The Music of Hindostan c9.22

c9.22

¹ His name for them is ‘passage-note’ (diesis). Gevaert (*Musique de l’Antiquité*, vol. i, p. 285) thinks that there is a tinge of exaggeration in this statement; but it is possible to believe that Aristoxenus meant what he said. He always subscribes to the musical not the acoustical view, and his words must be taken to mean not that the mind cannot think these intervals in the abstract, but that the voice will not sing them in the concrete; that they are what we should call ‘unvocal’. This may be observed whenever a village choir wrestles with three or four semitones in succession.