Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, by Raiph Vaughan Williams. Performers unknown.
There is no ice cream with this music. Although you are quite welcome to go grab a scoop while you listen to the above. Personally, I prefer to drink Kenya AA.
This is a good example of modal music. We did one other diary on modal music last Thanksgiving about Beethoven's Heiliger Dankgesang in the Lydian mode. Today we'll discuss in detail some other modes today, what modes are, and why they are important for understanding very old music (like the original Renaissance work this is based upon), newer modern music, like Raiph Vaughan Williams' version, above, classic rock, and film scores.
Bit first, as you listen to the music above, ask yourself what it is that gives this music its particular characteristic sound?
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When you are ready to move on, here is the original theme by Thomas Tallis to simplify matters. Thomas Tallis? you say? Wasn't he in Showtime's The Tudors? Yup, that guy.
The above is an example of Phrygian mode, one of the coolest of the modes.
So what is a mode?
Let's remember way back to our fourth diary in the series, Major and Minor, where I told the story of lil' boy Dumbo playing around on his Dad's piano, trying to figure out how to dink out Greensleeves with his index finger without touching any of those nasty, scary black keys.
It turns out that if you want to play any typical major key music, the usual do re mi kind of stuff, you can play it all on the white keys of a piano if you start your scale at the C note on the piano and completely avoid those scary black keys. Familiar songs like She'll Be Comin' Around the Mountain, for instance, can be played this way, not a single black key necessary.
We call music this simple diatonic music, meaning exactly what I said above, music that could possibly be played all on the white keys, provided you started in the right place. Music that requires both white and black piano keys, no matter where you start, is called chromatic. Chromatic, of course, means all colors, which is a strange name for this kind of music, since black and white are not colors. However, you kind of get the idea.
Lil' kid Dumbo also soon discovered that he couldn't play minor key songs starting at C without using those scary black keys. So scared was he that he dinked around and suddenly went "Aha!" for he found that starting at the A note on the piano, rather than the C note gave him the minor scale all in nice, safe, friendly white keys! He could play most minor key music without having to venture into the darker side of music!
Hmmm... You start at C for major key music, A for minor key music. So -- and it's a natural question to ask -- what if you start your do re mi scale on a note other than A or C, sticking to the white keys? What then? If it's neither animal nor vegetable, what is it?
We call these other scales modes. The distinction between a mode and a scale is so blurry I'm not going to bother trying to sort that out. For rather decrepit legacy reasons, diatonic scales that can be played on all white keys on the piano starting at a particular note have these Greek names. And no, this is not on the exam.
The seven diatonic musical modes
*A* -- Aeolian mode (the minor scale)
B -- Locrian mode
C -- Ionian mode (the major scale)
D -- Dorian mode
E -- Phrygian mode
F -- Lydian mode
G -- Mixolydian mode
All of this is rather dry and geeky, too much information, you might say, until you realize how dramatically other modes can change the character of the music. Modal music is very uncommon in classical period music, slightly less uncommon in late Romantic music, but it becomes a commonplace technique by the twentieth century for composers looking to create new sounds -- or to rediscover old sounds.
Modal music is both very old and very new.
The use of other modes was much more common in Medieval and Renaissance music and is almost mandatory in some types of ethnic music, like Celtic, which is heavily Mixolydian. Early twentieth century post-Romantic composers like Vaughan-Williams -- and also the impressionists, whom we will get to in a coming diary -- found in these old and ethnic sources of music a treasure trove of new/old ideas.
From the website A Beginner's Guide to Modal Harmony:
It was not until the early 20th century that researchers in traditional music realized that traditional music used Renaissance modes. The pioneering work of the likes of Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams was greeted with statements along the lines of "How can you tell me that these ignorant peasants are singing in the Mixolydian mode when some of our finest music professors don't even know what it is?" However, the fact is now generally accepted by ethnomusicologists. The interesting research area has moved on to the examination of how, in certain circumstances, some degrees of a mode can be modified by intervals less than a semitone. (This is a feature mostly found in the playing of older musicians—the influence of mainstream equally-tempered music is driving this artistic device into oblivion.)
So what happens when we shift the mode? Certain notes familiar to us from the major or minor scales -- scales drummed into our brains all our lives -- get tweaked, flattened or sharpened. For instance, Dorian is the same as the classic minor scale but with one note (la sharpened. See if you can hear the character change in this old song by Simon and Garfunkel in Dorian from that one little tweak.
Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme by Simon and Garfunkel.
It is identifiably minor-scale-ish in nature. But to our modern ears, there is something a bit more ethereal to it, and its not just because of S&G's musical arrangement.
We heard Beethoven's Lydian piece last Thanksgiving, but let's try a more modern Lydian piece, one I discovered this week. In Lydian mode, one note is different from the normal major scale, the fa note is sharpened.
When We Dance, by Sting
Where S&G's music sounded ancient, the sound of Sting's song is very modern. If I didn't tell you it was because he used Lydian mode, you probably wouldn't be able to tell me what makes it different. But knowing, now, maybe you can notice it.
Here is another example of Lydian in rock.
Pretty Ballerina, by Left Banke
I almost used this as an example of Lydian last Thanksgiving, but had misgivings because Left Banke wasn't as letter-strict about their use of Lydian mode. But listening to it now, and comparing it to the Lydian Sting piece above, I have to admit, strict or not, it has more of a modal feel to it.
Another example of Dorian rock music is The Beatles' Eleanor Rigby.
Mixolydian, all white keys if you start at G, sounds the same as the normal major scale but with a flattened seventh note ti. The flat seventh is so common in rock and jazz that I thought at first it was perhaps a waste of time to cover it, but it turns out using it consistently isn't that common. Wikipedia lists the following as Mixolydian, although I'm not that impressed by the faithfulness of the list:
* "Old Joe Clark"[6][7]
* "She Moved Through the Fair"[8]
* "Let It Loose"[9] by The Rolling Stones
* "Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynyrd Skynyrd[7]
* "Sweet Child o' Mine" by Guns N' Roses[10]
* "Marquee Moon" by Television[11]
For better examples of stricter Mixolydian, we can go to the music Vaughan Williams or Ravel. Some parts of Ravel's Mother Goose are in Mixolydian, but as this diary comes close to press time, I'm not sure which ones so I won't post it in the diary unless somebody tells me in comments.
Back to Phrygian mode, which we started with.
Phrygian is like the minor scale but with a flattened second note, which makes for some interesting effects. For one thing, it ruins the dominant (V) chord, but it makes the (II) chord much more interesting.
But there is another version of Phrygian which isn't on our list, the so-called Phrygian Major mode, or Gypsy mode. It's the Phrygian mode but with a major third. (You'll hear soon enough.) We can't really call it diatonic, because there's no way to play it on white keys no matter where you start. But it has a delicious Arabic/Gypsy/something ethnic sound.
My brother played keyboard for a while with guitar rock star Dick Dale, but he's not in this clip. This is Dick Dale playing his hit song Miserlou.
Miserlou, Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, 1963.
The basic melody line is just the straight Gypsy mode. Do-re-mi... in Phrygian Major. Dick Dale was Lebanese and grew up listening to this performed as traditional belly-dancer music by his uncle. Transforming it into wet-sound surfer music seemed natural to him.
I told CFK I was going to post some Saint-Saens, so I better not disappoint her! Here is my last modal example tonight, the Bacchanale scene from Camille Saint-Saens's ballet Samson et Delilah.
Bacchanale from Samson et Delilah by Camille Saint-Saens, performers unknown.
At about 1:47, the music changes to Gypsy mode in a rather famous melody stolen for countless cheap films of the thirties and forties.
Next Week: Dudes, I'm just getting started on modes. Consider your feet wet.