Does Always the Phrygian Mode Elicit Responses of Negative Valence?

In this paper the question of whether the Phrygian mode is always associated with perceived emotional responses of negative valence is looked into. To this end, we carried out a series of experiments. Music from twomusical traditions where the Phrygian mode is very common, flamenco and Galician music, were chosen for listening tests. Our subjects were 124 children of age 4-7. Some subjects were complete unfamiliar with both traditions and some were familiar with the Galician tradition; none was familiar with flamenco music. Results showed that the perceived emotion was in all cases of positive valence, flamenco music having less valence than Galician music.