Aeolian mode

Aeolian mode, in Western music, the melodic mode with a pitch series corresponding to that of the natural minor scale. The Aeolian mode was named and described by the Swiss humanist Henricus Glareanus in his music treatise Dodecachordon (1547). In that work Glareanus expanded the standing system of eight church modes—which had prevailed since the 9th century—to accommodate the increasingly common major and minor modes as well as the growing importance of harmony as a...