The Disappearance of the Enharmonic Genos in Ancient Greece
The Disappearance of the Enharmonic Genos in Ancient Greece

Summary/Abstract: In this paper, I study to which extent singing and the organic difficulties our anatomy has to tune certain intervals could have been one of the possible reasons why the enharmonic genos, considered among the ancient Greeks the most beautiful one, could have disappeared in such an early stage as the Classical period. Most probably it had already disappeared when Aristoxenus wrote his Elementa harmonica in the fourth centurybce. In any case, it is not found in any example at all in the Hellenistic phase, having been replaced by the other two gene: the chromatic and the diatonic. I shall research those matters in relation with the vocal technique used by singers and why they could underlie as one of the reasons that contributed to the extinction of the practice of such a genos. I shall analyse the difficulty of the internal organisation of the enharmonic intervals inside the tetrachord, especially when it needed to be executed with the voice as an instrument.

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