The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #122706 Message #2694735
Posted By: GUEST,leeneia
06-Aug-09 - 11:00 AM
Thread Name: folksongs in the lydian and phrygian mode
Subject: RE: folksongs in the lydian and phrygian mode
There are so many definitions of 'modal' that debate could last forever.
However, a few years ago, I attended an early music workshop given by professional musicians with degrees in early music. Their definition of a mode was a system where you took a scale and used another note to play the usual role of 'do.'
A conventional (perhaps I should say 'hackneyed') song starts on do, ends on do, and probably has the highest note on do. (I have a friend who says that's the definition of a folk song - not that I believe her.)
A modal song takes another note and does the same thing. Gallowa Hills does it with the fifth, which makes it Mixolydian. (My first post on that was in error.) Another example is the old Christmas song 'Savior of the Nations, Come' which is Dorian, beginning and ending on the second note of the scale.
I use the professionals' definition because it makes sense and sometimes we actually find an old song where it works. I can see how it might actually have helped some hapless monk deal with the many chants needed to run a monastery or cathedral. But nowadays paper is cheap, printing is easy, and we just teach people to read music.
Or perhaps the modes existed more in people's minds than in music. Medieval thinkers were great ones for intellectual systems, whether or not they actually existed. Remember epicycles? Terra australis? The music of the spheres?
Nowadays, too, compositions are much more varied, artists are more creative, and people start them and end them wherever they want.