Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/131

L Y R L Y R 115 scries of four notes, vas very early adopted as the fundamental principle of Greek music, and its origin in the lyre itself appears sure. The basis of the tetrachord is the employment of the thumb and first three fingers of the left hand to twang as many strings, the little finger not being used on account of natural weakness. As a succession of three whole tones would form the disagreeable and untunable interval of a tritonus, two whole tones and a half-tone were tuned, fixing the tetrachord in the consonant interval of the perfect fourth. This succession of four notes being in the grasp of the hand was called ffva.p-fi, just as in language a group of letters incapable of further reduction is called syllable. In the combina tion of two syllables or tetrachords the modern diatonic scales resemble the Greek so-called disjunct scale, but the Greeks knew nothing of our categorical distinctions of major and minor. We might call the octave Greek scale minor, according to our descend ing minor form, were not the keynote in the middle the thumb note of the deeper tetrachord. The upper tetrachord, whether starting from the keynote (conjunct) or from the note above (disjunct), was of exactly the same form as the lower, the position of the semitones being identical. The semitone was a limma ((~ifj.fj.a), rather less than the semitone of our modern equal temperament, the Greeks tuning both the whole tones in the tetrachord by the same ratio of 8 : 9, which made the major third a dissonance, or rather would have done so had they combined them in what we call harmony. In melodious sequence the Greek tetrachord is decidedly more agreeable to the ear than the cor responding series of our equal temperament. And although our scales are derived from combined tetrachords, in any system of tuning that we employ, be it just, mean-tone, or equal, they are less logical than the conjunct or disjunct systems accepted by the Greeks. But modern harmony is not compatible with them, and could not have arisen on the Greek melodic lines. The conjunct scale of seven notes attributed to Terpander, was long the norm for stringing and tuning the lyre. "When the disjunct scale <> c the octave scale attributed to Pythagoras, was admitted, to preserve the time-honoured seven strings one note had to be omitted ; it Avas therefore customary to omit the C, which in Greek practice was a dissonance. The Greek names for the strings of seven and eight stringed lyres, the first note being highest in pitch and nearest the player, were as follows: Ncte, Paranete, Paramcse ; Mese, Liclmnos, Parliypate. Hypate ; or Ncte, Paranete, Trite, Paramcse ; Mese, Lichanos, Parhypate, Hypate, the last four from Mese to Hypate being the finger tetrachord, the others touched with the plectrum. The highest string in pitch was called the last, vf&rn : the lowest in pitch was" called the highest, inraT-r], because it was, in theory at least, the longest string. The keynote and thumb string was yue trrj, middle ; the next lower was xlxavos, the first finger or lick- finger string ; rpir-rt, the third, being in the plectrum division, was also known as o^a, sharp, perhaps from the dissonant quality which we have referred to as the cause of its omission. The plect rum an 1 finger tetrachords together were 5iairacrcS/, through all ; in the disjunct scale, an octave. In transcribing the Greek notes into our notation, the absolute pitch cannot be represented ; the relative positions of the semitones are alone determined. We have already quoted the scale of Pythagoras, the Dorian or true Greek succession : Shifting the semitone one degree upwards in each tetrachord, we have the Phrygian 1 Another degree gives the Lydian 1 ~ which would be our major scale of E were not the keynote A. The names imply an Asiatic origin. We will not pursue further the much debated question of Greek scales and their derivation ; it will suffice here to remark that the outside notes of the tetrachords were fixed in their tuning as perfect fourths, the inner strings being, as stated, in diatonic sequence, or when chromatic two half tones were tuned, when enharmonic two quarter-tones, leaving respectively the wide intervals of a minor and major third, and both impure, to complete the tetrachord. (A. J. H. ) LYRE-BIRD, the name by which one of the most remarkable feathered inhabitants of Australia is commonly known, the Menura superba or M. novse-hollandige of orni thologists. First discovered, January 24, 1798, on the other side of the river Nepean in New South Wales by an exploring party from Paramatta, under the leadership of one Wilson, a single example was brought into the settle ment a few days after, and though called by its finders a "Pheasant" from its long tail the more learned of the colony seem to have regarded it as a Bird-of-Paradise. 1 A specimen having reached England in the following year, it was described by General Davies as forming a new genus of birds, in a paper read before the Linnean Society of London, November 4, 1800, and subsequently published in that Society s Transactions (vi. p. 207, pi. xxii.), no attempt, however, being made to fix its systematic place. Other examples were soon after received, but Latham, who considered it a Gallinaceous bird, in 1801 knew of only five having arrived. The temporary cessation of hostilities in 1802 permitted Vieillot to become acquainted with this form, though not apparently with any published notice of it, and he figured and described it in a supplement to his Oiseaux Dores as a Bird of Paradise (ii. pp. 30 sg., pis. 14-16), from drawings by Sydenham Edwards, sent him by Parkinson, the manager of the Leverian Museum. 2 It would be needless here to enter at any length on the various positions which have been assigned to this singular form by different systematizers who had to judge merely from its superficial characters. The first to describe any portion of its anatomy was Eyton, who in 1841 (Ann. Nat. History, vii. pp. 49-53) perceived that it was truly a member of the Order then called Insessores, and that it presented some points of affinity to the South American genus Pteroptochus ; 3 but still there were many who could not take advantage of this step in the right direction. In 1867 Professor Huxley stated that he was disposed to divide his very natural assemblage the Coracomorphse (essentially identical with Eyton s Insessores} into two groups, " one containing Menura, and the other all the other genera which have yet been examined" (Proc. Zool. Soc., 1867, p. 472) a still further step in advance. 4 In 1875 the present writer put forth the opinion in this work (BIRDS, vol. iii. p. 471) that Menura had an ally in another Australian form, Atrichia (see SCRUB-BIRD), which he had found to present peculiarities hitherto unsuspected, and accordingly regarded them as standing by themselves, though each constituting a distinct Family. This opinion was partially adopted in the following year by Garrod, who (Proc. Zool. Society, 1876, p. 518) formally placed these 1 Collins, Account of New South Wales, ii. pp. 87-92 (London, 1802). 2 Vieillot called the bird Le Parkinson " ! and hence Bechstein, who seems to have been equally ignorant of what had been published in England concerning it, in 1811 (Kurze Uebersicht, &c., p. 134), desig nated UParJcinsonius mirabilis Shaw also, prior to 1813, figured it (Nat. Miscellany, xiv. p. 577) under the name of Pa radisea parkin- soniana. The name " Menura lyra, Shaw," was quoted by Lesson in 1831 (Tr. d Ornithologie, p. 473), and has been repeated by many copyists of synonymy, but the present writer cannot find that such a name was ever applied by Shaw. Vieillot s principal figure (lit supra], which has a common origin with that given by Collins, lias been exten sively copied, in spite of its inartistic not to say inaccurate drawing. It is decidedly inferior to that of Davies (ut supra"), the original describer and delineator. 3 He subsequently (Osteol. Avium, pp. 97, 98, pi. 3, P and pi. 14) described and figured the skeleton. 4 Owing to the imperfection of the specimen at his disposal, Professor Huxley s brief description of the bones of the head in Menura is not absolutely correct. A full description of them, with elaborate figures, is given by Professor Parker in the same Society s Transactions (ix.

pp. 306-309, pi. Ivi. figs. 1-5).