A question about the Doric scale A moll

[BertKoor]

A moll as in Ab?

Moll = minor, not flat, at least in the languages I know.

English Flat:

• Dutch: mol
• German: molle
• French : bemol
• Espagnol: bemol
• Portuguese: bemol
• Russian: Бемоль

English Minor:

• Dutch: mineur
• German: moll
• French: modo mineur
• Spanish: modo menor
• Swedish: moll

Taken from the alternative languages links on wikipedia.
You and me both learned something new today.

[sjm]

My assumption is thus that the OP is referring to the fact that A minor (Aeolian) has the same notes as D Dorian/Doric. It's the only thing that makes sense in context.

The molle with an e (from the hexachord) is a red herring.


If i had to hazard a random guess, I'd say the OP is an Eastern German from an older generation. Hence learning Russian in school but no English, and hence using some very Germanic terms. But that's pure speculation of course

There's definitely a language barrier here.

[fmr]

*some people will call it melodic minor ascending, because they like to practice the descending scale with F natural and G natural, but they're pedantic and wrong. common practice era composers didn't stick rigidly to ascending/descending rules.

No, they are NOT wrong and pedantic. First, you have to define WTF do you mean with "common practice". According to Britannica, the "common practice" period spans from Bach to Debussy. Bach was strictly tonal, but followed closely the polpyphonic compositional rules. Actually, the melodic form of the minor mode was his creation, exactly to avoid the augmented second melodic jump, and he followed almost always the two raised tone when going up and the two natural tones when going down.

Debussy was a composer that used extensively modes (not just THESE modes, but modes in general, inluding exotic modes and his much beloved whole tone mode), and treated tonality and harmony in a very fluid form.

Before Debussy, we had Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, Mahler, Schoenberg, etc. All these compsoers treated harmony differently, up to the point of almost dissolve it into something else (chromaticism, progressive tonality, and finally dodecaphony). So, using something like "common practice" to embrace all this, is like saying "western composers". Its meaningless.

Bach, who created the harmonic form, almost always followed it, as I said, because of the linearity of his writing, and polyphonic movement concerns. Mozart and Beethoven almost only used harmonic minor, because their main concern was harmony. When you enter Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner, things became fluid, with many chromaticisms. Many times, melodic progression occured with chromatic movements, and the dichotomy harmonic/melodic basically lost any groud and reason of existence.

Anyway, THERE IS ONLY MINOR. Anything else is just occuring alterations that don't make sense to discuss isolated. And the minor mode comes directly from the mediavel church Dorian mode, BTW. When we are in the minor mode universe, we can use natural, harmonic, melodic, or any mixing of these. What we use in the end will depend only on which is the main concern. If it is harmony, we will use the leading tone. If it just melody, we may use the leading tone or not. The melodic form makes no sense to be discussed nowadays.

HOWEVER, there is a difference. If we use consistently the first tetrachord minor and the second tetrachord major, we are using a different mode, that isn't the minor mode anymore, but a mixed minor/major mode.

What I am trying to say is that when we enter modes, we open a completely new universe, and thing are many times diffuse and debatable. The usual tonal music rules don't apply anymore. Also, there are MANY, MANY modes, and each has its own personality.

[fmr]

My assumption is thus that the OP is referring to the fact that A minor (Aeolian) has the same notes as D Dorian/Doric. It's the only thing that makes sense in context.

C Major also has the same notes, and there is no possibility to confuse both.

The mode of D is a mode that, although it resembles A minor (if we don't use the leading tone) has an important difference in the sixth note, which forms a major sixth with the "tonic", contrary to the minor mode where it forms a minor sixth. This changes its "flavor".

Actually, the minor mode comes from the mode of D, through the "bemolization" of the sixth in the "musica ficta" practice. This "bemolization" of the B (which is where the term "BEMOL" comes from, BTW) was the first alteration that appeared in music, and is dated at around 1 000 years ago.

[sjm]

My assumption is thus that the OP is referring to the fact that A minor (Aeolian) has the same notes as D Dorian/Doric. It's the only thing that makes sense in context.

C Major also has the same notes, and there is no possibility to confuse both.

Yes, but I'm not the OP.

[Zasdg]

Thank you all for your extensive explanations. Thanks to that, I learned a lot. I have a question for fmr:

Actually, the minor mode comes from the mode of D, through the "bemolization" of the sixth in the "musica ficta" practice. This "bemolization" of the B (which is where the term "BEMOL" comes from, BTW) was the first alteration that appeared in music, and is dated at around 1 000 years ago.

Does this mean that I was right when I wrote in one of the first posts that the Dorian in A minor (A, B, C, D, E, F #, G#) may come from a Doric modal scale starting with the note D (D, E, F, G, A, B, C)?

[NERF_PROTOSS]

Bach was strictly tonal, but followed closely the polpyphonic compositional rules. Actually, the melodic form of the minor mode was his creation, exactly to avoid the augmented second melodic jump, and he followed almost always the two raised tone when going up and the two natural tones when going down.

but... he didn't. he used the raised tones in descending melodies plenty of times, especially on V chords. I would encourage people not to take my word for and it to go and study Bach and come to their own conclusions.

the rest about chopin and co - yes, the fact that cpp composers had all sorts of different styles is... my point? point being that "ackshually melodic minor is different descending" is irrelevant, both in the musical practice of the great composers and in the naming of the scale in 2021. language evolves. people can choose to practice that sort of thing, great, but 'melodic minor' is still a perfectly reasonable name for the scale OP was asking about, and it's a term that lots of people use, especially jazz musicians.

Anyway, THERE IS ONLY MINOR. Anything else is just occuring alterations that don't make sense to discuss isolated. And the minor mode comes directly from the mediavel church Dorian mode, BTW. When we are in the minor mode universe, we can use natural, harmonic, melodic, or any mixing of these. What we use in the end will depend only on which is the main concern. If it is harmony, we will use the leading tone. If it just melody, we may use the leading tone or not. The melodic form makes no sense to be discussed nowadays.

so... now you agree with me? great! I wouldn't say 'the minor mode comes directly from Dorian' but it really doesn't matter. talking about 'the major mode' and 'the minor mode' is a slightly old fashioned way of speaking, but eh it's good enough for Schoenberg. I don't use those terms because it just confuses people who ask about modes.

HOWEVER, there is a difference. If we use consistently the first tetrachord minor and the second tetrachord major, we are using a different mode, that isn't the minor mode anymore, but a mixed minor/major mode.

What I am trying to say is that when we enter modes, we open a completely new universe, and thing are many times diffuse and debatable. The usual tonal music rules don't apply anymore. Also, there are MANY, MANY modes, and each has its own personality.

this is where I don't agree. there aren't 'tonal music rules' in the first place, so there's nothing that gets thrown out the window when 'entering modes' - there's stuff you can do to establish (or not establish) a tonality, functional (or not functional) harmony, chromatic alterations, whatever - you can do it with whatever scale material you please. modes are not some special esoteric thing. they are, in fact, scales. as are all sorts of ordered pitch collections. a chord might actually turn out to be a scale, too, shock horror (folks at berklee might have something to say about that).

this notion that 'tonal' and 'modal' are mutually exclusive terms is utterly wrong and does nothing but confuse people and agitate beginners who seem to be, especially in this forum, especially on the topic of modes, bombarded with a bunch of recieved wisdom instead of anything rooted in aesthetics or real practice.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

According to Knud Jeppesen’s defintion, the scale is the dead abstraction, while the mode is the living music arising from that scale and its character. I guess it is like saying the scale is like a part of an alphabet, while the mode is the horror story or whatever. He is an expert in the history of modes and 16th century polyphony and has not been contested on this def in particular afaik. That def works for me, but I am not that interested the history and precise def of modes as I am in using concrete techniques of ze old (f)arts, so whatever. Just adding a def to the pool. I am not going to argue about it.

[Farnaby]

the scale is the dead abstraction, while the mode is the living music arising from that scale and its character

That makes it so much clearer!

[fmr]

HOWEVER, there is a difference. If we use consistently the first tetrachord minor and the second tetrachord major, we are using a different mode, that isn't the minor mode anymore, but a mixed minor/major mode.

What I am trying to say is that when we enter modes, we open a completely new universe, and thing are many times diffuse and debatable. The usual tonal music rules don't apply anymore. Also, there are MANY, MANY modes, and each has its own personality.

this is where I don't agree. there aren't 'tonal music rules' in the first place, so there's nothing that gets thrown out the window when 'entering modes' - there's stuff you can do to establish (or not establish) a tonality, functional (or not functional) harmony, chromatic alterations, whatever - you can do it with whatever scale material you please. modes are not some special esoteric thing. they are, in fact, scales. as are all sorts of ordered pitch collections. a chord might actually turn out to be a scale, too, shock horror (folks at berklee might have something to say about that).

this notion that 'tonal' and 'modal' are mutually exclusive terms is utterly wrong and does nothing but confuse people and agitate beginners who seem to be, especially in this forum, especially on the topic of modes, bombarded with a bunch of recieved wisdom instead of anything rooted in aesthetics or real practice.

Huh? "Tonal" and "modal" are mutually exclusive - THAT IS A FACT. The moment you use chordal functions, any mode you were pretending to use is immediately destroyed. The "notion that 'tonal' and 'modal' are mutually exclusive is utterly wrong" is a notion that is UTTERLY WRONG.

And what do you mean when you say "there aren't 'tonal music rules' in the first place"???

Tonality is about MODES - BUT JUST TWO. Tonality only moves around TWO modes, major and minor. It is also about another thing: Harmony, more precisely: Functional Harmony. If you use harmony, you either have Major or minor. You don't have anything else, because there aren't functions on the other modes - they don't even have a leading tone to start with, which means you will not have the Dominant > Tonic dichotomy which is the basis of functional harmony (well, the mode of F may have a leading tone, but that's the only one).

And modes are NOT scales. A "scale" technicaly is a succession of consecutive notes - ANY succession of notes. A chromatic scale IS A SCALE, Can you tell me which mode or tonaly does it belong to? C-D-E-F-G is a scale. Can you tell me which mode or tonality does it belong to?

Scale is so broad as a term that it becomes meaningless in this context. You say "a chord might actually turn out to be a scale". So what? A scale, in itself, is nothing but a succession of notes. It's as meaningless as the chord you supposedly extracted it from.

A mode is a special sequence of notes which have some internal relationships that define a "mood". Mode actually means exactly a mood. And major and minor, if we speak strictly about the notes, ARE MODES. And yes - minor comes from the mode of D (what you call Dorian). It doesn't matter if you would say it or not - it's something that's more or less established by now. As is the fact that the Major mode comes from the mode of G (what you call Mixolydian). I presume this maybe a surprise for you, and that you were convinced the minor comes from the Aeolian and the Major from the Ionian (a stupid nonsensic statement I have seen written countless times). Surprise, surprise: Aeolian and Ionian were not a thing when modes were being used. They never existed outside of the Dodecachordon.

I just leave all the other BS you wrote, especially about Bach. If you want to support your statement, feel free to post examples. And I don't give a damn to what "folks at berklee might have to say" about it.

[fmr]

the scale is the dead abstraction, while the mode is the living music arising from that scale and its character

That makes it so much clearer!

Actually, it does. It means that the scale is like the concrete and iron - the raw materials. The modes are bricks and trabes - the constitutive building blocks. You may build something with bricks and trabes, but will hardly do anything with just cement, sand and iron.

A mode already contains in steself ways to create music. A scale is just a succession of notes, meaningless in itself. Actually, it may be just part of a mode, or a chromatic succession of notes,

[fmr]

THERE IS ONLY MINOR. Anything else is just occuring alterations that don't make sense to discuss isolated. And the minor mode comes directly from the mediavel church Dorian mode, BTW. When we are in the minor mode universe, we can use natural, harmonic, melodic, or any mixing of these. What we use in the end will depend only on which is the main concern. If it is harmony, we will use the leading tone. If it just melody, we may use the leading tone or not. The melodic form makes no sense to be discussed nowadays.

so... now you agree with me? great! I wouldn't say 'the minor mode comes directly from Dorian' but it really doesn't matter. talking about 'the major mode' and 'the minor mode' is a slightly old fashioned way of speaking, but eh it's good enough for Schoenberg. I don't use those terms because it just confuses people who ask about modes.

I don't see where we agreed, but whatever. Is it the fact that nowadays it doesn't make sense to discuss natural minor, harmonic minor and melodic minor? Actually, it lost sense basically after Beethoven. And minor was only JUST minor. The rest was occuring alterations, that didn't ever change the nature of the mode.

And do I see some kind of "patronizing" attitude when you write: "I don't use those terms because it just confuses people who ask about modes."? Who are you to decide what terms to use or not, and what confuses people or not? It was good for Schoenberg? Of course it was. AFAIK, Schoenberg knew a few things about music, as did his inspirational master (Mahler)

Major and minor are modes. They always were, and ever will be, no matter you call them modes or not. You simply have to use the right terms. If people get confused, you have to explain them those are the only two that survived from the modal era, because when tonality raised, it slowly destroyed the other ones, merging them in just those two. And that even those two were destroyed, afterwards, and there was an era where things became diffused, where everything was merged with everything, and finally no mode remained, and all twelve notes were treated equally. And then...

[fmr]

Thank you all for your extensive explanations. Thanks to that, I learned a lot. I have a question for fmr:

Actually, the minor mode comes from the mode of D, through the "bemolization" of the sixth in the "musica ficta" practice. This "bemolization" of the B (which is where the term "BEMOL" comes from, BTW) was the first alteration that appeared in music, and is dated at around 1 000 years ago.

Does this mean that I was right when I wrote in one of the first posts that the Dorian in A minor (A, B, C, D, E, F #, G#) may come from a Doric modal scale starting with the note D (D, E, F, G, A, B, C)?

NO, there isn't a Dorian in A minor. You either have A Dorian (if you use the notes of the Dorian mode starting in A) or A minor. A Dorian would be A-B-C-D-E-F#-G-A. You can't have both simultaneously. As you can't have Major in minor simultaneously, you either have Major or minor. A, B, C, D, E, F #, G# is simply A minor, with the raised sixth and the raised seventh (leading tone). Nothing fancy, nothing exotic. Pretty common.

[NERF_PROTOSS]

Huh? "Tonal" and "modal" are mutually exclusive - THAT IS A FACT. The moment you use chordal functions, any mode you were pretending to use is immediately destroyed. The "notion that 'tonal' and 'modal' are mutually exclusive is utterly wrong" is a notion that is UTTERLY WRONG.

And what do you mean when you say "there aren't 'tonal music rules' in the first place"???

Tonality is about MODES - BUT JUST TWO. Tonality only moves around TWO modes, major and minor. It is also about another thing: Harmony, more precisely: Functional Harmony. If you use harmony, you either have Major or minor. You don't have anything else, because there aren't functions on the other modes - they don't even have a leading tone to start with, which means you will not have the Dominant > Tonic dichotomy which is the basis of functional harmony (well, the mode of F may have a leading tone, but that's the only one).

And modes are NOT scales. A "scale" technicaly is a succession of consecutive notes - ANY succession of notes. A chromatic scale IS A SCALE, Can you tell me which mode or tonaly does it belong to? C-D-E-F-G is a scale. Can you tell me which mode or tonality does it belong to?

Scale is so broad as a term that it becomes meaningless in this context. You say "a chord might actually turn out to be a scale". So what? A scale, in itself, is nothing but a succession of notes. It's as meaningless as the chord you supposedly extracted it from.

A mode is a special sequence of notes which have some internal relationships that define a "mood". Mode actually means exactly a mood. And major and minor, if we speak strictly about the notes, ARE MODES. And yes - minor comes from the mode of D (what you call Dorian). It doesn't matter if you would say it or not - it's something that's more or less established by now. As is the fact that the Major mode comes from the mode of G (what you call Mixolydian). I presume this maybe a surprise for you, and that you were convinced the minor comes from the Aeolian and the Major from the Ionian (a stupid nonsensic statement I have seen written countless times). Surprise, surprise: Aeolian and Ionian were not a thing when modes were being used. They never existed outside of the Dodecachordon.

I just leave all the other BS you wrote, especially about Bach. If you want to support your statement, feel free to post examples. And I don't give a damn to what "folks at berklee might have to say" about it.

that the concept of 'tonality' is restricted to the major/minor system is a common enough viewpoint, but that's not an argument in its favour. just because people believe something doesn't make it true. it's a needlessly restrictive definition.

for one, functional harmony isn't restricted to using leading tones, but that's besides the point, anyway. is establishing a tonality restricted to the use of harmony? (and you do know practitioners of modal counterpoint used leading tones and lowered tones all the time, right? we didn't just arrive at our tonal system by accident?)

a mode suggests a tonal center. it's not complicated. can you take a guess why we name them from the letter of the first scale degree? C dorian? we just say it's a C scale for fun? when someone plays a tune in C minor and at some point does a little Dm7 Cm7 passing chord move to elaborate the tonic, what, the song is no longer tonal? for how long? it's a magical modal rule-free experience until someone plays a B? or, what, they never actually used Dorian in the first place, even though they absolutely did, sounded like they did, and will tell you they did?

I like this 'modes are not scales' thing where you then turn around and define scale in such a way that includes modes. great stuff. modes are not scales. birds are not animals. apples are not fruits. great discussion

here, some examples of bach's usage: https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/handle ... 499382.pdf

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

And for the worth of it. Due to a discussion elsewhere I am checking out Oliver Messiaen - The Technique of My Musical Language. His general idea of modes seems compatible to Jeppesen's, namely that they are to be seen as closed systems, which offers a limited set of possible notes and steps available but great variation as to the life invoked within them. Modulation between modes is not the same as free chromatism or transpositions, but transitions between these closed systems. He refers to the three modal system of China, India and ancient greece to which none of his own refers. His can be mixed with tonality or they can oppose it, he notes. I must say that strikes me as spot on. Having listened to a line of works, his modes invoke something between beauty and creepy, which I cannot help relating to his upbringing and youth under the rise of facism and WW2. However, point to be taken is that his modes deffo seem to refer the harmonic moods when the system of notes come alive.