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The Hypophrygian mode, literally meaning 'below Phrygian', is a musical mode or diatonic scale^{[citation needed]} of ancient Greece that was based upon the Phrygian tetrachord: a series of rising intervals of a whole tone, followed by a semitone, followed by another whole tone. The rising scale for the octave is a single tone followed by two conjoint Phrygian tetrachords. This is the same as playing all the white notes of a piano from B to B: B | C D E F | (F) G A B. Confusingly, this scale in medieval and modern music theory came to be known as the Locrian mode.

The medieval music scholars,^{[weasel words]} misunderstanding the Latin texts by Boethius of how the Greek modes were reckoned, used the term Hypophrygian to describe the fourth mode of church music. This mode is the plagal counterpart of the authentic third mode, which was called Phrygian. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance this mode was described in two ways: the diatonic scale from B to B an octave above, divided at the mode final E (B–C–D–E + E–F–G–A–B); and as a mode with final E and ambitus from the A below to the C above. The note A above the final (the tenor of the corresponding fourth psalm tone) had an important melodic function (Powers 2001, 38). The melodic range of the ecclesiastical Hypophrygian mode therefore goes from the perfect fourth or fifth below the tonic to the perfect fifth or minor sixth above.

[edit] References

• Powers, Harold S. 2001. "Hypophrygian". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, 29 vols., edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, 12:38–39. London: Macmillan Publishers; New York: Grove's Dictionaries of Music. ISBN 9781561592395

[edit] Further reading

• Gissel, Siegfried. 1991. "Die Modi Phrygius, Hypophrygius und Phrygius connexus: Ein Beitrag zu den 'in mi' Tonarten um 1600". Musica Disciplina 45:5–94. ISSN 0077-2461
• Tilton, Mary C. 1989. "The Influence of Psalm Tone and Mode on the Structure of the Phrygian Toccatas of Claudio Merulo". Theoria 4:106–22. ISSN 0040-5817