New Light on the Function of "Borrowed Notes" in Ancient Greek Music: A Look at Islamic Parallels

In several of the fragments of ancient Greek music, a note that does not seem to belong to the established tonos for that piece appears in an unexpected and hitherto unexplained place in a melodic line.' The occurrence of these as "borrowed notes" has been 387 hypothesized, if not thoroughly investigated, by those who study the ancient fragments.2 The exact relationship between the tonos of the piece in which the odd note appears and the tonos to which the odd note belongs has yet to be determined, and the reason for the odd note's very existence and its intervallic relationships with the notes surrounding it have remained a perplexing problem. One approach to understanding these "borrowed notes" might be through Persian and Turkish music.3 Turkish music has much in common with Persian