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Stesichorus.15 By the seventh century, then, Greek musicians seem to have recognized and defined a particular mode or melodic style as being derived from Phrygia, or at any rate similar to what could be heard in Phrygia. The Lydian mode too must have been identified at this period or not much later, as it was from the mid-seventh century to the reign of Croesus that the Aeolian and Ionian Greeks were in the closest cultural contact with Lydia. This contact is reflected especially in the poetry of Alcman, Alcaeus, and Sappho. The Lydian mode is not associated with a particular Lydian musician, as the Phrygian is with Olympus.16 |
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These foreign modes are never contrasted simply with a 'Greek' one, but always with Dorian, Ionian, and other sub-national denominations. Presumably this was already the case in the seventh century, or whenever this nomenclature came into use. And presumably there was some continuity of nomenclature from then to the fifth century. At least some of the scales used in seventh- and sixth-century music were sufficiently like those known in the Classical period for compositions of Terpander and Alcman to be identified as being in the Dorian mode, airs of Olympus to be classified as Phrygian or Lydian, songs of Sappho as Mixolydian, songs of Pythermus as Ionian.17 |
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For the Archaic period we should probably assume that these modes had pentatonic form, in view of Aristoxenus' remarks about Olympus' earliest enharmonic, the indivisibility of the semitone in old-style aulos-playing, and the 'trichordal' character of both Olympus' and Terpander's music. For example, if we take the Dorian and Phrygian scales as described by Damon and eliminate the divided semitones, |
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15 Cf. p. 177. |
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16 In fact Olympus is credited with inventing the Lydian mode (having learned the Phrygian from Marsyas): Telestes, PMG 806, Clem. Strom. 1. 76. 4-6. Alternatively the 7th-c. Colophonian aulete Polymnestus is said to have invented 'the tonos now called Hypolydian' (ps.-Plut. De mus. 1141b), which probably corresponds to what was called Lydian in the 5th c. (cf. pp. 227 f.). |
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17 Clem. Strom. 6. 88. 1; Aristox. frs. 80-3; Ath. 625c. Himerius' flowery phrase about Alcman 'blending the Dorian lyre with Lydian songs' (Orat. 5. 3 p. 39. 12 Colonna) is probably based merely on the opinion that Alcman came to Sparta from Lydia, not on any musicological learning. The Dorian harmonia which is attributed to Stesichorus, Ibycus, Pindar and Alcman in the epigram on the nine lyric poets in schol. Pind. i. 10f. Dr. is nothing but their dialect. |
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