page_title: Octave species
section_title: Ancient Greek theory
hierarchical_section_title: Octave species / Ancient Greek theory
caption_attribution_description: English: Ancient Greek Dorian octave species, in the eharmonic genus
context_page_description: In early Greek music theory, an octave species is a sequence of incomposite intervals making up a complete octave. The concept was also important in Medieval and Renaissance music theory.
context_section_description: Greek theorists used two terms interchangeably to describe what we call species: eidos (εἶδος) and skhēma (σχῆμα), defined as "a change in the arrangement of incomposite [intervals] making up a compound magnitude while the number and size of the intervals remains the same" (Aristoxenus 1954, 92.7–8 & 92.9–11 (da Rios), translated in Barbera 1984, 230). Cleonides (the Aristoxenian tradition) described (in the diatonic genus) three species of diatessaron, four of diapente and seven of diapason. Ptolemy in his "Harmonics" called them all generally "species of primary consonances" (εἴδη τῶν πρώτων συμφωνιῶν). Boethius, who inherited Ptolemy's generalization under the term "species primarum consonantiarum" (Inst. mus. IV,14), expanded species theory of Greeks; along with the traditional orderings of three primary species he introduced three further their orderings (Boethius 1989, 149). For epistemology of the Antiquity music theory, the most important of all was the octave species, because "from the species of the consonance of the diapason arise what are called modes" (Boethius 1989, 153).
caption: Greek Dorian octave species in the enharmonic genus, showing the two component tetrachords About this soundPlay (help·info)
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