[Smt-talk] Examples of Modes

Tue Sep 3 03:00:08 PDT 2013

Dear Nicolas,
Your second question first: tonal  centricity. I too would say that, when all notes in all scales/ modes are the same, there has to be a way in which the performer knows which should be the final, & that this is nowhere more acute than in the antiphon/psalm interchange. As you say, a lot of antiphons are very short: where you might still get that leap is from final of antiphon to tenor of psalm. This is where the joining mattered.
Your first question now: whether that leap is a natural or conventional way of signalling the tonal centre? I think I'd say it's both: it's there in the music, & can't be gainsaid; but how did it get there? we don't know.
I can also say that it is there in the secular trouvère music manuscripts.
subsidiary questions: the leap from the final is often to the tenor/reciting tone; but not always. see the dark phrygian modes
& cordes m~eres: again, for a fuller discussion you'd have to read my book.
Salut from a graduate of Paris-IV,
f
(Dr) Fiona McAlpine
Honorary Research Fellow
School of Music
University of Auckland

Le Béguinage
42 Horns Rd
RD 1
Oxford 7495
North Canterbury
NEW ZEALAND
________________________________
From: Nicolas Meeùs [nicolas.meeus at scarlet.be]
Sent: Thursday, 29 August 2013 09:06
To: Fiona McAlpine
Cc: smt-talk at lists.societymusictheory.org
Subject: Re: [Smt-talk] Examples of Modes

Fiona,

Unfortnuately, I cannot have access to your book just now; but I read your paper "Arripui hymnarium" in De musica disserenda, which gave me an idea of your hypothesis. I am very interested with tonal centricity, which to me is essential to the very notion of 'modality'. I believe, for instance, that late medieval and Renaissance polyphony is modal because it evidences tonal centricity.
    I have two questions, however; I am aware that I may find an answer at least to the first one in your book, which I intend to read as soon as possible: in that case, don't bother to answer it.

The first question is: do you think that the leap upward from the final is somehow a 'natural', unconscious feature of modes, or do you view it as a conventional way of signaling the tonal center? On the one hand I fail to see how such feature could result, say, from the structure of the diatonic system; it is true that most melodies of the world tend to leap upwards and to descend stepwise, as I think Curt Sachs already noted, but I don't see why the leap should be from the final (especially that it would have to be from an intermediate final). On the other hand I know that music does make use of conscious signaling, particularly in ensemble singing, but I don't immediately see the reason for this in the case of church modes.

The second question that I have concerns the special case of psalm antiphons: many of these are too short to include any internal cadence, or upwards leaps of any kind (unless at the very beginning, but then not always upwards from the final). On the other hand, it is in that case that the tonal centre may be of "vital importance", as you write. I can see your point when dealing with hymns, but there the question of joining bits of music does not arise, I think.

There are many subsidiary questions that immediately arise:
– I thought that the notion of "final" did not appear in medieval theory before Hucbald, i.e. at a time when the modes were close to being "turned into scales". Is your hypothesis to be linked with the interval between final and tenor (reciting tone)?
– The joining of antiphons with psalm verses concerns not only the end of the antiphon and the beginning of the psalm tone (which very much involves the final as tonal centre), but also the end of the tone with the beginning of the antiphon, which depends on the particular differentia used.
– Did you consider what Jacques de Liège (and others, probably) had to say of melodies which did not end on their proper final because of a mistake of the singers, who ended on one of the affinals? Would these cases concern melodies lacking the upwards leap that you describe?
– Etc., but these will suffice for the time being.

I presume that the upwards leaps that you describe could often be from the final to the reciting note, what may suffice as justification/explanation, and which may link to the later theory of fifth and fourth species. But does not this raise a question of chronology (considering the theory of "cordes mères", of tenor and final at first not being distinct)? I'd very much like to hear your opinion about all this.

Nicolas Meeùs
Université Paris-Sorbonne

Le 26/08/2013 10:49, Fiona McAlpine a écrit :
Coming back to Nicolas' earlier point about the 'church' modes being not just scales but collections of melodic formulae: in the absence of any harmonic underpinning, these melodic formulae also had to define the tonal centre in a world where the tonal centre was of vital importance because most of your  musical activity consisted of joining discrete bits of music to each other (I'm talking abut monks joining antiphons to psalm tones, which Nicolas touched on). Those modes were there, and organised thus in relation to tonal centre, from perhaps mid-ninth century (Aurelian), long before they got turned into scales (let's say before the point of reference for most of the readers of these pages, Guido in the early eleventh century). There is a technique by which medieval musicians achieved this tonal-centredness, given that all medieval modes used the same diatonic collection: leaps upwards from the final in an essentially stepwise melodic world. Forgive the self-puffery, but for further collaboration see my book Tonal Consciousness & the Medieval West.

(Dr) Fiona McAlpine
Honorary Research Fellow
School of Music
University of Auckland

Le Béguinage
42 Horns Rd
RD 1
Oxford 7495
North Canterbury
NEW ZEALAND
________________________________

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