What is the origin of the names of musical scales, are they from the Greek Language?

Question

I found an interesting link, http://www.greenwych.ca/natbasis.htm
but I can't pin point the "source" of the naming. What started my curiousity was the Ionian scale, and the Ionian Greek isles, and it is going from there, any links or info will be apprecieated.

yes, I stand corrected, modes is the term. and thanks ms.muse for the answer and link.

all of them great answers really, and all put together have given me great insight into the "theory". thanks

Answer 1

I think what you mean is an octave or something. I made a research a while back when I was trying to connect chemistry with music and found that an octave can be conected with the octave in the Table of Elements and where founded by a greek guy or something. (Sorry short term memory)

Answer 2

They're actually called "modes", not scales.

"Early Greek treatises on music referred to modes, or scales, which were named after certain of the Ancient Greek subgroups (Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians), one small region in central Greece (Locris), and certain neighboring (non-Greek) peoples from Asia Minor (Lydia, Phrygia).

The Greek modes were:

* Ionian
* Dorian and Hypodorian
* Phrygian and Hypophrygian
* Lydian, Hypolydian
* Mixolydian
* Aeolian
* Locrian"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_mode

Answer 3

Yes, the names come from Greek regions ...

But just to add a little extra histoy, the modes as listed by the first poster are the modern modes ... but they developed that way from the medieval chruch modes. THere was dorian (for example) and hyperdorian. They had different rules and settings for what was the tonic, how they worked, where the recitative note was etc. and were functional for Gregorian chant.

The modern modes grew later from this.

Answer 4

I understand that the names were arbitrarily assigned.
The Dorian scale isn't really Dorian, the Phrygian scale isn't really Phrygian, and so on.

This is off the subject, but a handy memory device is "Dumb people like me always look intellignet."

Incidentally, the names for the augmented sixths are arbitrary, too. Composers of all three nationalities have always written French AND Italian AND German sixths.

Answer 5

"Museofsa" is most correct I think. I would only add that those are referred to as tetra-chords: made up of 4 notes.

They can be so arranged as to form any and all of the major and minor scales.

Wotan