Plato approved of only two musical modes, along with the dancing they inspired.  They were the phrygian ("War-like and nerving") and the dorian ("sobering and tempering").  He regarded the lydian as "relaxing sweet," and therefore to be forbidden, being among the modes that tended to produce mixed pleasures and to loosen the bonds of the human soul.

Today, quite the opposite response is more often the case.  "Dissonant" or some other term to express "odd," is the reaction regularly heard from among western moderns when hearing the lydian.  It is easy to see how conditioning and expectation account for most opinion and sensibility.

The modern ability to easily juxtapose lydian in with other scales and modes (a thing Plato would definitely frown upon) gives greater scope for its effect.

Threnody puts the lydian in with an equal number of standard, mostly suspended, scaletone chords, nearly relieved at two points by dominant seventh chords, only one of which resolves normally, and that to a minor that quickly shifts to a minor with a major 7th.  The effect of Threnody is that of nearly constant suspension, a tension in keeping with its title.

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