About the 8 Byzantine Modes

• Modes:

1. Influenced by ancient Greek Music.
2. Three ‘families’:
   1. Diatonic: Modes in which your singing something close to only white keys on the piano.
   2. Chromatic: A lot of black keys.
   3. Enharmonic:
3. Within the three families there are eight “Modes” which the Church adopted from the fifteen modes of the ancient Greeks.
   1. “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.
4. 8 Modes are distinguished into two groups of four.
   1. The Chief Modes: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th.
   2. The Plagal (Variations) Modes: Plagal of the 1st, and 2nd; Varys, or, Grave Mode;  and Plagal of the 4th.
5. More modes belong to the diatonic family than chromatic or enharmonic:
   1. To the Diatonic:
      1. The 1st, and Plagal of the 1st; 4th and plagal of the 4th.
   2. Chromatic:
      1. 2nd, and Plagal of the 2nd.
   3. Enharmonic:
      1. Third mode, and Varys.