paramese

Unadapted borrowing from Latin paramesē, from Ancient Greek παραμέση (paramésē, literally “next to the middle [string]”).

paramese (plural parameses)

1. (musical pitch) In Ancient Greek musical theory, the lowest-pitched fixed note in the farther tetrachord on a lyre, always pitched a perfect fourth below the nete, with two movable notes between them, the trite (lower in pitch) and the paranete (higher in pitch). The paramese was higher-pitched than the mese (the highest-pitched fixed note in the nearer tetrachord on a lyre) by a ratio of 9:8.

• The strings/pitches from lowest-pitched (nearest the player) to highest-pitched (farthest from the player) were the hypate, parhypate, lichanos, mese, paramese, trite, paranete and nete, grouped into two tetrachords, the nearer one stretching from hypate to mese and the farther one stretching from paramese to nete. The outer two notes in a tetrachord were fixed in pitch but the inner two notes could be tuned differently.