Posted: 25 Sep 2020 12:20 pm
Makes sense, thanks. Here's what I have on assigning letters to name pitches:
V1.0 was naming A through G in one octave, and the concern was just having a designation for the root notes of the authentic and plagal modes. The lowest note needed was the Hypo-Dorian, a fourth below Dorian, so that pitch was assigned the letter 'A' and it counted up from there to Myxolidian's root at 'G.' No system in place yet for naming notes below A or above G; there was only one octave's-worth that had been named.
V1.1 was adding in a low G. Was named Gamma rather than, say, well... G (with the understanding it was the same note already named, but just an octave down. But, no, they went with 'Gamma').
The list of notes now ran the gamut (heh..) Gamma through G. The repeating pattern above and below those 8 notes into other octaves would have to wait for a later version.
V1.2 Notes repeat in other octaves. Capital letters used, with lower case used for octaves above. At some point, Gamma was replaced with 'G' since it was no longer needed; it was treated the same as other notes.
V1.0 was naming A through G in one octave, and the concern was just having a designation for the root notes of the authentic and plagal modes. The lowest note needed was the Hypo-Dorian, a fourth below Dorian, so that pitch was assigned the letter 'A' and it counted up from there to Myxolidian's root at 'G.' No system in place yet for naming notes below A or above G; there was only one octave's-worth that had been named.
V1.1 was adding in a low G. Was named Gamma rather than, say, well... G (with the understanding it was the same note already named, but just an octave down. But, no, they went with 'Gamma').
The list of notes now ran the gamut (heh..) Gamma through G. The repeating pattern above and below those 8 notes into other octaves would have to wait for a later version.
V1.2 Notes repeat in other octaves. Capital letters used, with lower case used for octaves above. At some point, Gamma was replaced with 'G' since it was no longer needed; it was treated the same as other notes.
Between the trip down Gamma lane and the struggles at notation, it sounds like they hadn't quite landed on how to designate the fact that notes repeat in different octaves. Glad we landed where we did.Laurence Pangaro wrote:By the way in some of the early systems of notation (read less successful) the same pitches didn't repeat from one octave into the next resulting in what we would call different alterations from one octave to the next..