The art of music. Vol. 01 (of 14) : $b The pre-Classic periods
History
The art of music. Vol. 01 (of 14) : $b The pre-Classic periods
Music -- History and criticism; Musicians
Associated with this we soon find the Phrygian mode, supposed to be of
Asiatic origin and introduced into Greece by Terpander of Lesbos, one
of the earliest known composers of antiquity:
[Illustration: PHRYGIAN.]
and also the Lydian, the name of which indicates its origin:
[Illustration: LYDIAN.]
Around these three may be grouped all the modes in use in classic
times. These scales or octave species may be compared rather to our
present major and minor modes than to our modern transposition scales,
in that their identity is determined _not_ by their absolute pitch, but
by the intrinsic character of each mode, _based upon the distribution
of the large and small steps or intervals within the octave_. But
here the analogy ends, for the Greek modes cannot really be thought
of in the same way as either modern scales or modes, which by long
association with our harmonic system have become inseparably identified
with it, so that every step of the scale has a harmonic significance
as well as a melodic. Hence, there is associated with our scales the
idea of _tonality_, which in its modern sense is entirely foreign to
Greek music. Nevertheless a distinct character or _ethos_ was ascribed
to their scales by the Greeks (just as our major and minor have their
individual character). The Lydian, for instance, was thought of as
plaintive and adaptable to songs of sorrow; the Dorian as manly and
strong, hence to be employed in warlike strains; and so on.[36]
It will be seen that the above three scales correspond to the three
series of notes comprised within the octaves from e to e´, d to d´,
and c to c´, produced by the white keys of the piano. (While this does
not indicate their absolute pitch, it represents the relative pitch
at which they appear as part of the entire system, or 'foundation
scale,’ of the Greeks, illustrated on page 103.) By a transposition of
the tetrachord divisions of each of these scales, the Greeks obtained
two additional scales out of each of the above three. These derived
scales were denoted by the prefixes _hypo_ and _hyper_ (low and high),
respectively:
Hypodorian (Like Hyperphrygian) Hyperdorian
/━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━\ /━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━\
A B c d e f g a b c´ d´ e´ f´ g´ a´ b´
╲▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁╱
Dorian
Hypophrygian (Like Hyperlydian) Hyperphrygian (Like Hypodorian)
/━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━\ /━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━\
G A B c d e f g a b c´ d´ e´ f´ g´ a´
╲▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁╱
Phrygian
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