Didymos the musician

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Didymos the musician was a Greek music theorist of the first century BC.

His work on music theory has only been passed down indirectly through Porphyrios and Ptolemy . Among them are its tetrachords in string lengths, from which the interval proportions can be calculated as follows:

diatonic tetrachord: (16:15) (10: 9) (9: 8)
chromatic tetrachord: (16:15) (25:24) (6: 5)
enharmonic tetrachord: (32:31) (31:30) (5: 4)

Like Archytas von Taranto, he used the pure major third , but was the first to use it in the diatonic as the sum of the major and minor whole tones , because proportionally (10: 9) × (9: 8) = 5: 4. The difference between the two whole tones is the so-called syntonic comma , which is sometimes also referred to as the didymic comma, although Didymos was not talking about it.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Didymos the musician
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek music theorist
DATE OF BIRTH 1st century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 1st century BC Chr.