The Dodecachordon of Heinrich Loris Glarean of Basel (1489-1563) was originally published in 1547. It exists in an impractical and inaccessible modern scholary edition, Volume 6 of the Musicological Sudies and Documents of the American Institute of Musicology. Most of what I have taken from Hawkins came to him by way of Glareanus, about whose work he [Hawkins] says, "The design of this book is to establish the doctrine of Twelve modes, contrary to the opinion of Ptolemy, who allows of no more than there are species of the Diapason, and those are Seven. The general opinion is, that Glareanus has failed in the proof of his doctrine; he was nevertheless a man of very great erudition...." Like Hawkins himself in his first volume, HG was mad for the mystical and mathematical theory of ancient Greek music. After ten more or less inscrutable columns of fine-printed struggle with Glareanian modality, Dr. Hawkins just finally gives up: "Not to pursue an enquiry into the nature of a subject which has long since eluded a minute investigation and which] ... [none] of the most learned musicians of modern times, could ever yet penetrate...." And then he presents the figure at the bottom of page 319 and says (sarcastically, as I assume) "it is left to speak for itself." I'd guess from that figure that HG would have called the above composition "Hypodorian," not simply "Dorian." Modern textbooks would say "Aeolian." I think. Although Pythagoras and Plato doubtless never dreamed of anything like that when they said "Dorian music," it really is quite meritorious. (The text may well not be original. Glarean in other cases undoubtedly substituted Latin of his own inventing for the vernacular.)

(egress)