While, as we said before, we know very little about the melodies of the Greeks, we do know something about their scales, upon which the church music of the Middle Ages was based, as are our own major and minor scales. In fact the most important contribution Greece made to our music was the scale. They had a very complicated system and no one is quite sure how it worked. We have the two modes or kinds of scales, major and minor, which we use in different keys, but the Greeks had at least seven different modes used in many different ways. They used one mode for martial or military music, another for funeral ceremonies, another for their temple music, and curiously enough, our own C major scale they used for their popular music, for drinking songs, and light festivities. The Greek scales were based on _tetrachords_, from the Greek words tetra-four, chord-string that is, a group of four strings. If you play on the piano B C D E and C D E F and D E F G you will find the three tetrachords that formed the _primary modes_ of the Greeks:—Dorian, Phrygian and Lydian. Perhaps you have heard in Greek architecture of the Doric column which came from Doria, a province in Greece, and the Ionic column, from Ionia, and so on. In the same way the scales were named for sections of the country from which they first came, Dorian mode, Ionian, Æolian, Phrygian, Lydian, etc. The Greek tetrachord was formed on the interval of a fourth, for example from E to A—these were called _standing tones_, because the intervals between the two standing tones or permanent tones could be changed but the first and the fourth always remained the same— Dorian, ⏜E F⏜ G A: Phrygian, E ⏜F G⏜ A ⏜G# A⏜ ½ ½ ½ step step step By putting two tetrachords together all the other Greek scales were formed. These fell into two classes, and according to Cecil Forsyth in his _History of Music_ these classes were called the _join_ and the _break_. When the second tetrachord began on the fourth tone of the first tetrachord, Mr. Forsyth calls it the _joining_ method, thus. [Illustration: ⎴E͡FGA⎴——⎴A͡B♭CD⎴] When the second tetrachord began on the tone above the fourth tone of the first tetrachord, he calls it the _breaking_ method, thus: [Illustration: ⎴E͡FGA⎴ ⎴B͡CDE⎴] By using the _join_ and the _break_ with each of the three modes, Dorian, Phrygian and Lydian, you can see to what a great variety of scales and names this would lead. The Greeks spoke of their scales from the top note down, instead of from the lowest note up, as we do.