natives who use them are familiar with other notes besides the curious and characteristic formula of five; but in the background of their musical feelings the original foundation of their system remains distinct, just as the scheme of the key of C remains distinct in the mind of an intelligent musical person even when a player sounds all the black notes in a couple of bars which are nominally in that key.

It undoubtedly made a great difference whether the fifth or fourth was chosen, for it is noticeable that small intervals like semitones are rare in five-note systems and common in sevennote systems; and this peculiarity has a very marked effect in the music, for those which lend themselves readily to the addition of semitones have proved the most capable of higher development. It is unnecessary to speculate on the way in which savages gradually built their scales by adding note to note, as the historical records of Greek music go so far back into primitive conditions that the actual process of enlargement can be followed up to the state which for ancient days must be considered mature. It is tolerably clear that the artistic standard of the music of the Greeks was very far behind their standard of observation and general intelligence in other matters. They spent much ingenious thought upon the analysis of their scales, and theorised a good deal upon the nature of combinations which they did not use; but their account of their music itself is so vague that it is difficult to get any clear idea of what it was really like. And it still seems possible that a large portion of what has passed into the domain of "well-authenticated fact" is complete misapprehension, as Greek scholars have not time for a thorough study of music up to the standard required to judge securely of the matters in question, and musicians as a rule are not very intimate with Greek. But certain things may fairly be accepted as trustworthy. Among them is, of course, the enthusiasm with which the Greeks speak of music, and their belief in the marvellous power of its effects. The stories of Orpheus and Amphion and others testify to this belief strongly, and mislead modern people into supposing that their music was a great art lost, when the very details and

style of their evidence tend to prove the contrary. It is not in times when art is mature that people are likely to tell stories of overturning town walls or taming savage animals with it; but rather when it is in the elementary stages, in which the personal character of the performer adds so much to the effect. It is a sufficiently familiar fact that in our own times a performer of genius can move people more and make more genuine effect upon them with an extremely simple piece than a brilliant virtuoso of the highest technical powers can produce with the utmost elaboration of modern ingenuity. A crowd of people of moderate intelligence go almost out of their minds with delight when a famous singer flatters them with songs which to musicians appear the baldest, emptiest, and most inartistic triviality. The moderns who are under such a spell cannot tell what it is that moves them, and neither could the Greeks. They would both confess to the power of music, and the manner of their confession would seem to imply that they were very impressionable, but had not arrived at any high degree of artistic intelligence or perception. The Greeks, moreover, were much nearer the beginning of musical things, and may be naturally expected to have been more under the spell of the individual sympathetic magnetism of the performer than even uneducated modern people; and the accounts we have of their system tend to confirm these views. Its limitations are such as do not encourage a belief in high artistic development, for at no time did the scheme extend much beyond what could be reproduced upon the white keys of the pianoforte and an occasional B and C#; and all the notes used were comprised within the limits of the low A in the bass stave and the E at the top of the treble stave. The first records indicate the time when the relations of three notes only were understood, which stood in much the same relation to one another that A FE do in our modern system. This, clearly does not represent the interval of a third with a semi

tone below it, but the interval of a fourth looking downwards with F as a downward leading note to E. This was called the tetrachord of Olympos. In time the note

between A and F was added, which gave a natural flow down from A to E. This was well recognised

as the first nucleus of the Greek system, and was called the Doric tetrachord. It was enlarged by the simple process of adding another group of notes which corresponded exactly to the first, such as E, D, C, B, below or above, thereby making a balance to the other tetrachord. It is possible that their musical sense developed sufficiently to make use of the artistic effects which such a balance suggests; and it is even likely that the desire for such effects was the immediate cause of the enlargement of the scale. In course of time similar groups of notes, called tetrachords, were added one after another, till the whole range of sounds which the Greeks considered suitable for use by the human voice was mapped out. The whole extent of this scale being only from A in the lower part of the bass stave to A in the treble, indicates that the Greeks preferred only to hear the middle portion of the voice, and disliked both the high and low extremes, which could only be produced with effort; and it proves also that their music could not have been of a passionate or excitable cast, because the use of notes which imply any degree of agitation are excluded. The last note which is said to have been added in the matter of range was the A below the lowest B, which was attributed to a lyre-player of the name of Phrynis in 456 B.C. But this note was considered to stand outside the set of tetrachords, and was not used in singing, but only to enable the harp-player to execute certain modulations.

The Greek musical system being a purely melodic one, it was natural that in course of time a characteristic feature of higher melodic systems should make its appearance. For the purposes of harmony but few arrangements of notes are necessary; but for the development of effect in melodic systems it is very important to have scales in which the order of arrangement of differing intervals varies. In the earliest Greek nucleus of a scale, the Doric, there was a semitone between the bottom note and the next above it i. each tetrachord-a between B and C, or E and F. In course of time the posi tions of the semitones were altered to make different scales,

and then the tetrachord stood as B, C, D, E, or, as in our modern minor scale, D, E, F, G. This was called the Phrygian, and was considered the second oldest. Another arrangement with the semitone again shifted, as B, C, D, E, resembles the lower part of our modern major scale, and was known as the "Lydian." When the tetrachords were linked together at first they overlapped; as in the Doric form, if the lower tetrachord was B, C, D, E, the one added above it would be E, F, G, A, the E being common to both tetrachords. This was ultimately found unsatisfactory, and a scheme of tetrachords which did not overlap was adopted about the time of

Pythagoras. Thus the Doric mode stood as E F GABCDE, the semitones coming between first and second and fifth and sixth; the Phrygian mode became like a scale played on the white notes of the pianoforte beginning on D; and the Lydian like our ordinary major scale; and more were added, such as the Æolic, which is like a scale of white notes beginning on A; the Hypolydian, like one beginning on F, and so forth.

>The restrictions of melodies to these modes secured a wellmarked variety of character, to which the Greeks were keenly alive; and they expressed their views of these diversities both in writing and in practice. The Spartan boys were exclusively taught the Doric mode, because it was considered to breathe dignity, manliness, and self-dependence; the Phrygian mode was considered to have been nobly inspiring also, but in different ways; and the Lydian, which corresponded to our modern major mode, to be voluptuous and orgiastic, probably from the fact that the semitones lay in the upper part of the tetrachords, which in melodic music with a downward tendency would have a very different aspect from that of our familiar major mode under the influence of harmony. But this mode was not in great favour either in ancient times or in mediæval times, when attempts were made to revive the Greek system.

In this manner a series of the notes which were supposed to be fit for human beings to sing were mapped out into dis

tinct and well-defined positions. But one of the most impor. tant developments of the scale still remained to be made. In modern times the scale has become so highly organised that the function of each note and the particular office each fulfils in the design of compositions is fairly well understood even by people of moderate musical intelligence. What is called the tonic, which is the note by which any key is named, is the most essential note in the scale, and the one on which every one instinctively expects a melody or a piece of music in that key to conclude; for if it stops elsewhere every one feels that the work is incomplete. To the tonic all other notes are related in different degrees-the semitone below, as leading to it; the dominant, as the note most strongly contrasted with it, and so forth. But to judge from the absence of comment upon such functions of various notes of the scale by Greek writers, and the obscurity of Aristotle's remarks on the subject, it must be assumed that the ideas of the Greeks on such a head were not clearly developed. In the beginning, when there were only three notes to work with, it seems as if their musical reason for existence necessarily defined their functions. But it is probable, as frequently happens in similar cases outside the range of music, that composers speculated in arrangements of the notes which ignored the purposes which brought them into existence; and that, as the scale grew larger and larger, people ceased to recognise that any particular note was more important than another. It is true they had distinct names for every note in a mode, and two are specially singled out as important, namely, the "middle" note and the "highest," which all modern writers agree was what we should call the lowest. If anything can be gathered from the ancient writings on the subject at all, it would seem to be that the middle note, the "mese," was something like our dominant, and the "hypate," which we should call the lowest, was the note to close upon. If this was so, the original functions described on page 20 were still recognised in theory; but the wisest writers on the subject in modern times think that matters got so confused that a Greek musician would end upon any note that suited his humour. This vagueness coin