Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In Greek music: A diatonic series of seven tones, containing five whole steps and one half-step (between the third and fourth tones)
- noun The interval of the major seventh.
- noun An instrument with seven strings.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A system of seven sounds.
- noun A lyre with seven chords.
- noun (Anc. Poet.) A composition sung to the sound of seven chords or tones.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun music A
system ofseven sounds . - noun music A
lyre with sevenchords . - noun poetry A
composition sung to the sound of seven chords ortones .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Ancient Greek seven-stringed, seven + chord: compare French heptacorde. See seven and chord.
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Examples
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He added three new strings to the cithara, which had consisted only of four, and this heptachord was employed by Pindar, and remained long in high repute; he was also the first who marked the different tones in music.
Handbook of Universal Literature From the Best and Latest Authorities Anne C. Lynch Botta 1853
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[2] According to Cicero, and his commentator, Macrobius, the lunar tone is the gravest and faintest on the planetary heptachord.
The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore Collected by Himself with Explanatory Notes Thomas Moore 1815
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