Music/Scale/Phrygian

• Phrygian Mode

  • Also called the deuterus authentic mode or Mode 3. On C: C D♭ E♭ F G A♭ B♭. Steps in semitones: 1 2 2 2 1 2 2. The third mode of Music/Scale/Major.

  • History

    • The ancient Greek Phrygian octave species ran from D to D, the collection now called Dorian. The medieval name shifted with the rest of the Greek names; see Music/Scale/Dorian.
    • In chant and polyphony the E mode was hard to cadence in, because no leading tone rises to the final. Renaissance cadences in the E mode pair F–E in the bass with D–E above it. Heard from A minor, the result sounds like a half cadence.
    • That cadence outlived the mode. The Baroque "Phrygian half cadence", iv6–V in minor, uses the same half-step bass descent to the dominant. The two-chord Adagio of Person/Johann Sebastian Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 is one.

  • Use

    • Flamenco's characteristic sound is usually Phrygian with a major tonic, close to the fifth mode of Music/Scale/Minor/Harmonic, over the Andalusian cadence i–♭VII–♭VI–V.
    • Heavy metal leans on the ♭2 for darkness, often as a riff that alternates the tonic with ♭II.
    • In jazz chord-scale theory it fits a minor seventh chord functioning as iii, and the sus4♭9 chord voiced over it.
    • Carnatic music's Hanumatodi, melakarta 8, is this collection. See Music/Scale/Todi for the different Hindustani Todi.

  • Quirks

    • It is the inversion of the major scale: the major step pattern read downward from the tonic gives Phrygian.
    • Phrygian and Locrian are the only diatonic modes with a ♭2. The ♭II triad sits a half step above a minor tonic, the relation the Neapolitan chord borrows in common-practice minor.
    • The tonic has no dominant: the triad on 5 is diminished (G B♭ D♭).