The Modes of Ancient Greek Music — Reading Notes

The Central Dispute: Pitch vs. Position

Monro's core argument hinges on a terminological fault line. Westphal and his followers held that Greek mode names (Dorian, Phrygian, etc.) indicated the position of a scale pattern on a fixed pitch grid—what Monro calls 'nomenclature by position.' Monro counters that Ptolemy's harmonic system, which reduced the keys from fifteen to seven, was an innovation that introduced this positional naming, and that earlier theorists like Aristoxenus used thesis differently. In a key passage, Monro dissects Aristoxenus's statement that melodic elements are 'limited and settled' in respect of dynameis, eidē, and theseis. He argues that thesis here refers to the relative placement of tetrachords (conjunct or disjunct), not to absolute pitch. Westphal, Monro claims, misread this technical vocabulary to support a modern theory. The debate is not merely philological: it determines whether ancient Greek music was perceived in terms of fixed pitch levels or movable patterns—a distinction with consequences for understanding the experience of melody.

Evidence from the Aristotelian Problems

A second battleground is Problem xix. 20, which discusses the special role of the Mesē (the middle note) in relation to the rest of the scale. Westphal interpreted this as requiring a mesē kata thesin (by position) to accommodate octaves of different species. Monro insists that the passage makes sense only if the Mesē is the key-note of the Perfect System—a fixed pitch reference. He points out that if Westphal were correct, the scale would have to be an octave of the a-species, and any other species would force a different understanding of Mesē. The argument is dense, turning on a single Greek phrase, but Monro's method is consistent: he treats each ancient text as a precise technical document, not a vague description. He does not claim to have settled the matter, but he shows that Westphal's reading requires an anachronistic concept of 'position' that the text does not support.

The Role of Newly Discovered Fragments

Monro's preface highlights a methodological tension: the book was nearly complete when the Delphi hymn emerged. He does not pretend that these fragments prove his thesis, but he uses them to test the competing theories. The Seikelos inscription and the Euripides fragment offer rare examples of actual notation, allowing comparison with the theoretical systems described by Aristoxenus and Ptolemy. Monro's treatment is cautious—he notes that the fragments are brief and late—but he suggests that they align better with a pitch-based understanding of modes than with Westphal's positional scheme. The reader is left to judge, as Monro explicitly invites, whether the new evidence strengthens or weakens his argument. This openness to revision, announced in the preface, gives the book a provisional character rare in scholarly monographs of the period.

Monro's study rewards readers who attend to his close reading of Greek technical terms and his willingness to engage with competing interpretations. The book is not a general introduction but a focused intervention in a specific scholarly debate. Those unfamiliar with Aristoxenus or Ptolemy may wish to consult a primer on ancient Greek harmonic theory before diving in. Monro's prose is clear but assumes a reader comfortable with transliterated Greek and the vocabulary of tetrachords, genera, and systems. The payoff is a sharper understanding of how modern scholars reconstruct ancient musical concepts from fragmentary evidence.

I remember when Monro’s Modes taught me that those old Greek names were about pitch, not position—a quiet undoing of a scholarly habit. It felt like hearing a familiar melody played in a new register. That same gentle shift lives in Spirit and Music — Themes and Context, where feeling re-tunes the notes we thought we knew.