prime form

The usual arrangement of the intervals of the tetrachord in the which the largest interval is at the top and the smallest at the bottom is the prime form.

Some genera such as Archytas's Enharmonic and Diatonic violate this rule as 28/27 is larger than 36/35 and 8/7 is larger than 9/8.

[from John Chalmers, Divisions of the Tetrachord]

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