Phrygian mode

American  

noun

Music.

1. an authentic church mode represented on the white keys of a keyboard instrument by an ascending scale from E to E.

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Etymology

Origin of Phrygian mode

First recorded in 1800–10

Example Sentences

Recurring throughout is an ascending phrase in the Phrygian mode – a scale Vaughan Williams detected repeatedly in English folk music.

From The Guardian • Jun. 11, 2010

But despite its hints at the shift from modes to keys, Miserere mei is still framed within the medieval Phrygian mode, often noted for its air of melancholy.

From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall

There were flutes of the Doric and of the Phrygian mode, and--let us forget not--the Tyrrhenian trumpet, with its brazen-cleft pavilion.

From A Love Story by A Bushman

Athenaeus quotes the same passage from Theophrastus, with this additional circumstance, that, as to the second of these disorders, to render the cure more certain, the flute should play in the Phrygian mode.

From Thaumaturgia by Oxonian, An

Bach's well-known choral, O Sacred Head now wounded also begins in the Phrygian mode, e.g.

From Music: An Art and a Language by Spalding, Walter Raymond