Timeline for In what way is music considered to be in a mode when accidentals seemingly contradict the mode?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Oct 15, 2020 at 14:11 | vote | accept | Michael Curtis | ||
| Jan 15, 2020 at 23:05 | comment | added | Michael Curtis | I recently printed up a large collection of IMSLP scores for early music - Machaut, du Fay, etc. - so I can study this music from the sources. Your explanation will really help. I needed to dispel these modern misunderstandings, and I don't have the benefit of being in a college course. I found a copy of Judd's dissertation about the ut re mi tonalities, thanks again! | |
| Jan 15, 2020 at 22:50 | comment | added | Athanasius | @MichaelCurtis: You've just happened upon what theorist Cristle Collins Judd calls the "ut-re-mi" tonalities, which she says are a way of thinking about how "mode" actually worked in polyphony in the late renaissance. The "ut" tonalities are sort of majorish, the "re" tonalities are sort of minorish, and the "mi" is Phrygian, which gradually died out. | |
| Jan 15, 2020 at 22:48 | comment | added | Athanasius | @MichaelCurtis: Yes, I'd agree with that analogy. I'd also note that the original 8-mode system was imposed on a pre-existing oral tradition of chant melodies, which likely had more chromatic inflections that couldn't be represented in the scale inherited from the Greeks (and used for the first notation systems). "Lydian" is a distillation of what was originally thought of as the "tritus" (third) tone, which collected chants having a semitone below the final and a couple whole steps above the final. | |
| Jan 15, 2020 at 22:48 | comment | added | Michael Curtis | When reading the google book page, I thought variable ^6 plus raised leading tone in Dorian, basically amounts to modern minor, and variable ^4 in Lydian amounts to modern major, that leaves Phrygian as unique and easy to identify with lowered ^2. I don't want to over simplify, but if this is more or less correct, it explains why classifying polyphony into modes doesn't really make sense. | |
| Jan 15, 2020 at 22:36 | comment | added | Michael Curtis |
Perhaps this is a bad analogy, but the flexibility of B in the modes reminds me of ^6 and ^7 in minor key. Just as there are not separate harmonic, melodic and natural minor keys, but rather variable ^6 and ^7 degrees, Lydian is not defined by a #4, but a variable fourth degree. Does this seem like I'm on the right track?
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| Jan 15, 2020 at 22:35 | comment | added | Athanasius | @MichaelCurtis: Happy to help. The ultimate problem is that things changed a lot from century to century and decade to decade. Textbooks try to sum up centuries of varying historical practice with a few terms and table of modes, but that only scratches the surface. | |
| Jan 15, 2020 at 22:28 | comment | added | Michael Curtis | This answer, plus this from another SE question books.google.com/books?id=7IP0Jo9Dr9QC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA10, I think are helping to clear up my confusion. | |
| Jan 15, 2020 at 22:19 | history | answered | Athanasius | CC BY-SA 4.0 |