The Church Modes: Ancient Scales, Modern Music

Before major and minor became the dominant scales of Western music, composers worked within a system of seven modes — ordered sets of pitches derived from the same basic collection of notes, but starting on different degrees. The church modes originated in early Christian liturgical music and take their names from ancient Greek tribes: Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian, along with the Ionian mode that later became what we call the major scale. The easiest way to understand modes is to think of a yardstick: each twelve-inch section is identical, but where you start measuring changes what you get. The modes use the same seven pitches as the major scale, just beginning and ending on a different one. Each mode has a characteristic interval structure, a characteristic sound, and characteristic cadential patterns. Dorian — starting on the second degree of the major scale — has a raised sixth compared to natural minor, giving it a slightly brighter quality. This is the mode of much Celtic music, much medieval music, and a surprisingly large portion of modern rock and folk. Mixolydian — starting on the fifth degree — is like a major scale with a lowered seventh, which is why it sounds right at home in blues-influenced rock: the lowered seventh removes the leading tone, giving the mode a more open, unresolved character. Phrygian — starting on the third degree — has a lowered second, giving it the darkest, most exotic flavor of all the modes. The modes never disappeared from Western music; they merely went underground during the centuries when major and minor dominated. They reappeared in the twentieth century through multiple channels simultaneously: in the modal jazz of Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, in the revival of folk music traditions that never abandoned them, in the modal scales of film scores, and in rock guitar playing that instinctively reached for Dorian and Mixolydian for their particular emotional colors. Every musician who has played a song ‘in a minor key’ and noticed that it sounds different from natural minor has probably encountered a mode. The labels are new; the sounds are ancient.

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