a. [f. L. æoli-us adj. f. Æolis or Æolus + -AN.]
1. Of Æolis or Æolia, a district of Asia Minor anciently colonized by Greeks; Æolic. Æolian mode in Music ‘is the ninth of the church modes.’ Grove, Dict. Music.
1789. Burney, Hist. Music (ed. 2), I. iii. 53. The Æolian is grand and pompous though sometimes soothing.
1880. Helmore, in Grove, Dict. Mus., I. 40/2. Mozart’s Requiem may be said almost to begin and end with the Æolian scale.
2. Of Æolus, the mythic god of the winds; hence of, produced by, or borne on the wind, or by currents of air; aerial. Æolian harp: a stringed instrument adapted to produce musical sounds on exposure to a current of air.
1791. E. Darwin, Bot. Gard., I. 181. You melt in dulcet chords, when Zephyr rings The Eolian Harp.
1820. Shelley, Prom. Unb., IV. i. 188. The music of the rolling world Kindling within the strings of the waved air, Æolian modulations.
1879. Rutley, Study of Rocks, xiv. 275. Rounded by attrition, the result of their transport by water, or in the case of aeolian rocks, of their transport by wind.
1880. M. D. Conway, in Academy, 24 July, 56. There is a pure aeolian quality, a music as of storms telling their secret on the strings of a heart.
