Homeric Greek through Pharr's book and finding it pretty enjoyable and challenging.

I've been also trying to recite Homer using pitch accent. I read this article : http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/Classics/Greekaccents.html which suggests using a Fifth, and went on practicing with a guitar . Then just after I got the tone right I realised that something was not sounding quite well, I mean, it seemed the Fifth only sounded nice in some isolated words but very weird in any longer sentence.

Then after hearing annis' recitation I realised the tone was too high. I guess William uses a Major Third(is that right?) and that sounds soooo much better than the fifth! Now I'm practicing with major thirds and I'm much more satisfied.

Has anyone tried another tone, or thinks some tone is better-sounding or more historically acurate than the others?

[annis]

Has anyone tried another tone, or thinks some tone is better-sounding or more historically acurate than the others?

Well, when we speak of the pitch of the accent we're really speaking about an average. I wouldn't aim for a fixed interval. Normal phrasing considerations would lead to different intervals, as would style of delivery. In other languages where this matters, the pitch interval differs from speaker to speaker, and will generally be wider when speaking loudly, formally, or when excited.