About the 8 Byzantine Modes
- Modes:
- Influenced by ancient Greek Music.
- Three ‘families’:
- Diatonic: Modes in which your singing something close to only white keys on the piano.
- Chromatic: A lot of black keys.
- Enharmonic:
- Within the three families there are eight “Modes” which the Church adopted from the fifteen modes of the ancient Greeks.
- “A mode is the manner in which a melody progresses.” (Cavarnos, Byzantine Chant, 34) It is the way one goes about singing from start to finish. One could compare this to how we go about signing a melody in major or minor key in western music, yet in Byzantine music there are eight different manners in which a melody might progress.
- 8 Modes are distinguished into two groups of four.
- The Chief Modes: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th.
- The Plagal (Variations) Modes: Plagal of the 1st, and 2nd; Varys, or, Grave Mode; and Plagal of the 4th.
- More modes belong to the diatonic family than chromatic or enharmonic:
- To the Diatonic:
- The 1st, and Plagal of the 1st; 4th and plagal of the 4th.
- Chromatic:
- 2nd, and Plagal of the 2nd.
- Enharmonic:
- Third mode, and Varys.
- To the Diatonic: