source file: mills2.txt Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 10:41:42 +0200 Subject: JI modes From: Daniel Wolf Gordon Collins wrote: ''But the church modes have not been *used* in all that time, either as a basis for theory or as a basis for practical music.'' - a remark which I cannot follow at all, unless one wishes to limit ''music theory'' and ''practical music'' to what what happened in art music in German-speaking countries (and even there (here, I should say)), there is plenty of ''modal'' music to be found in both ''composed'' and folk traditions. Even if you intend to limit the definition of the church modes to their treatment under species counterpoint, then you must account for the fact that composing in various modes has been a continuous and central part of musical training in the western classical tradition. That said, I believe it is worthwhile to discuss what aspects of modal theory are indeed useful for a musical training in which a wider variety of pitch relations are to be included. From my personal experience, I find it more efficient for a beginner to concentrate on mastering (singing, dictating, and tuning up) _intervals_, and then contructing collections of pitches (among them tetrachords, hexachords, and proper scales) and only then locating modes within the collections. I find too often that young musicians focus on ''scales'' which are simply not directly relevant to a lot of real musics. Most music that I know tends to focus locally on collections smaller than scales (something I learned first by listening to Stravinsky and Sibelius, but then reconfirmed in my ethnological work), and music that makes even the most simple modulations will soon depart from the limits of a single scale. (One caveat to the above: if the student is interested in learning a music based upon a fixed drone pitch (as in Karnatic or Hindustani musics), then one begins directly with the modes as fixed melodic types, each with fixed ornamentation, and the abstract study of intervals is less relevant.) In the west, the modal traditions are defined rather more coarsly than on the Indian subcontinent, and modal melodic types are not fixed to particular ornaments nor may they be assigned single intonations. Indeed, the modes - like the genera of the classical tetrachords - are broadly defined and invariant to specific tunings; and in polyphgonic settings may indeed require a larger number of exact pitches. Perhaps it is most efficient to retain a definition of the modes in terms of ''whole steps'' and ''half steps''? From my experience it is centainly sufficient to limit the practice to the four most common modes (dorian, phrygian, lydian, and mixolydian), to focus on the tetrachords and hexachords from which they are built, and precisely tuning the intervals within these smaller units. This kind of practice should then also be sufficient for tonal repertoire as well (by recombining the tetra- or hexachords). Daniel Wolf Frankfurt DR DANIEL WOLF / MATERIAL PRESS / FRANKFURT AM MAIN http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/DJWOLF_MATERIAL Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 20 May 1997 16:03 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA06130; Tue, 20 May 1997 16:03:28 +0200 Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 16:03:28 +0200 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA06128 Received: (qmail 216 invoked from network); 20 May 1997 14:03:18 -0000 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 20 May 1997 14:03:18 -0000 Message-Id: <97051922242521/0005695065PK5EM@mcimail.com> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu