And this is from Plato's Republic:

Of the harmonies I know nothing, but would have you leave me one which can render the note or accent which a brave man utters in warlike action and in stern resolve; and when his cause is failing, and he is going to wounds or death or is overtaken by disaster in some other form, at every such crisis he meets the blows of fortune with firm step and a determination to endure; and an opposite kind for times of peace and freedom of action, when there is no pressure of necessity, and he is seeking to persuade God by prayer, or man by instruction and admonition, or when on the other hand he is expressing his willingness to yield to the persuasion or entreaty or admonition of others. And when in this manner he has attained his end, I would have the music show him not carried away by his success, but acting moderately and wisely in all circumstances, and acquiescing in the event. These two harmonies I ask you to leave; the strain of necessity and the strain of freedom, the strain of the unfortunate and the strain of the fortunate, the strain of courage, and the strain of temperance; these, I say, leave.
And these, he replied, are the Dorian and the Phrygian harmonies of which I was just now speaking.

Damon of Athens was certainly an advocate of the Dorian's appropriateness for the education of young men, and in the formation of manly character and attributes. He is, also, given credit for 'inventing' the Lydian mode - thought to foster effeminate and frivolous traits.

There's a fair amount of Gray matter in that deliberation.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Very true! Upon first discovering chant I wondered why bother about modes if they're all in the same "key".

I don't get synaesthesia for modes...but your Wilde suggestion might induce it, melo!

The Greek 'modes' or 'species of octave', based on a system of varying tetrachords, is really quite different from the medieval church modes. Cleonides' writings (2nd or 3rd century C. E.) describe the ancient Greek Dorian 'species of octave', consisting of joined tetrachords, as resembling what we know as the Phrygian mode.

but it looks as if I've been beaten to it!

MJO

I did not say the modes sound all alike. I said the intervals in all the modes sound alike. To hear and compare the modes go to my "demystification of the modes".

Is a man unmanly if he should prefer Phrygian music? How old is the notion of a "feminine" ending, musically speaking?

At least one Greek thought that assigning virtue or the lack of it as a result of listening to given modes was nonsense. Hippias of Elis (Vth cent. BC) asserted that enharmonic melody will 'no more make its votaries brave than chromatic will make them cowards'. Hippias may or may not have been correct. Dissent does not necessarily imply the veracity of the dissenting voice.

Much as we (and especially I) would like to maintain that moral character can be inculcated or discerned from the music which given persons play or hear, there is abundant evidence that even some really awful people listen to some really exquisite music, and some really nice people listen to some really awful music; and that some awful people write and have written wondrously fine music, and vice versa. Still, I would maintain that there must be some objective and ontological difference betwixt Mozart or Tallis and certain other music which can only be described as hellish. There is nothing that will foul a mind more than the foul music to which large numbers of our society prefer to hear - and, that may go a long way to explain the general moral laxity of the otherwise nice people in our body politic. Anyone can be nice - if it pleases them to be.

I commend to all Basil Cole, O.P.'s book, Music and Morals: A Theological Appraisal of the Moral and Psychological Effects of Music.

Stravinsky, in The Poetics of Music, asserted that 'surely, music is a moral category'. This does seem rather a self evident truism.

And I find F Major to be sad, also.

G minor, on the other hand, I find to be solemn and dignified, but also joyful.

Odd, isn't it?
And soooo subjective!
Adam finds d-minor sad.
I find it noble.
E flat-Major I find heroic.
A-Major elegant.
E-Major deliriously joyful if not ecstatic
B-Major intelligent
e-minor dreadfully sad
Salieri often finds d-minor to be joyful -
Mozart, with his symphony no. 40, would, I think, concur.
& cet....

And, look what Beethoven did with his c#-minor piano sonata: Ist mvmnt: a dirge-like and morose offering in memory of a friend who had died (NOT moonlight!); IInd mvmnt: a rather gay and dance-like movement complete with rhythmic syncopation in the enharmonic Db-Major; and IIIrd mvmnt: returning to c#-minor, a rollicking and definitive celebration of unfettered, indeflectible, vivacity.

About that second movement: would we hear or apprehend it differently if B had written it in the sonata's C#-Major rather than the enharmonic Db-Major? Some of us might. To me sharp keys are relatively bright, flat ones relatively dull.

I find D minor is really the saddest of all keys...

*Nope, C minor wins. Just the right amount of flat signs, or as Goldilocks sez, "Just right."
*D minor is indeed sad, but it's more sad when the capo is applied to the third fret and piece played in B moll (a little known JSBach secret.) Organists place the capo at the relative distance of Pi from the fipple.
*Beethoven wanted to establish A minor as the "saddest" only because Elise couldn't play enough black keys.
*Copland was so repulsed by his mentor, Stravinski's multiple minor clusters, he sadly resolved to write everything in major mode.

That's enough Henny Youngman for now. I'm available for contract work, here all week. Need the dough, retired you know.

Hmmm.
How is it that Dorian is thought to be manly - with all the nobility and virtue that that implies, but d-minor (the same scale) is thought to be sad. Yes, yes, Greek Dorian is/was not mode I or d-minor - but still and all.....

(oh, and there's Bach's Dorian Toccata and Fugue - certainly not sad. Rather manly and vigourous, actually.)

Not sure how manly "God rest ye merry gentlemen" is but it certainly isn't sad.

And, sorry, Melo, purple or not, c-minor doesn't win!

Whatever there is to Beethoven's fifth, it isn't sad - not anywhere near sad. More prophetic, I would say... not too different from...

Bach's great c-minor prelude and fugue (BWV 546), which I just played in recital last Sunday and will play again in recital on the glorious Pasi organ at Houston's Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart this coming Friday. It is a work of rare and profound gravitas, the brief appearance of the slurred sorrow motif notwithstanding. When playing it I think inevitably of the XXth century Anglican mystic Evelyn Underhill's sure notion about God's fecund vigour as expressed in her poem, 'Dynamic Love' -
Not to me
The Unmoved Mover of philosophy
And absolute still sum of all that is,
The God whom I adore - not this!
Nay, rather a great moving wave of bliss,
A surging torrent of dynamic love
In passionate swift career,
Down the sheer abyss
Of Being ever pours, his ecstasy to prove.

If I ever start a geezer rock garage band again, I'm naming it "Fecund Vigour."