Modal Harmony vid series

[jancivil]

its all just whole tones and leading tones though. thats what modes are...same with scales. all that matters is the intervals. not who decides to name them, or what is fashionable.

You don't know what a mode is. It's just a scale to you. There aren't leading tones in modes, for example.
The treatment of intervals in 'major' is different than it is in modes. The reason Bilaval Thaat exists in ICM is for a certain mood/feel, soundworld. It has a name, its children have names to identify them by. You don't get to obliterate that!* It's never a major scale. The intervals and what we do with them are what matters, which is precisely why there's a distinction.

Knowing from the intervals is clearly not so important to you, like seeming to know all about it is. That's the whole problem, this is why people are dissing you. There's a lot to understand that you just don't but you have to make a stand that you do: 'It's all the same intervals so that's all I need.'. You don't warrant respect at this point and all this crap you talk has alienated me totally. And at this point your *argumentation is contemptuous and terrifically arrogant; so why wouldn't people feel contempt for you finally?

[nineofkings]

While I'm not really allergic to the idea of "modal harmony" for pure convenience, I have to agree with Jan here. Modes and scales are not the same just because their intervals are the same, just like Santa and Satan aren't the same because their letters are the same.

The intent behind them, and the way that they are used, and therefore the sound that results, is completely different.

C major is NOT E phrygian, period. Even without leaving the comfy paradigm of Western pop music, here's an exercise for you. Try taking any blues song with a "Mixolydian-based" melody, or any psych rock song with a "Dorian-based" melody, and reharmonize it in its equivalent major key. The intervals are all the same, right? But the resulting sound is completely, often unsettlingly different. Music is inseparable from culture; intent matters. Intervals are just intervals.

[JumpingJackFlash]

and then there is the actual topic of modes. and how modes work. and how harmony works with modes. and i am the only one who is talking about that.

I've lost track of where we are with this now, there is a lot of irrelevance here and descending into an ego war would seem to serve little purpose.

Perhaps it might be helpful to look at some basic points about the ecclesiastical modes compared with later tonality:

The medieval modes were initially developed as a means of classifying ‘Gregorian’ chant.

Mode is a melodic concept; it relates primarily to monophonic music. Even when the system was (much later and not without difficulties) adapted to polyphonic music, it was conceived as a product of individual lines. Tonality however is a harmonic concept; harmony is a fundament part of the key system (even if only implied) and the “key” relates to the music as a single whole.

Keys have an intrinsic hierarchy of pitches which is absent from modes. With keys, there is a clear and characteristic relationship between dominant and tonic (indeed, the Schenkerian school of thought says that all tonal music can ultimately reduced to a basic I-V-I progression; not so with modal music). Modal melodies on the other hand might just as easily stress the fourth and/or sixth degrees.

Modes can be transposed to start on a different note and yet still be the same mode. Whereas if you transpose a key, it becomes another key.

Modes were traditionally conceived as consisting of a species of fourth (diatessaron) and a species of fifth (diapente), whereas keys represent a particular arrangement of tones and semitones.


I might write more later, but that should provoke enough reaction to at least get back to the topic at hand, even if the polemics continue.

[harryupbabble]

, just like Santa and Satan aren't the same because their letters are the same.

Are you sure? Kidding.

[jancivil]

and then there is the actual topic of modes. and how modes work. and how harmony works with modes. and i am the only one who is talking about that.

I've lost track of where we are with this now...

Nowhere.

I mean zethus the only one talkin about "how harmony works with modes"

Mode is a melodic concept; it relates primarily to monophonic music. Even when the system was (much later and not without difficulties) adapted to polyphonic music, it was conceived as a product of individual lines. Tonality however is a harmonic concept; harmony is a fundament part of the key system (even if only implied) and the “key” relates to the music as a single whole.

Keys have an intrinsic hierarchy of pitches which is absent from modes. With keys, there is a clear and characteristic relationship between dominant and tonic (indeed, the Schenkerian school of thought says that all tonal music can ultimately reduced to a basic I-V-I progression; not so with modal music). Modal melodies on the other hand might just as easily stress the fourth and/or sixth degrees.

Modes can be transposed to start on a different note and yet still be the same mode. Whereas if you transpose a key, it becomes another key.

Modes were traditionally conceived as consisting of a species of fourth (diatessaron) and a species of fifth (diapente), whereas keys represent a particular arrangement of tones and semitones.

I might write more later, but that should provoke enough reaction to at least get back to the topic at hand, even if the polemics continue.

That's a very good summation.

"how harmony works with modes"...
There is how harmony doesn't work with modes, and that's when this hierarchy takes over and kills the mode. Earlier Musicologo mentioned this hierarchy, here elucidated as a feature of keys, of tonality.
I have called tonality 'the major/minor harmonic paradigm' & 'the dominant/tonic functional paradigm'. So we don't want V7-I to kill the mode.

Musicologo asserted that the hierarchy would prevail if you employed harmony at all, but I said that works when you have capital H Harmony as your definition rather than a general, you harmonized this with that meaning.

I thought of the McCartney bridge to You Never Give Me Your Number first in regards to that assumption.
He does I V iii vi IV I, which seems tonal but does not engage the dominant/tonic engine; but then he does bVII IV I, which is where we get out of Common Practice Period-type completely.

SO: some people will call G D A {bVII IV I} 'A Mixolydian'. Is that necessarily wrong?

I was always a modal player for solos. <A Mixolydian> is quite supported by an A to G vamp. Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar, Inca Roads, D C vamp, D Mixolydian. I already said all this I thought.

But anyway, this is what I know - not just information - modes and chords is best handled with 2, MAYBE 3 chords. I bVII IV I seems like a grey area. Is the melody "but OH that magic feeling, nowhere to go" modal? Maybe not, but I wouldn't call it tonal, certainly.

Another is i IV, Dorian. Carlos Santana Secret Chord Progression.
With this, I say we'll have quite sussed 'modal harmony'.

[zethus909]

[quote
I mean zethus the only one talkin about "how harmony works with modes"
[quote="J]
yea, but i am only talking about it, because thats what the thread title is, and that is what you all were arguing about before i chose to enter into this argument(thats what it was, it was an argument that you all were having, BEFORE i even entered the thread)(go back and see my first post in this thread).

Instead of arguing about whether "modal harmony" is taxonomicallty correct. I am attempting to use the ideas that the OP is putting forth in a practical real sense. I am not worried about whether the "nomencalture" of all of it is correct, i am attacking it from a functional perspective. I am destroying all the artifical artifices that are put up by the convention of "Music Theory"...and discussing "MUSIC". the SOUND, of music. and how music works. not how people tell me that music is SUPPOSED to work. but how the SOUND of music works. the SOUND of music, does NOT require THEORY, for it to be SOUND. from this point, I am just gathering that the way I am approaching this , and the way that i like to approach music theory is maybe a bit atmospheric. because it relies on your primal intuitive understanding and familiarity with the actual SOUND of music, and not, the THEORY, of how music is SUPPOSED to sound.

Or let me put it this way: I dont care if the way i speak about music and the "theory of music" SOUNDS incorrect on the surface. I know it SOUNDS(reads) incorrect. THis is where you are purposely causing a storm. I know it is incorrect on the surface, but I choose to discard that issue in favor of a more RAW perspective on the actual SOUND of music. Because I feel, that that is far more helpful, to ALL who are reading, as they continue their quests. I choose not to put up this artificial edifice of ESTABLISHED principles, as some sort of roadblock to "knowing" music. The true underlying principle themselves will shine through, regardless of what language is used. Music does not NEED language to operate. How many times do I need to reiterate this.

Modes and scales are not the same just because their intervals are the same

clearly, you are not reading what I am saying, I KNOW...that modes are not the same as scales. they are completely different functionally from a theoretical, subjective perspective. I've repeated like 5 times now, that these are abstractions, a "mode" is an abstraction, a "scale" is an abstraction...these are abstractions that ONLY exist withing the mind of an "intelligent" being.

You can have a thousand different abstractions that all describe the exact SAME reality. I am concerned with REALITY. The REALITY of music, what is the REALITY? It is space and non-space. The SPACE is "that which is in BETWEEN two TONES". The space is "the interval (distance) between tones". The TONE is end point that signifies where one interval STOPS, and the next one STARTS. This is the reality that we are describing, at its most primitive.

Thus, the INTERVAL, is the very fabric of music. The interval implies both a start point, and end point, and distance/length. This has been the same since Ancient Greece, and probably millions of years before that, whenever ,modern humans first became what they are. Jan yo uwant to call me a nihilist, I am no. I am a "reductionist" if anything. Why? Because I dont care about any of the "in between" that happened from 1000 0000 years ago until today. I only care about the reality of music. That reality has not changed. Gravity and other forces were basically the same then as they are today. Our breathable atmosphere, is what allows for there to BE audible sound. THere is no sound in outer space.

Rather than (in this act of complete futility) arguing semantics and who knows the history of music, and (musicology), I choose to attack functional aspects of music, I honestly could care less if the piano was not always what it is today, it could have resembled a saxophone 300 years for all i know, but i am not making music, or working with music 300 years ago. I am making today, like literally today, this very second. I am listening to this
Jean Richafort. Requiem in memoriam Josquin Desprez

This is something I heard on the radio again, two days ago, it is i THINK actually, MAYBE, even pertinent to this thread, a peculiar occurence, but useful none the less. This is chanting, requiem, and i am ignorant on the history of music, and so I truly have no clue when this chanting was originally written or what "period" of music theory this was written in, but I like it. And I like my ignorance to everything that is NOT related to what the music actually sounds like. I have zero inculcations super imposed on me of HOW this is music is SUPPOSED to sound like, BECAUSE of what subjective schematic the original writer of it was under the influence of when they wrote it. Music like this is so much more than the intervals anyway. It is about dynamics, and layering. As I said I am ignorant to the apparent theory someone was using to write this. Or whether they were even using theory to write it. And I am not evern sure if i could trust anyone who tells me how the writer wrote it because they were NOT there with the person at the time.

While I would welcome some surface level explanation as to what types of modal influences were being used to write this song, I do not view any theoretically relevant info as anything more than an EXPLANATION. But this is... (it is modal, and it is harmonious) Clearly, it is like multiple monophonic lines that overlap, which creates passing harmonies.

I have not analyzed this music, I just heard it for the first time two days ago. BUt it is modal, there is no "unnatural" notes, and it's using some lydian, aeolian and dorian. It uses the b7 cadences.(actually there are a couple non-MODAL notes here and there but very seldom) (maybe the singer screwed up who knows) (at 2:10 you can hear it it sounds like the singer screwed up to me actually ) It is VIRTUOUS, sounding, and I see how/and why Plato, like I showed int that other thread, believed Ionian to sound drunken or vulgar. I dont even like to say that, because again, any type of human subjective emotion that isbeing placed ONTO the REALITY of sound, is an abstraction. Regardless of how it "feels" inside this human body, to hear these cadences, and resolutions.

But these cadences and resolutions EXIST, whether WE exist or not. The intervals exist FOR us to discover, WE do NOT create the intervals, or the cadences. They are embededded within our reality, as timeless as the moon or the oceans. They will be here thousands of years into the future, and millions of years into the future whether anyhone is around in our solar system to manipulate them or not. Whether anyone is around to "label" a certain arbritiray "patterning" of space and non-space as a "culturally -accepted" pattern or not.

I can only speak for our solar system, where the laws of nature (and the intelligent civilizations who are "allowed" to come forth into similar atmospheric conditions as we are) experience "sound" as it manifests itself here.

Way out there, and/or far into the past or future, I am not sure how geometry or nature acts, or into other dimensional realities i guess, that we are completely incapable of imagining.

Mode is a melodic concept; it relates primarily to monophonic music

yes.

The medieval modes were initially developed as a means of classifying ‘Gregorian’ chant.

Mode is a melodic concept; it relates primarily to monophonic music. Even when the system was (much later and not without difficulties) adapted to polyphonic music, it was conceived as a product of individual lines. Tonality however is a harmonic concept; harmony is a fundament part of the key system (even if only implied) and the “key” relates to the music as a single whole.

Keys have an intrinsic hierarchy of pitches which is absent from modes. With keys, there is a clear and characteristic relationship between dominant and tonic (indeed, the Schenkerian school of thought says that all tonal music can ultimately reduced to a basic I-V-I progression; not so with modal music). Modal melodies on the other hand might just as easily stress the fourth and/or sixth degrees.

Modes can be transposed to start on a different note and yet still be the same mode. Whereas if you transpose a key, it becomes another key.

hmmm yea, that makes sense.

Do you actually share zethus' understanding of 'major scale', the root of all things?

NO... NO....why are you continuing this crusade. you are framing what i am saying....it isn't "my understanding", it is how YOU are perceiving my understanding to be based on a single sentence in a thread, a thread whose title is "modal HARMONY". the thread itself is a misnomer. but I would seriously like to just ask you right here:
tell me please, what is MY "understanding"....elaborate. dont just copy and paste a single sentence i wrote, but actually explain to me, in your own words what YOU think MY "understanding" is. (understanding of what i dont even know)

but i'll leave that to you. please tell me what MY "understanding" of _____ is, then your crusade can continue.

[JumpingJackFlash]

For anyone interested, I would like to offer some real-world musical examples here.
Specifically, two eighteenth-century chorale settings of the same melody by J.S. Bach. The melody was written by Hans Leo Hassler in 1601. It was a well-known melody in the Phrygian mode.

Bach set it a number of times. I present two contrasting examples here, the first concludes Cantata 161.
You can see the score here and hear it on YouTube . You can also hopefully hear a MIDI rendition here (be careful though, I think it will only let you download files so many times or something).

The second setting from around 8 years later comes from St. Matthew Passion. The score can be viewed as part of a collection here - it is number 89 which comes on page 49 (the first example above is number 270 on page 164 here, but it's missing the recorder obbligato). YouTube link . MIDI file here.

Before I say anything, what do you think about each of the two settings?
Are they modal or tonal? (Or something else?) Perhaps look at each phrase separately first (same questions).

[jancivil]

Well, right away (all I need is "harmonized by JS Bach" to know 'not modal') I'd have to analyze the first one in C. Beats 3 & 4, ms. 1 is ii4/3 V6 I. Actually a (suspended) 9th on the beat 3, 9-8 suspension at beat 4. Second half of ms. 2 is V7 of vi (the first E chord at all). So obviously not modal. (sure, JS started with early typa tunes which were supposedly modal but afaict he would have nothing to do with the modal character {opinion received second-hand via David Sheinfeld who taught my partner-in-crime.}). (The 9th on the ii chord does not resolve during the ii harmony but to the 5th of V, which he does occasionally. But we get to enjoy a 9th chord for a second.)

The later example is more chromatic.
More secondary dominants. The very presence of dominants means no mode (edit: to me, as a modern person.).

[nineofkings]

Uh, actually we do create the cadences. We do not create the intervals, true, but music as such is NOT some kind of universally encoded, objective reality. A "cadence" makes sense to us because we're coming from a Eurocentric musical tradition with its accumulated centuries of history. This is what everyone has been saying.

THIS is why music theory matters. It describes what, historically, music has been. Every single musical decision you make is, like it or not, aligned with a theoretical, that is a cultural, decision. Even defining yourself as "anti-theory" is only a position that exists in relation to theory and history. Like how Satanism only exists in relation to (as a reaction against) Christianity. To talk about the "objective reality of music" is a fallacy. Music is cultural, always always. And just because the underlying assumptions are not always explicit does not mean that they are objectively true.

[MadBrain]

Before I say anything, what do you think about each of the two settings?
Are they modal or tonal? (Or something else?) Perhaps look at each phrase separately first (same questions).

If you gave them to me in dictation and that I didn't suspect anything, I would've written down both of them in minor (looking at the parts, A minor for first, B minor for second), first example starting on Vmin and ending on Vsus4-V, second example starting on Imin and ending on V. The only thing it's missing is the resolution of the last V to Imin or I.

I know that in theory the first example has a finalis on E, but my ear (given a tuning fork) is saying 'Tonic on A' and sees E as a dominant subordinate to A (it even has a Esus4-E suspension) and is hearing all sorts of A-minor harmony things like temporary modulations to the relative major (C). If you ignore the finalis on E, there's little difference between this and a tonal song in A minor to me.

This E phrygian is completely different from the pop musician's E phrygian. This has a finalis on E and is most similar to A minor. The pop musician's E phrygian has a tonic on E and is most similar to E minor.

[jancivil]

Yeah, looking further at the score it must be A minor. I didn't hear that or see it in the first 8 bars (I wasn't digging the youtube), it keeps dodging. But the E chords tend to be dominant. IF he had in mind some theory of "E Final", it's nonetheless a half cadence in A minor as far as I care. There just is no feeling of E as tonic.

[jancivil]

Before I say anything, what do you think about each of the two settings?
Are they modal or tonal?

If you ignore the finalis on E, there's little difference between this and a tonal song in A minor to me.

This E phrygian is completely different from the pop musician's E phrygian. This has a finalis on E and is most similar to A minor. The pop musician's E phrygian has a tonic on E and is most similar to E minor.

Who said it was E Phrygian? The original tune he remixed is E Phrygian. I'm ignorant of 1601 music, or definitions musicians will have used then. "E Final" reflects the concepts of say late 15th c Modal Counterpoint which is about where I vacated from the scene, but hey. Tonic is A there afaic.

[stringtapper]

....

[jancivil]

Well, right away (all I need is "harmonized by JS Bach" to know 'not modal') I'd have to analyze the first one in C. Beats 3 & 4, ms. 1 is ii4/3 V6 I. Actually a (suspended) 9th on the beat 3, 9-8 suspension at beat 4. Second half of ms. 2 is V7 of vi. So obviously not modal. (sure, JS started with early typa tunes which were supposedly modal but afaict he had nothing to do with the modal character. {opinion received second-hand via David Sheinfeld who taught my partner-in-crime.}) (The 9th on the ii chord does not resolve during the ii harmony but to the 5th of V, which he does occasionally.)

The later example is more chromatic.

Uh…

The two settings both have tonal attributes, no doubt. But the first setting is definitely composed with an ear toward the original Phrygian melody. Notice how the bass stresses the characteristic Phrygian interval of F->E (Ra-Do or b2-1) a few times (mm. 2, 7, & 15). That's not going to be as typical a motion in a standard minor mode piece as it would be in a Phrygian piece. Those F-E motions combined with the general "E-ness" of the piece (begins and ends on an E harmony) and the key signature of no sharps or flats all point to E Phrygian.

Really? Well, for me it pointed to C major and later A minor. It's not like I miss all the Es or that is any surprise considering this is a treatment of a tune purportedly in E Phrygian. Or very surprising that you would get what JJF is after with the "contrast" and the leading question "or is it something else". This is what's interesting, as a 'Music Theory' matter, that all this E business is supposed to mean something something Phrygian. Will there be scholarly consensus on that? I'm not a scholar.
I see and hear too much that tells me 'tonal' and the whole Phrygian aspect would be theoretical and not concrete to me and I'm saying why:

The sound of the final cadence isn't final, it sounds like i-V with a sus4-3 on top.

[stringtapper]

After playing it (I wasn't around a keyboard) I agree with the A tonal center, which is why I retracted my post. There is definitely more of a modal character to the first setting though.