Musical mode in the context of "Olivier Messiaen"

An order in architecture is a certain assemblage of parts subject to uniform established proportions, regulated by the office that each part has to perform.Coming down to the present from Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman civilization, the architectural orders are the styles of classical architecture, each distinguished by its proportions and characteristic profiles and details, and most readily recognizable by the type of column employed. The three orders of architecture—the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian—originated in Greece. To these the Romans added, in practice if not in name, the Tuscan, which they made simpler than Doric, and the Composite, which was more ornamental than the Corinthian. The architectural order of a classical building is akin to the mode or key of classical music; the grammar or rhetoric of a written composition. It is established by certain modules like the intervals of music, and it raises certain expectations in an audience attuned to its language.

Whereas the orders were essentially structural in Ancient Greek architecture, which made little use of the arch until its late period, in Roman architecture where the arch was often dominant, the orders became increasingly decorative elements except in porticos and similar uses. Columns shrank into half-columns emerging from walls or turned into pilasters. This treatment continued after the conscious and "correct" use of the orders, initially following exclusively Roman models, returned in the Italian Renaissance. Greek Revival architecture, inspired by increasing knowledge of Greek originals, returned to more authentic models, including ones from relatively early periods.

A raga (/ˈrɑːɡə/ RAH-gə; IAST: rāga, Sanskrit: [ɾäːɡɐ]; lit. 'colouring', 'tingeing' or 'dyeing') is a melodic framework for improvisation in Indian classical music akin to a melodic mode. It is central to classical South Asian (Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi) music. Each raga consists of an array of melodic structures with musical motifs; and, from the perspective of the Indian tradition, the resulting music has the ability to "colour the mind" as it engages the emotions of the audience.

Each raga provides the musician with a musical framework within which to improvise. Improvisation by the musician involves creating sequences of notes allowed by the raga in keeping with rules specific to the raga. Ragas range from small ragas like Bahar and Sahana that are not much more than songs to big ragas like Malkauns, Darbari and Yaman, which have great scope for improvisation and for which performances can last over an hour. Ragas may change over time, with an example being Marwa, the primary development of which has been going down into the lower octave, in contrast with the traditional middle octave. Each raga traditionally has an emotional significance and symbolic associations such as with season, time and mood. Ragas are considered a means in the Indian musical tradition for evoking specific feelings in listeners. Hundreds of ragas are recognized in the classical tradition, of which about 30 are common, and each raga has its "own unique melodic personality".

In medieval music, ambitus (Ecclesiastical Latin: ['am.bi.t̪us]) is a Latin term literally meaning enclos[ur]e, and in Medieval Latin means the "range" of a melodic line, most usually referring to the range of scale degrees attributed to a given mode, particularly in Gregorian chant. In Gregorian chant specifically, the ambitus is the range, or the distance between the highest and lowest note. Different chants vary widely in their ambitus. Even relatively florid chants like Alleluias may have a narrow ambitus. Earlier writers termed the modal ambitus "perfect" when it was a ninth or tenth (that is, an octave plus one or two notes, either at the top or bottom or both), but from the late fifteenth century onward "perfect ambitus" usually meant one octave, and the ambitus was called "imperfect" when it was less, and "pluperfect" when it was more than an octave.

All of the church modes are distinguished in part by their ambitus. The plagal modes have the final in the middle of the ambitus, while the authentic modes generally go no more than one note below the final.

A borrowed chord (also called mode mixture, modal mixture, substituted chord, modal interchange, or mutation) is a chord borrowed from the parallel key (minor or major scale with the same tonic). Borrowed chords are typically used as "color chords", providing harmonic variety through contrasting scale forms, which are major scales and the three forms of minor scales. Chords may also be borrowed from other parallel modes besides the major and minor mode, for example D Dorian with D major. The mixing of the major and minor modes developed in the Baroque period.

Borrowed chords are distinguished from modulation by being brief enough that the tonic is not lost or displaced, and may be considered brief or transitory modulations and may be distinguished from secondary chords as well as altered chords. According to Sheila Romeo, "[t]he borrowed chord suggests the sound of its own mode without actually switching to that mode."

The book Octoechos (from the Greek: ἡ [βίβλος] Ὀκτώηχος Ancient Greek pronunciation: [okˈtoixos]; from ὀκτώ 'eight' and ἦχος 'sound, mode' called echos; Church Slavonic: Осмѡгласникъ, Osmoglasnik from о́смь 'eight' and гласъ 'voice, sound') is a liturgical book containing a repertoire of hymns ordered in eight parts according to eight echoi (tones or modes). Originally created in the Monastery of Stoudios during the 9th century as a hymnal complete with musical notation, it is still used in many rites of Eastern Christianity. The book with similar function in the Western Church is the tonary, and both contain the melodic models of an octoechos system; however, while the tonary serves simply for a modal classification, the octoechos is organized as a cycle of eight weeks of services. The word itself can also refer to the repertoire of hymns sung during the celebrations of the Sunday Office.

Modes of limited transposition are musical modes or scales that fulfill specific criteria relating to their symmetry and the repetition of their interval groups. These scales may be transposed to all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, but at least two of these transpositions must result in the same pitch classes, thus their transpositions are "limited". They were compiled by the French composer Olivier Messiaen, and published in his book La technique de mon langage musical ("The Technique of my Musical Language").