It would be beyond the scope of this essay to discuss the date of the Greek musical notation. A few remarks, however, may be made, especially with reference to the high antiquity assigned to it by Westphal.
The alphabet from which it was derived was certainly an archaic one. It contained several characters, in particular
for digamma,
for iota, and
for lambda, which belong to the period before the introduction of the Ionian alphabet. Indeed if we were to judge from these letters alone we should be led to assign the instrumental notation (as Westphal does) to the time of Solon. The three-stroke iota (
), in particular, does not occur in any alphabet later than the sixth century B.C. On the other hand, when we find that the notation implies the use of a musical System in advance of any scale recognised in Aristotle, or even in Aristoxenus, such a date becomes incredible. We can only suppose either (1) that the use of