[812d]
Athenian
So, to attain this object, both the lyre-master and his pupil must use the notes of the lyre, because of the distinctness of its strings, assigning to the notes of the song notes in tune with them;1 but as to divergence of sound and variety in the notes of the harp, when the strings sound the one tune and the composer of the melody another, or when there results a combination of low and high notes, of slow and quick time, of sharp and grave,
1 i.e. the notes of the instrument must be in accord with those of the singer's voice. “The tune, as composed by the poet, is supposed to have comparatively few notes, to be in slowish time, and low down in the register; whereas the complicated variation, which he is condemning, has many notes, is in quick time, and high up in the register.” (England.)
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 10 & 11 translated by R.G. Bury. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1967 & 1968.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.