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A scale pattern, such as the Dorian or the major, that gives a piece its pitch material.
Choosing a mode chooses a colour: Dorian’s raised sixth brightens a minor sound, Phrygian’s lowered second darkens it, Lydian’s raised fourth floats, Mixolydian’s lowered seventh sounds folk-like. To make a mode audible, keep its characteristic degree prominent and avoid the leading-tone cadence that would pull the music back into major or minor. From Debussy and Vaughan Williams onward, composers use modes for colour rather than as a closed system.
Mode is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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