A hydrodynamic description is used to study the normal modes of a vortex in a zero-temperature Bose-Einstein condensate. In the Thomas-Fermi limit, the circulating superfluid velocity far from the vortex core predominates, yielding a perturbative treatment of the normal modes based on those of a vortex-free condensate. The relative frequency shifts are small in all cases considered, suggesting that the vortex is stable. The Bogoliubov equations serve to verify the existence of helical waves, similar to those of a vortex line in an unbounded weakly interacting Bose gas. In the large-condensate (small-core) limit, the condensate wave function reduces to that of a straight vortex in an unbounded condensate; the corresponding Bogoliubov equations have no bound-state solutions that are uniform along the symmetry axis and decay exponentially far from the vortex core.