The Six Modes
As we have gathered from listening to the chants on the last page, there are an incredible variety of scale patterns that can be created within the framework of a basic 5- or 7-note scale (pentatonic or heptatonic), made all the richer by the subtle ways in which those tones can be tuned for expressive purposes.
In the classical tradition of the West which forms the basis of all Western music of our time, 6 modes were identified as being the basis for musical composition. For many centuries, these modes formed the basis for all compositional activity. In modern composition and jazz, there remains a conscious use of these modes under a variety of schemes and approaches.
Let's begin by looking at the modes in how there were first conceived. You will often see these called the Church Modes or the Ecclesiastical modes or the Renaissance modes. The concept is a simple one: based on the diatonic scale that we can write on the musical staff using no sharps or flats, begin scales on different pitch centers and notice the expressive quality of the different modes that arise from a shift in tonal center. Since Medieval and early Renaissance theory based their ideas on a faulty understanding of ancient Greek thought, the modes were assigned the same names as those of the ancient Greek tribes to which the Greeks affixed lables for their modes. While historically inaccurate, the names have become fixed so that even today, composers or jazz musicians working within the modal system refer to these scales by the same ancient terminology.
The modes, beginning with D and E (the most ancient modes) and moving up by progessive scale steps, are as follows:
You will notice that the mode beginning on B has been skipped. This is because this mode, the Locrian:
has a tritone between the root and the fifth (B to F, as is now very familiar to you). So central is the solidity of the perfect fifth between the root and fifth of any mode (even in the great majority or Indian ragas), that a scale lacking this quality becomes of theoretical value, only. (For you jazz players, this mode does have an application in the greater discussion of melodic improvisation, but that cannot concern us here).
This brings us to regard the 6 modes for their particular qualities. In general, these can be categorized in a variety of ways.
- Modes can be organized based on their major or minor quality.
This is defined specifically according to whether the third of the scale
is a major or minor third above the tonic or starting note.
Thus, we can arrange the modes as
- Minor modes: Phrygian, Dorian, Aeolian
- Major modes: Lydian, Mixolydian, Ionian
Thus there are 3 major modes and 3 minor modes.
- Modes can also be organized based on their combination of tetrachords.
- Dorian: minor + minor
- Phrygian: phrygian + phrygian
- Lydian: Major with raised fourth + major with raised fourth
- Mixolydian: major + minor
- Aeolian: minor + phrygian
- Ionian: major major
You'll notice that four of the modes are a combination of two identical tetrachords. Only the aeolian and the mixolydian have mixed tetrachords.
- Modes can finally be organized according to their symmetricality.
- The Dorian mode is symmetrical in ascending and descending directions, as we have seen WHWWWHW.The ordering of whole and half steps is also symmetrical around a central point. The dorian mode is one balance mode!
- The Ionian and Phrygian modes are symmetrical: Play the Ionian mode ascending and the Phrygian mode descending and you will have the same order of whole and half steps: WWHWWWH. (Check this out for yourself, or better, play it on the piano). There is a fundamental polar relationship between the major and minor that is reflected in this symmetrical balance between Ionian and Phrygian.
- The Aeolian and Mixolydian modes are similarly symmetricality.
- Only the Lydian mode does not have a symmetrical correspondance.
Here are some examples of Renaissance music that is composed in these various modes. Are you able to hear these? You will have a listening assignment posted to this chapter's assignment page that will ask you to train yourself to better hear these modes.
NEXT: 4D Polarity Theory