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Didymus the Musician

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Didymus the Musician (Greek: Δίδυμος) was a music theorist in Rome of the end of the 1st century BC or beginning of the 1st century AD, who combined elements of earlier theoretical approaches with an appreciation of the aspect of performance. Formerly assumed to be identical with the Alexandrian grammarian and lexicographer Didymus Chalcenterus, because Ptolemy and Porphyry referred to him as Didymus ho mousikos (the musician), classical scholars now believe that this Didymus was a younger grammarian and musician working in Rome at the time of Emperor Nero.[1] He was a predecessor of Ptolemy at the library of Alexandria. According to Andrew Barker,[2] his intention was to revive and produce contemporary performances of the music of Greek antiquity. The syntonic comma of  81 / 80 ≅ 21.506 cents is sometimes called the comma of Didymus after him.[1]

Among his works was On the Difference between the Aristoxenians and the Pythagoreans (Περὶ τῆς διαφορᾶς τῶν Ἀριστοξενείων τε καὶ Πυθαγορείων).

Theory

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We know of his theory only indirectly from the works of Porphyry and Ptolemy. There, one finds examples of his tetrachords as measured string lengths from which the following frequency ratios are calculated:

tetrachord
 type
interval
  1st–2nd
interval
  2nd–3rd
interval
  3rd–4th
diatonic  16 / 15  10 / 9  9 / 8
chromatic  16 / 15  25 / 24  6 / 5
enharmonic  32 / 31  31 / 30  5 / 4

Like Archytas, he used a major third, but appears to have been the first to use it in the diatonic as the product of the major (9:8) and minor (10:9) whole tones, as the proportions produced by  10 / 9 ×  9 / 8 =  5 / 4 . The ratio of these whole tones  9 / 8  10 / 9 =  9 / 8 ×  9 / 10 =  81 / 80  ; is the so-called syntonic comma, also referred to as Didymos' comma.[3][4]

References

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Sources

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  • Barker, A. (1994). "Greek musicologists in the Roman Empire". Apeiron. 27 (4): 53–74. doi:10.1515/apeiron.1994.27.4.53. ISSN 2156-7093. OCLC 8306313368. S2CID 170415282.