Art & MusicGreek → English
Tetrachord
/ˈtɛtrəkɔːrd/noun
A run of four notes spanning a perfect fourth, the unit ancient Greek scales were built from.
The Greek roots
τετρα-
tetra-
four
χορδή
chordḗ
gut, string
Literally: “four strings”
The story of the word
Greek theory assembled everything out of tetrachords stacked in pairs, and the mode names describe how the two halves join. The outer two notes stayed fixed while the inner two moved, which produced the diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic genera and a set of tunings that no keyboard can play. χορδή means gut, the material the string was made of, which is why the harmony in a chord and the tissue in a notochord share an ancestor.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
chordcordnotochordtetrahedrontetralogy
In a sentence
He taught the scale as two tetrachords, which made the fingering obvious.