=The Music of Ancient Greece the Foundation of Modern European Music=.—Although the history of European music properly begins with the music of Ancient Greece, we are still very ignorant of the subject, owing to the fact that there is not in existence a note of music anterior to the Christian Era. But lately, in the ancient treasure house at Delphi, a hymn was found inscribed in marble on the inner wall. Mr. J. P. Mahaffy, an authority in matters pertaining to Greek literature, says: “The time is given by the metre, a long syllable and three short, variously placed, or two long and a short between them, in every case 5-8 in a measure.... As regards the accompaniment or harmonizing of the air, there is none extant. [As to the melody] although there is rhythm and even a recurrence of phrases to mark the close of the period, nothing worthy of being called melody in any modern sense is to be found.” The inscription dates from the third century before Christ, is a hymn to Apollo and the Muses, and consists of phrases equal to eighty measures in our modern reckoning. The blank spaces in the measure were filled in by an instrument, probably the cithara. Our knowledge is confined to the treatises of mathematicians and musicians, previously mentioned, and these works are often so obscure that there is much uncertainty as to their meaning. Besides, these writings are scattered over a period of about 800 years; that is, from 585 B. C., the date of Pythagoras, to 130 A. D., the date of Claudius Ptolemy. Numberless changes took place in the art in the course of this long period; hence the attempt to elucidate a homogeneous system by comparing these writings is about as hopeless as would be the attempt to deduce the modern system of music from the collocation of the works of Guido and Hucbald of the 10th century with those of Richter and Prout in the 19th. [Illustration: Music HYMN TO APOLLO AND THE MUSES.] We owe much to the labors of these bygone writers; in fact, the Greek system of music is the foundation upon which the modern system is the superstructure. No attempt will be made here to settle the many disputed points that have puzzled the learned for ten or more centuries, but a clear and concise account of all that is necessary to an understanding of the place of this system in the historical development of music will be given. =Formation of the Greek Scale=.—The Greek Scale was founded on a tetrachord or succession of four sounds, arranged as follows: E (half tone) F (whole tone) G (whole tone) A It is commonly believed that these letters written on the bass staff, thus: [Music]