“Books dealing with the music of ancient Greece usually state, without comment, that the tetrachords apparently constituting the original organization of Greek music had a descending slope; their tones were listed from higher to lower pitch. In several histories of music I read in the summer of 1917, I found brief statements, at times merely footnotes, that the standard musical progressions (or scales) of all ancient cultures descended from high to low notes. The implications of this are vast and profound, indicating that a total reversal of human consciousness of sound has occurred since ancient Greece. 

“Would anyone singing or playing scales today start with high-pitched sounds and gradually descend to lower pitches? Is not the feeling and thought of rising scales absolutely ingrained in present-day musical consciousness? 

“What could have occurred to produce such a reversal in musical consciousness?”

Dane Rudhyar, 1919