Hypodorian mode

The Hypodorian mode, a musical term literally meaning 'below Dorian', derives its name from a tonos or octave species of ancient Greece which, in its diatonic genus, is built from a tetrachord consisting (in rising direction) of a semitone followed by two whole tones. The rising scale for the octave is a single tone followed by two conjoint tetrachords of this type. This is roughly the same as playing all the white notes of a piano from A to A: A | B C D E | (E) F G A. Although this scale in medieval theory was employed in Dorian and Hypodorian, from the mid-sixteenth century and in modern music theory they came to be known as the Aeolian and Hypoaeolian modes.^[1]

The term Hypodorian came to be used to describe the second mode of Western church music.^[2] This mode is the plagal counterpart of the authentic first mode, which was also called Dorian. The ecclesiastical Hypodorian mode was defined in two ways: (1) as the diatonic octave species from A to A, divided at the mode final D and composed of a lower tetrachord of tone–semitone–tone, ending on D, plus a pentachord tone–semitone–tone–tone continuing from D, and (2) as a mode whose final was D and whose ambitus was G–B♭ (that is, with B♮ below the final and B♭ above it). In addition, the note F, corresponding to the reciting note or tenor of the second psalm tone, was regarded as an important secondary center.^[2]

• Sadie, Stanley; Tyrrell, John, eds. (2001). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan. ISBN 9780195170672.