Mode is not octave species. What secular mediƦval songs use a reciting tone? Cait Webb once pointed out on her blog that for many instrumentalists Mode I (later "dorian") just didn't fit, despite being by far the commonest one - the range of many instruments bottomed out at the tonic so the standard final cadential pattern, passing through the subtonic, was physically impossible. The result must have sounded to a contemporary ear as odd as Highland pipes trying to play a normal tonal melody.
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