Dorian mode


Dorian mode or Doric mode can refer to three very different but interrelated subjects: one of the Ancient Greek harmoniai, one of the medieval musical modes, or, most commonly, one of the modern modal diatonic scales, corresponding to the white notes from D to D, or any transposition of this.

Greek Dorian mode

The Dorian mode is named after the Dorian Greeks. Applied to a whole octave, the Dorian octave species was built upon two tetrachords separated by a whole tone, running from the hypate meson to the nete diezeugmenon.
In the enharmonic genus, the intervals in each tetrachord are quarter tone–quarter tone–major third.

In the chromatic genus, they are semitone–semitone–minor third.

In the diatonic genus, they are semitone–tone–tone.

In the diatonic genus, the sequence over the octave is the same as that produced by playing all the white notes of a piano ascending from E to E, a sequence equivalent to the modern Phrygian mode.
Placing the single tone at the bottom of the scale followed by two conjunct tetrachords, produces the Hypodorian octave species: A | B C D E | F G A. Placing the two tetrachords together and the single tone at the top of the scale produces the Mixolydian octave species, a note sequence equivalent to modern Locrian mode.

Medieval Dorian mode

The early Byzantine church developed a system of eight musical modes, which served as a model for medieval European chant theorists when they developed their own modal classification system starting in the 9th century. The success of the Western synthesis of this system with elements from the fourth book of De institutione musica of Boethius, created the false impression that the Byzantine octoechos was inherited directly from ancient Greece.
Originally used to designate one of the traditional harmoniai of Greek theory, the name was appropriated by the 2nd-century theorist Ptolemy to designate his seven tonoi, or transposition keys. Four centuries later, Boethius interpreted Ptolemy in Latin, still with the meaning of transposition keys, not scales. When chant theory was first being formulated in the 9th century, these seven names plus an eighth, Hypermixolydian, were again re-appropriated in the anonymous treatise Alia Musica. A commentary on that treatise, called the Nova expositio, first gave it a new sense as one of a set of eight diatonic species of the octave, or scales.
In medieval theory, the authentic Dorian mode could include the note B "by licence", in addition to B. The same scalar pattern, but starting a fourth or fifth below the mode final D, and extending a fifth above, was numbered as mode 2 in the medieval system. This was the plagal mode corresponding to the authentic Dorian, and was called the Hypodorian mode. In the untransposed form on D, in both the authentic and plagal forms the note C is often raised to C to form a leading tone, and the variable sixth step is in general B in ascending lines and B in descent.

Modern Dorian mode

The modern Dorian mode, by contrast, is a strictly diatonic scale corresponding to the white keys of the piano from D to D

or any transposition of its interval pattern, which has the ascending pattern of whole steps and half steps as follows:
Thus, the Dorian mode is a symmetric scale, since the pattern of whole and half step is the same ascending or descending.
The modern Dorian mode can also be thought of as a scale with a minor third and seventh, a major second and sixth, and a perfect fourth and fifth, notated relative to the major scale as:
It may be considered an "excerpt" of a major scale played from the pitch a whole tone above the major scale's tonic, i.e., a major scale played from its second scale degree up to its second degree again. The resulting scale is, however, minor in quality, because, as the D becomes the new tonal centre, the F a minor third above the D becomes the new mediant, or third degree. Thus, when a triad is built upon the tonic, it is a minor triad.
The modern Dorian mode is equivalent to the natural minor scale but with a major sixth. The modern Dorian mode resembles the Greek Phrygian harmonia in the diatonic genus.

Notable compositions in Dorian mode

Traditional