What Melic poetry like Sappho's actually was is best comprehended in the light of Plato's definition of melos, that it is 'compounded out of three things, speech, music, and rhythm.'
Aristoxĕnus, as quoted by Plutarch, ascribes to her the invention of the Mixo-Lydian mode. Mr. William Chappell thinks the plain meaning of Aristoxenus' assertion is merely that she sang softly and plaintively, and at a higher pitch than any of her predecessors. All Greek modes can be exhibited by means of our diatonic scale—by the white keys, for example, omitting the black ones, of our modern pianofortes; the various modes having been merely divisions of the diatonic scale into certain regions each consisting of one octave. The ecclesiastical Mixo-Lydian mode, supposed to be similar to the Greek mode of the same name, is the scale of our G major without the F# or leading note. It was called in the early Christian Church 'the angelic mode,' and is now known as the Seventh of the ecclesiastical or Gregorian modes. The more celebrated instances of the use of this mode in modern church music are Palestrina's four-part motet Dies sanctificatus, the Antiphon Asperges me as given in the Roman Gradual, and the Sarum melody of Sanctorum meritis printed in the Rev. T. Helmore's Hymnal Noted. The subjoined example of it is given in Sir George Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians:—
together with a technical description of its construction.
Sappho is said by Athenaeus, quoting Menaechmus and Aristoxenus, to have been the first of the Greek poets to use the Pēktis (πηκτίς), a foreign instrument of uncertain form, a kind of harp (cf. fr. [122]), which was played by the fingers without a plectrum. Athenaeus says the Pektis was identical with the Magădis, but in this he was plainly wrong, for Mr. William Chappell has shown that any instrument which was played in octaves was called a Magadis, and when it was in the form of a lyre it had a bridge to divide the strings into two parts, in the ratio of 2 to 1, so that the short part of each string gave a sound just one octave higher than the other. Sappho also mentions (in fr. [154]) the Barōmos or Barmos, and the Sarbĭtos or Barbĭtos, kinds of many-stringed Lesbian lyres which cannot now be identified.
As to the metres in which Sappho wrote, it is unnecessary to describe them elaborately here. They are discussed in all treatises on Greek or Latin metres, and Neue has treated of them at great length in his edition of Sappho. Suffice it to say that Bergk has as far as possible arranged the fragments according to their metres, of which I have given indications—often purposely general—in the headings to the various divisions. The metre commonly called after her name was probably not invented by her; it was only called Sapphic because of her frequent use of it. Its strophe is made up thus:
