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We have now covered the six modes for which we have Damonian scales. Plato seems to treat them as a closed set. After excluding from his state the Mixolydian, Tense Lydian, Lydian, and Ionian, the only ones that remain available are the Dorian and the Phrygian. Outside Plato, however, we find sporadic mention of others. |
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We have already cited Lasus' and Pratinas' references to an Aeolian mode. Pindar too seems to register his use of it.90 Thereafter it either went out of use or came to be called by another name. Heraclides Ponticus, however, needed it for his reconstruction of the history of Greek music, so that the commonly recognized broad division of the nation into Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians should be matched by a trio of three primary modes with the same names. Finding the allusions to an Aeolian mode in Lasus and Pratinas, and observing that the Lasus hymn was actually sung in what was currently called the Hypodorian mode, he concluded that Aeolian was the old name for Hypodorian, in which he found qualities similar to those of the oldest Aeolic people, the Thessalians: open-hearted, honest, generous, swaggering.91 |
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There were two 'Hypo-' modes, Hypodorian and Hypophrygian, and they were indeed, so far as our evidence goes, not identified under these names before the late fifth or early fourth century.92 They were mutations of Dorian and Phrygianprobably occurring in association with them, through modulationin which disjunct tetra-chords became conjunct ones. Someone performing in the Dorian scale, d e f a b  c' e', would go into Hypodorian if from the a he went up a  d', making d' his highest note. In the Phrygian, d e  f a b  c' d', the change to Hypophrygian came about in the opposite way, by going down from the b through the descending tetrachord b g and (probably) making e the bottom note.93 |
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90 Above, p. 178; Pind. Ol. 1. 102(?), Pyth. 2.69(?), Nem. 3. 79 with schol. (cf. above, n. 73). The interpretation of the Pindaric passages is controversial. I. Henderson in E. Wellesz (ed.), Ancient and Oriental Music (New Oxford History of Music, i, Oxford, 1957), 383, suspects that the terms Dorian and Aeolian could be applied to the same music. |
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91 Heraclid. Pont. fr. 163 ap. Ath. 624c-625e; cf. Poll. 4. 65. Late sources characterize the Aeolian mode as 'straightforward' (Apul. Flor. 4) or 'calming and soporific' (Cassiod. Var. 2. 40. 4). |
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92 'Hypolydian' does not have the same modal status. It is a name created for a theoretical systematization of keys. See pp. 227f. |
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93 This account is based on inference from the later systematized scheme and the known use of modulation between disjunct and conjunct tetrachords from the late 5th c. onwards. |
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