Mode

The influence of mode and musical experience on the attribution of emotions to melodic sequences.

“…The modality of a piece has long been identified as a crucial element in musical-emotional communication (e.g., Gabrielsson & Lindström, 2010;Heinlein, 1928;Hevner, 1935;Powers, 2013). Hevner (1936Hevner ( , 1937 found that mode (common practice major or minor) and tempo had the largest effects on emotion, followed by pitch, rhythm, harmony, and melody.…”

“…The 16th century Swiss music theorist Heinrich Glarean is credited with providing the definitions of the diatonic modes as we use them today (Glareanus, 1547). However, the term mode has been used for thousands of years in discussions of musical structure and affect (see Powers, 2013, for a more comprehensive discussion). The Greek names ascribed to the modes appear in the writings of Aristotle and Plato, who used them to refer to musical styles (including specific instrument tunings, pitches, and rhythms) that were similar in affect to the tribes they were named after (Aristotle, 1919; Plato, 1941).…”

“…During the middle ages, these Greek terms were used to categorize and compose liturgical chant melodies into eight categories, each of which had a certain ethos , and these are now referred to as the church modes (Powers, 2013). This medieval modal approach to composition was the dominant trend into the 1500s (Powers, 2013), and can be seen as framework from which modern tonality and harmonic progressions arose. Baroque music theorists in the 17th and 18th centuries went to great lengths to identify specific emotions that could be conveyed by specific scales and rhythms in melodies.…”

Interaction between musical and poetic form affects song popularity: The case of the Genevan Psalter.

“…Nearly all regressions significantly confirm the predictions of Kats and Smelik who suggested that Ionian, Aeolian, and Mixolydian modes would be relatively popular because these modes sound familiar to ears used to major and minor scales, and indeed there is a connection between familiarity, processing fluency, and liking (Huron, 2013; van Balen, 2016). Nevertheless, it is not certain whether the preference for these modes is really based on familiarity, as it is visible as early as 1606 (Marti, 2004; when the change in tonal system was far from complete) and furthermore, even in our times the diatonic modes have been used quite regularly in folk and rock music (Moore, 1992; Powers, Porter, & Cowdery, 2001; Temperley & de Clerq, 2013). As the Ionian mode is perceived as happy (Temperley & Tan, 2013), an alternative explanation for its popularity would be that Calvinist protestants prefer happy music.…”

Studying Large Plainchant Corpora Using chant21

“…Two paired modes use the same final note, but differ in their typical range: the so-called authentic one moves mostly above the final, the plagal one around it. This already shows that modes are melody types, more than just the church scales to which they are sometimes associated [14]. Second, different parts of the liturgy use different chant genres, from the short, syllabic antiphons to the elaborate responsories.…”