Mode - Plainchant - Encyclopedia Britannica

Gradual emergence of major and minor tonality

The strict consistency of the system of church modes was gradually weakened by the appearance of B♭ in addition to B♮, although the two notes never occurred in succession. The main reason for the use of a tone not included in the basic scale pattern was that medieval musicians sought to avoid the tritone F–B. The tritone (so called because it includes three whole tones) was considered an undesirable interval sharply contrasting with the perfect fourth F–B♭. The substitution of B♭ for B♮ changed the character of a mode. For example, the Lydian mode with a flattened B was identical with the modern major mode, specifically, with the F–major scale (F G A B♭ C D E F); and the Dorian mode with a flattened B generated a minor mode corresponding to the natural D minor scale (D E F G A B♭ C D).

Nevertheless, for centuries medieval theorists considered these alterations as special forms of the Lydian or Dorian mode rather than as new modes. The reluctance to acknowledge the existence of additional modes is reflected in the so-called musica ficta. According to this practice, musical notation appears to conform strictly to the system of church modes but presupposes that the performer makes certain adjustments by raising or lowering a note through the insertion of a sharp or flat.

Two different developments occurring between the 12th and the 16th centuries resulted in a radical change in modal theory: an infiltration of folk music into the ecclesiastical and secular art forms and the steadily evolving fabric of harmony destined to unify the growing complexity of polyphonic (many-voiced) musical texture. Finally, a theorist, Heinrich Loris, commonly known by his assumed name Henricus Glareanus, sanctioned the coexistence between the old church modes and the emerging major and minor modes. In his Dodecachordon (1547; from Greek dōdeka, “twelve,” and chordē, “string”), perhaps the most significant musical treatise of the time, Glareanus enlarged the system of the eight church modes by adding the following four:

The Ionian and Hypoionian modes correspond to the major mode, the Aeolian and Hypoaeolian modes to the “natural” minor mode. The 12 modes of the Dodecachordon comprise authentic and plagal structures with tonal centres on the notes C, D, E, F, G, and A, without recourse to sharpened or flatted tones. Glareanus mentions another two modes: the Locrian and the Hypolocrian, having B as their tonal centre. But because in these two modes B and the fifth degree above it, F, form a “false” (i.e., diminished, or flattened) fifth (another form of the forbidden tritone), Glareanus states that for practical purposes only 12 modes are available.

The growing complexity of polyphonic music caused the distinction between authentic and plagal modes to become more and more irrelevant, and, as a result, the number of modes was virtually reduced to only six. The further development of art music in the Western Hemisphere is characterized by the gradual abandonment of the old ecclesiastical modes in favour of the dual major-minor system that dominated 18th- and 19th-century harmony. This system is often termed tonal, in contradistinction to that of the church modes; in fact, some 20th-century works reviving the patterns of the old church modes, as well as folksongs that occasionally use them, are often termed modal. Nevertheless, major and minor scale patterns have all essential characteristics of modes and should therefore be evaluated as such.