mixolydian

[Lycidas at worldnet.att.net]

Daniel Wolf wrote:
> 
> It's irrelevant whether Greeks thought of their scales as ascending or
> descending. The relevant problem is that, thanks to a medieval error
> (Boethius), the interval sequences in the modes were interpreted in the
> opposite direction. Thus the medieval European names represent modes whose
> interval sequences are inversions of the interval sequences in the Greek
> originals.
> 
> There are several hints throughout Pynchon that he took a music appreciation
> or history course at Cornell. In fact, from the Webern and Rossini vs.
> Beethoven discourse, I would guess that he took a course taught by the music
> historian William Austin.
> 
> Daniel Wolf


This sounds very interesting, why Austin?