source file: mills2.txt Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 21:53:36 +0200 Subject: modes From: Daniel Wolf Gordon Collins wrote: ''Daniel Wolf sees modes in certain patterns of harmonization. '' This is not so. Rather: I hear particular patterns of harmonization as a consequence of melodic modes. As Bill Alves says, Major and minor are modes of the common diatonic collection just as well as any others. Their historical prominence in the common practice era - as opposed to the prominence of other modes in other eras - is attributable to the particular suitability of the intervallic arrangement to harmonizations which can project the first degree of the major scale as a tonic over the duration of a piece. This is a fairly Schekerian statement, but as I noted in earlierpostings, I am also quite open to simultaneous interpretations of a work where local melodic behavior is suggestive of other modes - a ''Raga Malaka'' interpretation. Please note that my definition here is based upon major to allow for the characteristic ambiguity of the minor, which pivots between its own distinctive modal identity and one based upon the parallel major scale with chromatic modifications. The difficulty represented by this misunderstanding is similar to the problem that mid-Rennaisance theorists in had dealing with the definitionof modes when not all voices in a polyphonic setting started or ended on the final of the mode. Just because the thickened texture allowed for chords with more pitches, doesn't mean that a piece whose bass is in d dorian will have an alto in f lydian when the alto starts and ends on f. A close study of that alto voice will probably reveal motion that is uncharacteristic of a lydian melody. Counterpoint did indeed change the modes, but the distinctiveness of the modes was determinative in how actually counterpoint functioned. In the common practice era, the rise of Major and minor corresponded generally with the substitution of transposition for modulation (in the sense of changing the melodic mode) as a means of generating tonal variety over the duration of a piece, with the melodic contrast between minor andMajor leading to two distinct ways of coloring harmonic progressions thatwere functionally identical. This was accompanied by a general change in the texture, towards a more homophonic arrangement of the voices, or rather one in which the inner voices were decidedly subservient to the outer. The striking cross relationships in Bach chorale harmonizations are one example of this. The net result is that although the material resources of these modes at the local level of a piece were not substantially different fromthose of earlier musics, the experience was quite distinct. What, however, does this have directly do with tuning? I am afraid that the more I ponder the music of the common practice era, the closer I come to concluding that ''tonal music'' was composed with increasing disregard for precise tuning. And the increasingly indistinct tuning was used to represent or imply an increasingly broad harmonic language with unlimitedtransposition. Twelve tone and serial musics may even be worse off; a good friend of mine recalls visting the studios of many composers in the fifties - Boulez, Stockhausen, Nono among them - and all of them had out-of-tune pianos. The first broadcast of the complete _Lulu_ featured intermissionswith George Perle playing analytical examples on an instrument where almost every pitch had vibrato due to mistuned strings. In contrast, older musicis terribly sensitive to tuning. Simply playing dorian as d to d' on a just major C scale won't work due to the comma shy fifth d - a; in pythagoreanthe opposite is often the case due to the ditone above the tonic, resolution to which is demanded by the diminished fifth b - f. (A discussion of the benefits and disadvantages of out-of-tuneness might be worthwhile for this list...). As to the general question of the survival of other modes in the tonal era: Sibelius's _Seventh_, or any of Debussy's lydian works should be sufficient - if late - counter-examples to the thesis that modal writing just stopped. I wish to acknowlege that Harry Powers - author of the New Grove article on ''Mode and Melodic Type'' - greatly influenced my thinking on these issues during his guest professorship at my graduate school. My definition of key does differ from his but does so by going to a fairly radical reduction (a group of seven consecutive members from a chain of fifths, with chromaticsubstitutions in the minor borrowed from the parallel Major). I find thisdefinition will be true for a wider repertoire than that defined in Groveand also one that is closer to the practices of notating and keyboarding,which are certainly signs and symptoms of the conceptual framework underlying the system. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 30 May 1997 21:56 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA05200; Fri, 30 May 1997 21:56:04 +0200 Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 21:56:04 +0200 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA05202 Received: (qmail 636 invoked from network); 30 May 1997 18:49:24 -0000 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 30 May 1997 18:49:24 -0000 Message-Id: <199705301437_MC2-178E-6CF2@compuserve.com> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu