Mode (music)

It is applied to major and minor keys as well as the seven diatonic modes (including the former as Ionian and Aeolian) which are defined by their starting note or tonic.

Although both diatonic and Gregorian modes borrow terminology from ancient Greece, the Greek tonoi do not otherwise resemble their medieval/modern counterparts.

Previously, in the Middle Ages the term modus was used to describe intervals, individual notes, and rhythms (see § Mode as a general concept).

[3] It is still heavily used with regard to Western polyphony before the onset of the common practice period, as for example "modale Mehrstimmigkeit" by Carl Dahlhaus[4] or "Alte Tonarten" of the 16th and 17th centuries found by Bernhard Meier.

In all three contexts, "mode" incorporates the idea of the diatonic scale, but differs from it by also involving an element of melody type.

At the same time, composers were beginning to conceive "modality" as something outside of the major/minor system that could be used to evoke religious feelings or to suggest folk-music idioms.

[12] Early Greek treatises describe three interrelated concepts that are related to the later, medieval idea of "mode": (1) scales (or "systems"), (2) tonos – pl.

The association of these ethnic names with the octave species appears to precede Aristoxenus, who criticized their application to the tonoi by the earlier theorists whom he called the "Harmonicists".

According to Bélis (2001), he felt that their diagrams, which exhibit 28 consecutive dieses, were Depending on the positioning (spacing) of the interposed tones in the tetrachords, three genera of the seven octave species can be recognized.

[13] According to Cleonides, Aristoxenus's transpositional tonoi were named analogously to the octave species, supplemented with new terms to raise the number of degrees from seven to thirteen.

[11] When the late-6th-century poet Lasus of Hermione referred to the Aeolian harmonia, for example, he was more likely thinking of a melodic style characteristic of Greeks speaking the Aeolic dialect than of a scale pattern.

[26] By the late 5th century BC, these regional types are being described in terms of differences in what is called harmonia – a word with several senses, but here referring to the pattern of intervals between the notes sounded by the strings of a lyra or a kithara.

[27] In the Republic, Plato uses the term inclusively to encompass a particular type of scale, range and register, characteristic rhythmic pattern, textual subject, etc.

[28] The philosophical writings of Plato and Aristotle (c. 350 BC) include sections that describe the effect of different harmoniai on mood and character formation.

[34] According to Thomas J. Mathiesen, music as a performing art was called melos, which in its perfect form (μέλος τέλειον) comprised not only the melody and the text (including its elements of rhythm and diction) but also stylized dance movement.

Melic and rhythmic composition (respectively, μελοποιΐα and ῥυθμοποιΐα) were the processes of selecting and applying the various components of melos and rhythm to create a complete work.

[35]Tonaries, lists of chant titles grouped by mode, appear in western sources around the turn of the 9th century.

The eight-fold division of the Latin modal system, in a four-by-two matrix, was certainly of Eastern provenance, originating probably in Syria or even in Jerusalem, and was transmitted from Byzantine sources to Carolingian practice and theory during the 8th century.

[40] In his De institutione musica, book 4 chapter 15, Boethius, like his Hellenistic sources, twice used the term harmonia to describe what would likely correspond to the later notion of "mode", but also used the word "modus" – probably translating the Greek word τρόπος (tropos), which he also rendered as Latin tropus – in connection with the system of transpositions required to produce seven diatonic octave species,[41] so the term was simply a means of describing transposition and had nothing to do with the church modes.

Thus, the names of the modes became associated with the eight church tones and their modal formulas – but this medieval interpretation does not fit the concept of the ancient Greek harmonics treatises.

[45] Although the earlier (Greek) model for the Carolingian system was probably ordered like the Byzantine oktōēchos, with the four authentic modes first, followed by the four plagals, the earliest extant sources for the Latin system are organized in four pairs of authentic and plagal modes sharing the same final: protus authentic/plagal, deuterus authentic/plagal, tritus authentic/plagal, and tetrardus authentic/plagal.

While Zarlino's system became popular in France, Italian composers preferred Glarean's scheme because it retained the traditional eight modes, while expanding them.

[50] Given the confusion between ancient, medieval, and modern terminology, "today it is more consistent and practical to use the traditional designation of the modes with numbers one to eight",[55] using Roman numeral (I–VIII), rather than using the pseudo-Greek naming system.

Liane Curtis writes that "Modes should not be equated with scales: principles of melodic organization, placement of cadences, and emotional affect are essential parts of modal content" in Medieval and Renaissance music.

[56] Dahlhaus lists "three factors that form the respective starting points for the modal theories of Aurelian of Réôme, Hermannus Contractus, and Guido of Arezzo":[57] The oldest medieval treatise regarding modes is Musica disciplina by Aurelian of Réôme (dating from around 850) while Hermannus Contractus was the first to define modes as partitionings of the octave.

Three such interpretations, from Guido of Arezzo (995–1050), Adam of Fulda (1445–1505), and Juan de Espinosa Medrano (1632–1688), follow:[citation needed] Modern Western modes use the same set of notes as the major scale, in the same order, but starting from one of its seven degrees in turn as a tonic, and so present a different sequence of whole and half steps.

With the interval sequence of the major scale being W–W–H–W–W–W–H, where "W" means a whole tone (whole step) and "H" means a semitone (half step), it is thus possible to generate the following modes:[58] For the sake of simplicity, the examples shown above are formed by natural notes (also called "white notes", as they can be played using the white keys of a piano keyboard).

The Locrian mode is traditionally considered theoretical rather than practical because the triad built on the first scale degree is diminished.

Renaissance composers routinely sharped leading tones at cadences and lowered the fourth in the Lydian mode.

The "chord" row lists tetrads that can be built from the pitches in the given mode[80] (in jazz notation, the symbol Δ is for a major seventh).