Ancient mode

The Ancient mode is a synthetic scale constructed and used by composer Djuro Zivkovic in his compositions since 2004. The first example is found in his Sophisticated Prelude No.1 for piano solo. Because of its vibrating, colourful sound, and the way how Zivkovic developed it in his music, he has named it "the ancient".
Construction
The mode is build around the central tone, thus creating a "mirroring" scale:
Ancient Mode
The mode is similar to second mode, however the ancient mode has nine tones, with dense half steps around the central tone. The central tone is not 'finalis', neither the tonic, it is just constructed in that particular way.
The mode can be transposed 12 times. It is possible to use the tonal harmonic principles for modulation, such as diatonic, chromatic or enharmonic modulation between these modes. The far-most modulation can be achieved in the distance of major third (E - Ab - C).
Quality
The ancient mode has extremely diverse chordal possibilities. It includes a multitude of tonal associations and can create clusters, minor and major chords, pentatonic scale, diminished and augmented chords, and near-to complete the major and minor scale. Comparing to all modes that can be made using by combining 7 or 8 or 9 tones within the frame of octave (all their possible combinations), the ancient mode has the lowest difference-tone integrity.
The difference-tone integrity means that the ancient mode produces many difference-tones outside itself; we could also say that this is phenomenological richness in reference. The highest difference-tone integrity has Messiaen's third mode, which is the opposite attitude: it refers strongly to itself. Within 8 tone scales Messiaen second also has low the difference-tone integrity. Investigating scale classes with 7 tones shows that major and (it's related) has the highest difference-tone integrity, which is opposite to the ancient mode. Thus, the lowest difference-tone integrity of the ancient mode may be the reason of its vibrating sound.
Ancient mode in Zivkovic's music
Zivkovic has developed a highly advanced techniques within the frame of the Ancient mode (further AM), with several striking constrains. These constrains include:
* chromatic ancient mode
* note movement
* chord building
* scale filtering
Chromatic ancient mode
Instead of using the plain, diatonic mode with 9 tones, Zivkovic has constructed several “chromatic” AMs by utilising the scale layering technique. The main principle consists of using the full chromatic scale as a starting point which is passed through the AM, by applying the filtering technique. In that way, the full chromatic scale, with all tempered tones are at disposal and are used to construct the chromatic AM. The tones from chromatic scale which are not found in the AM are replaced with additional tones, by repetition in the Basic construction:
However, Zivkovic prefers two flavours of the chromatic AM, so called Major and Minor AM:

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