Greek Music. In the entire history of music there is no field so embarrassing to the student as that of ancient Greek music. There are two main reasons for this: first, the perplexing incongruity that exists between the considerable quantity of available theoretical information and the small number of preserved musical documents, that is, five of six complete compositions and as many fragments; secondly, the fact that the theoretical information is largely of a highly speculative and scholastic character, frequently incomplete, obscure and contradictory. Stimulated rather than discouraged by this situation, modern scholars have spent - not to say wasted - an incredible amount of time, labor and ingenuity trying to clarify the many perplexing incongruities and hairsplitting of Greek theory. The essay on Greek music contained in Lavinac's Encyclopedie (LavE i.I 377-537) is the ne plus ultra of dry and useless scholasticism, an effusion compared with which medieval treatises read like a detective story. It is to be regretted that even in the most recent books the intricacies of Greek theory are treated with a thoroughness which can only be explained as the (unconscious) desire on the part of the author to make his readers suffer for what he has suffered himself in preparing and writing his study. The article by C. Sachs in Buchen's Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft is a noteworthy exception, which has served as a model for the subsequent description ...