@CharlesW: I cast some blame on the collapse of musical education. No one understands, recognizes anything in music, or cares anymore because we no longer see value in teaching young people how to listen, think about, or critique the music they hear. My children attend Catholic school and thankfully they still have music class, but are they taught chant? No. Are they taught anything about the Church's musical heritage? Haha hilarious...My seven year old daughter loves to sing and has a beautiful voice, and she already knows all of the Haas, Haugen, et. al. stuff she hears several times a week. She's being raised on this stuff, and will probably have some kind of sentimental attachment to it when she's grown up. But she also knows all the "good old hymns" she hears me play at the work church, so I take some small comfort in that LOL. Like any language, it must be learned early and often. We cannot create a meaningful dialogue for the future unless we cultivate one in the next generation.

Getting back to the original topic of this post, the ethos of the modes, Fr Saulnier has just uploaded his draft paper (in French) on the modes which builds on his previous book.

https://www.academia.edu/22289656/Les_mdoes_du_plain-chant_-_Nova_et_vetera

In his previous book, he pointed out that a lot more still remains to be said about the modes.

All's I know is, Mode 3 really %#@$^&!es me off. Guess that means I'm not a mystic.

The effect of the music has to do with compared to what. In 600 AD people had not yet heard Jesus Christ Superstar. In other words they had no idea of what a major key was. At one time the modes were used to evoke different meanings and emotions. Today we are left with just 2 forms of them, the major and minor keys. You will notice the serious sound of music used for feasts, and we are left with minor keys for this sort of sound. It was designed that way. Thomas Merton gave talks to his novices about this when he was their master. Today the church modes can't have the same meanings because we have been exposed to other sounds and developed our ears accordingly. But the closest we have to this is the music that is traditional for Christmas and because it is a church mode which was developed into what we now have known as a minor key we have that responce. It is sort of sad but in a happy/sad way.
Originally there were only a few church modes, 4. But as time when on more were developed, 12, and people got used to hearing newer things and eventually it blended together. The difference had to do with the dominant note and the end note and their relationship to each other. But over the years it has boiled down to just two types of sounds and just two types of affects: major and minor.
Therefore, unless you have lived with earplugs in your ears until you enter a monastic community, the church modes no longer have the effect they were used for and eventually designed to be used for. And even then, you will have to enter a Trappist community or more strict than that to keep away from the natural effect of music that is not solely based on music pre 1200 AD (except the Trappist abbey I entered which had a music library and with headphones you could listen to Jesus Christ Superstar). Soleme has clear publications on this.
Today, the use of telling you what that mode is has to do mostly with the rang of notes, the dominant note and the end note. It is a short hand for going into a chant without knowing it well. If you know what your singing you don't need it. Trying to interoperate a mode or type of sound from the church modes today just doesn't work; unfortunately or fortunately we have been exposed to a rich diet of Neapolitan 5ths and Aug 6ths, not to mention Star Wars and Harry Potter film scores.

a rich diet of Neapolitan 5ths and Aug 6ths

The Neapolitan chord is known as a Neapolitan 6th (not 5th) chord or, alternatively as a flat supertonic (♭II), and sometimes as a Phrygian II chord.

The augmented 6th chord (in various flavors) has been traced back to Renaissance origins and functions as way of getting to the dominant in a piquant manner. It is typically outlined by a flatted 6th degree in the lowest voice and a sharped 4th degree in the highest voice, both resolving outward to an octave separated 5th degree.

Sorry about that, I was slipping in my thinking, combining, wrongly, 5th of 5th, and Neapolitan, etc etc on pre-Dominant chords. The topic was something along the lines of what do the different modes produce in our "ears" today. The point I was trying to make was that like all humans we have had musical experiences which would make it impossible to have the same impression on us today as it did between 600 and 1200 AD. Polyphony didn't come about for quite some time and when it did it changed out "ears."
The origins of written music were so that the songs, melodies, (which is what all of these notes boil down to) were to insure they did not change, especially when new religious houses where formed. Singing badly/wrong could lead to full prostration, so not changing the music was a big deal. But it did change.
The church modes increased over the years. The additional church modes over time came about by theory of the writers. If they thought difference modes had different sounds such as happy or serious we can only speculate. But we don't hear what they did. We have had the influence of polyphony for centuries now, eventually we have been exposed to all sorts of sounds, such as counterpoint to rock-opera, as well as experimental music.
At the beginning of today's notation there is indication of which mode.
When I was a member of the schola, most of the time in rushing in to practice I would be tired, hungry and sleep deprived (the 1st office of our day is 3:30 am) so in refreshing my memory or in learning what was to be sung the mode was a basic hint about what we were going to deal with. Our biggest problem was keeping the pitch up. Our intonation was out the door.
Some of the older members, who had entered while they were still teens, would like some chants over others. No one my around my age every talk about what they think of the modes, and some of us had been musically trained before we entered and others after they were solemn professed. Interestingly the music library, the one with headphones and fairly good sized record and CD collection, is only somewhat frequented (no telling what CD players the community have in their cells). But I've never heard anyone, members of the community, visiting religious (the guest house is popular among religious retreatants), or other members of the schola, that they had an opinion about this mode or that mode.
I do notice the community does get a little more full voiced when what we sing lands more toward a major key or a minor key. Compline is the most well attended of lay retreatants and they have the most exposure to modern music, and the office of compline tends to sound major or minor.
As an aside, I once experienced, in office, what made me think how polyphony came about. One of the brothers had dozed off and when he woke up he started singing a few notes behind. Spontaneous harmony! It was ignored.

Yes, there actually is. The various chant modes correspond to the four ancient humours/temperaments (choleric, sanguine, melancholic, and phlegmatic).

I put a fragment in google translator and made some corrections (excuse any errors or poor english):

Feeling is not passion (emotion) nor affection (volition, motion of the will), is an affective impression (affectus in Saint Bernard when operated by God in the soul), a single act that
involves the perception of beauty and its fruition, a synthesis between cognition and appetite in a single present act to reflective consciousness.

Feeling is loving knowledge and knowing love, an integration of the threefold division memory-intelligibility-inclination that reacts beautifully to beauty.

The feeling only occurs in the integration of the consciousness and in its degrees that are realized in the various types of memory as power of reflection:
1- the affectio imaginaria,
2- reminiscence, and
3 - spiritual memory in its degrees of spiritual participation (natural self-knowledge, and
the various degrees of supernatural self-knowledge).


The feeling of the beautiful can respond to a present beautiful object or be the beginning of the creation of something beautiful and may be related to the apprehension of the simpliciter Good or to the Good while injured and thus joins the feeling of the ugly (sensitive, spiritual or moral ugly ). There is also the possibility of the feeling not being fruitive and this does not imply ugliness of the contemplated but otherwise implies a relative imperfection of the beholder (here is the disorder of who contemplates acting or the supreme perfection of beauty that can be terrifying and amazing).

There are several types of feeling and it is possible that a degree of feeling by reflux
affect another. It is possible that the feeling of the sensitive beauty with intensity leads to feeling of the spiritual beauty and to the contemplation of the truth and it is possible that the spiritual carries delight to the lower powers generating feelings.

Disordered feelings are also possible that are dangerous because of the link of feeling with the deep impression on the soul. It is possible that feelings are contaminated by excess of passion or disordered volition and then more than access to the beauty become obscure egocentric vertigo. The beauty is reduced to the good and to the good persecuted in a disorderly way and in a very small degree that many times it is nothing more than vegetative or impression of the senses. It is in this degradation that
appear works of "art" that are not worthy of that name and that do not go beyond satisfaction of the most basic needs related to the instincts of reproduction and
nutrition.

The feeling implies a knowledge by conaturality, an intimate knowledge of that who loves by union with the beloved and thus in mystical spiritual feelings there is a knowledge of God by participation in his life derived from love in a high degree. At the case of the apprehension of human and divine works of art, there is also the possibility of this knowledge fruit of love, the possibility of a feeling and an experience touching an another.

Langlais - Huit pieces modales
Each has a decidedly different 'effect'.
I happen to be playing no. 3, mode de mi, as a before-mass voluntary at Walsingham for this Saturday's vigil mass.

Langlais is like Brahms - everything he wrote is good
(and not [like Brahms] because he was effected by a mood and destroyed everything that wasn't).

Also, I have relied on the psychological theories of the Christian mystics, especially on how the soul is affected by the Holy Spirit.

Lincoln_Hein, the excerpt you provided has some intriguing insights, despite (or maybe because of?) the translation. These phrases are particularly memorable:

Feeling is loving knowledge and knowing love, an integration of the threefold division memory-intelligibility-inclination that reacts beautifully to beauty.

It is possible that feelings are contaminated by excess of passion or disordered volition and then more than access to the beauty become obscure egocentric vertigo


What did you come up with when you matched the eight modes with the eight gifts of the Holy Spirit and the four temperaments? I think you're really onto something there.

Liam, I've been working on your yummy ice cream test, and I'll venture a guess:

Vanilla (Mode 1)
Vanilla Chocolate Chip (Mode 5)
Chocolate (Mode 8)
Cookies and Cream (Mode 7)
Strawberry (Mode 3)
Coffee (Mode 6)
Butter Pecan (Mode 2)
Rocky Road (Mode 4)

As a personal rule of thumb, I find the even-numbered modes have more complexity and depth, while the odd-numbered modes offer smoother sailing. In that sense, Mode 4 is the bumpiest ride, speaking for myself.

I will find someone to translate the entire meditations from portuguese to english. A brief summary of the correspondences:

modes
1 The Holy Spirit as a gift authentic protus
2 Fear of the Lord protus plagal
3 Piety authentic deuterus
4 Knowledge deuterus plagal
5 Fortitude authentic tritus
6 Counsel tritus plagal
7 Understanding authentic tetrardus
8 Wisdom tetrardus plagal

primitive pentatonic modes
protus - systaltic melos depressing
deuterus - diastaltic melos - elevating
tritus - hesychastic melos - soothing
The combination of this 3 modes in the modulations of the 8 allow the interpretations of the correspondences of the 8 with the gifts.

authentic protus (1) is more Phlegmatic in the aspect of the
control of the passions and more Melancholic in the aspect of introspection.

protus plagal (2) is more Melancholic in the aspect of tendency to sadness.

deuterus is more Choleric but the plagal (5) has the effect of moderating the temperament (blends more with sanguine, melancholic and phlegmatic in the
intermediary cadences)

tritus is more Sanguine but the plagal (6) has the effect of moderating the temperament (blends more with choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic in the
intermediary cadences)

authentic tetrardus (7) is more Phlegmatic in the final cadences (sol) but blends with the choleric aspects of the melancholic temperament by the influence of si and the introspective melancholic aspects by the transposition of protus in pentatonic passages.

tetrardus plagal (8) is more Phlegmatic in the aspect of the peace of the soul

I don't think the modes have much effect. In their own day, perhaps they did. All of us have heard music that the Gregorian originators could never have imagined. Any effect from them would be exceedingly mild if it even exists at all.

To any who would offer the blanket assertion that affect relative to the different modes is non-existent, I would say 'speak for yourself, and don't project your insensitivities onto others'.

Yes, but...We are living in a culture that is decidedly not Catholic. Even the Catholics don't recognize Catholic culture any more. Much of the music and liturgy from before Vatican II is as foreign as something imported from Mars.

Yes, but... all musicians are not employed in a place where the priest has their backs. Sometimes the priest is part of the problem. For the musician who needs the money to support a family, it is a difficult situation, to be sure.

As for why this music 'is as foreign as something imported from Mars',

Forgetting for a moment the back-stabbing that Chant took following VatII, Chant would still be 'foreign' to Western sensibilities because, as MJO observes, it does not fall into the major/minor parameters of Western music, utilized since about 1700 AD. (Maybe earlier than that, but I'm not a research scholar.)

And that is a GOOD thing, when you think about it. The Mass itself is 'different,' too. While there are major/minor works that are 'sacred music,' using one-step-removed from our 21st-century sensibilities stuff like Chant reminds us that what really counts is not easily apprehended nor neatly categorized.

>> remains exiled simply because most priests and musicians are incompetent to teach it
I reflect, incompetent to teach it because they were not taught it... therefore how impressive that CMAA devotes part of its Colloquium to teaching the clergy who attend. Alleluia!

True. But in my experience, Chant was "it" at the school weekday Masses, but at the Sunday Cantata Masses, 4-part dominated.

That is what I remember, too.

.

This subject of the modes and the spirit they invoke has always intrigued me as a musician. I generally agree with the common concept of the "feeling" of the modes. It has been my opinion also that Church music should use the modes in the employment of her music. That is not to say that there is no place for works based on major and minor scales; there is a place/time for both.

Generally If I set a tune to something lighter and generally memorable I'll go to modes 5 and 6 for this reason. I set the Symbolum Athanasianum to mode 3 for the fact that this mode is very authoritative in its nature, perfect for declarative statements. I have seen articles that express mode 1 as "generally can be anything"; again mode 1 is not a sad, nor happy sound. Mode 2 has a little bit more of minor sound because it resembles A minor. Modes 7 & 8 generally seem lighter in their sentiment, more mystical like the Church's heavy use of mode 8 in the antiphons for the Easter Vigil services.

It is a commonplace that our modern major and minor modes are not limited to 'joyful' or 'sad' moods. Of course so it should be with our more ancient ones. For instance, who could mistake Beethoven's A-minor (No. 15?) quartet, or Mozart's 40th symphony for being anything other than ecstatically joyful? It is no different with the eight ecclesiastical modes.

@ghmus7

I may be mistaken, but I believe Bach's Art of Fugue was composed in the Aeolian mode (also called natural minor).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(music)#Aeolian_(VI)

The Dorian mode has a raised sixth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorian_mode

Well sdtalley, if someone invites me there, I will come.

Whether D-Dorian, or D-Minor, etc., is the mode-key of all the fugues it is notable that, still, they are not all of the same 'mood'.