incomposite interval

An incomposite interval (; ) is a concept in the Ancient Greek theory of music concerning melodic musical intervals  between neighbouring notes in a tetrachord or scale which, for that reason, do not encompass smaller intervals. ( means "uncompounded".) Aristoxenus (fl. 335 BCE) defines melodically incomposite intervals in the following context: In another place, Aristoxenus clarifies that It is thus not an issue of the voice being physically incapable of singing a note within an incomposite interval. For example, in the enharmonic genus the distance from the neighbouring scale degrees lichanos to mesē is a ditone—a gap equivalent to the major-third interval between F and A in the modern scale. In such a case the function of the note λιχανός is such that "the 'nature of μελῳδία' somehow requires that it should leap forward at least as far as μέση, without touching down anywhere in between. Any smaller distance is melodically impossible or unintelligible, ἐκμελής".