A pleasant musical oddity (bimodality)

Subject: A pleasant musical oddity
From: paddymac
Date: 08 Oct 06 - 09:40 PM

I chanced to hear a show on NPR this morning (08 Oct 06) called "Sacred Choral Music." The thing that caught my ear was the hostess' comment on "bi-modal choral arrangement." The conductor had the ladies and gents singing in different keys. The song they sang was "The Water Is Wide." That's a well known folk standard on both sides of the pond, but I never knew of before it as a "sacred" song. The hostess didn't say what keys they sang in, but from the sound of it, my guess would be a major-minor pair. I suppose an attentive arranger could easily enough avoid any dissonances. It sounded fine to my humble ear. Anybody ever hear of that kind of singing before.

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 09 Oct 06 - 03:40 AM

It's been about 40 years since I've heard anyone use the term, but music students at Friends University (who taught me a lot of my music theory while the big guys were chasing the grrrls at the social meetings) did mention and discuss it some, so it's not a figment of NPR delusions.

I'd assume that it was one of those theoretical notions associated with older and/or "church" music forms, as it didn't seem known to the SPEB activists I knew then; but I can't really offer anything very useful other than it is (or once was) a real idea.

John

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 09 Oct 06 - 03:59 AM

Sure it was actually 'The water is wide'? There is a rather naff set of lyrics to the tune - available in 'Celebration Hymnal', a purple hymnbook available in the UK. I remember it vaguely because it left me with a faint feeling of betrayal and general nastiness.... I don't mind people nicking old tunes but I do object to them renaming and denying its origins. Besides, the words were naff, trite and tedious in the extreme!

LTS

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 09 Oct 06 - 04:17 AM

I find "The Water is Wide" in at least 10 of my "folk" books, including the Joan Baez, Folk Song Fakebook, and Rise UP Singing. Several of them give it as an alternate title for "Waly Waly" and/or "O Waly Waly."

I don't recall doubting that any of the versions I've looked at had a "religious" origin, but I'd have to go research to see if any of them give attribution; and it does get "bent about" in some of them.

I don't think the song is really at question here, though. It's the "harmony" technique used in the performance that paddymac observed. What's needed is a music historian and/or vocal music theoretician(?) to explain it to us.

John

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 09 Oct 06 - 09:49 AM

No Problem.

If both groups are singing only notes in the major scale - easy - a major chord.

If one group sings a note from the minor scale, as long as the other group is only singing (in the major scale) notes that do not cause a dissonance, then you will hear a minor chord.

You see, the trick depends on the fact that most of the notes overlap between the two scales - especially if you use the Relative Minor to the Major - eg C Major & A Minor..

I'm sure someone else could describe it with a lot more words though...

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Oct 06 - 01:15 PM

"That was a bum note you sang there!" "No it wasn't. I'm singing a bi-modal choral arrangement."

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: Kaleea
Date: 09 Oct 06 - 04:05 PM

It is not uncommon for Music to be bimodal, whether folk songs, composed by long ago composers, or modern composers. However, the average person often isn't familiar with it cause it is not usually heard in popular music, as it does not sell cause it's too wierd. Kinda like Music in odd meters & "real" Country Music as in other recent threads. It's sort of a matter of dollars & nonsense.

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 09 Oct 06 - 07:10 PM

"That was a bum note you sang there!"

Ah! Peter Sellers - come back, all is forgiven...

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 09 Oct 06 - 07:59 PM

About 35 ago I went to a choral concert where the choir sang an arrangement of the introduction to Look Homeward Angel. "Naked and alone we come into exile...."

In one section, the men and women were singing in different keys at the same time, the program said. I felt at the time that the result was a pointless grating effect. I haven't heard it since.

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: Joe_F
Date: 09 Oct 06 - 08:30 PM

My highschool music textbook does not have "bimodal" in the index (spect I'll have to go to a statistics book for that). But it does afford:

[O]ne of the first forms of melodic combination [was] a system in which one melody was paralleled by another melody removed from it by intervals, which were most frequently, but not exclusively, fourths and fifths. This procedure was in marked contrast to classical and modern music, which considers thirds and sixths to be consonances. Melodic combination based on fourths and fifths was called _organum_....

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 10 Oct 06 - 03:52 AM

... which is, as far as I know, all in the one 'key' or'mode' (we've had THAT discussion before...)

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Oct 06 - 02:53 PM

? What makes a song "sacred" in contrast to just being about something godly?

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Oct 06 - 02:54 PM

Also on NPR interesting piece on the secular music of 15th-century French monks...wonder what makes a song secular if it's still sung by monks?

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: Tootler
Date: 10 Oct 06 - 06:34 PM

wonder what makes a song secular if it's still sung by monks?

The words, of course. "Sumer is icumen in" is most definitely a secular song, but it has survived with both words an music because it was written down by the monks of Reading Abbey. There is also a set of sacred words in Latin on the same MS.

If you go here, there is a scan of the MS which clearly shows both the English and Latin words.

I bet the monks did not only sing the Latin words on that manuscript <g>

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: Joe_F
Date: 10 Oct 06 - 09:11 PM

Some of those monks were pretty secular. Somewhere in Gibbon you will find an abbot (I think it was) who boasted that his vow of poverty had made him one of the richest men in Europe, and his vow of obedience had made him one of the most powerful. Gibbon commented, "I forget what he did with his vow of chastity".

On that subject, one of those folks' songs begins

Sevit aure spiritus
et arborum come fluunt penitus
in frigore silet cantus nemorum;
dum torpescit ver a solo,
tepet amor pecorum.
Numquam amans sequi volo
vices temporum
bestiali more.

"The breath of the air rages, and all the hair of the trees flows. In the cold the song of the woods is silenced. When spring lies stiff in the ground, the lust of the cattle cools. (But) as a lover I will never follow the changes of the seasons after the manner of beasts."

An unChristian observation, IMO. There is quite a bit of erotic detail in what follows. The only god mentioned is Jupiter.

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 02:51 PM

"[O]ne of the first forms of melodic combination [was] a system in which one melody was paralleled by another melody removed from it by intervals, which were most frequently, but not exclusively, fourths and fifths."
-------
I decided to check this out. You can do it too.

Step up to a keyboard and put your thumb on C. (Use your right hand.) Put another finger on F. (This is a fourth apart.) Now keep your hand in the same postion and move it from note to note, making a simple tune. It will sound ancient. I found that I needed to play a fifth after a while, to end it.

I have heard this called "parallel fourths." Parallel fourths are illegal now. :)

Puttings a fifth apart. (C and G) wasn't as satisfying, but perhaps I need to make up some other tune.

Try it.

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: paddymac
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 09:49 PM

Yes, LTS, it was definitely "water is wide," with the common folk lyrics. There may also have been some non-folky, but by now hoary old "churchy" verses, but I wasn't really paying that much attention to the lyrics after I recognized it. I was more intent of listening for dissonances between the male and female melodies lines. There were places where it sounded "different," but I didn't hear anything that made me wince.

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 09:58 PM

I suspect, getting back to the original question, that the piece may not in fact have been "in 2 separate keys" - the the idea of "parallel harmony" could have confused someone without a lot of musical theory training.

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 11:01 PM

I seem to recall a discussion of quite a lot of "polka music" being often in pretty strict thirds. It's apparently pretty common in some such music for the "first harmony" part to move closely parallel and a third below the "melody" part. In some polkas, it's the two harmony voices that move in strict thirds with each other, usually below the melody.

The "bi-modal" terminology would suggest that both voices are in the same key, but starting on different notes and moving in parallel they would be in two different "modes" within the key.

The objection to the sound shouldn't be that it's strange, but more likely it's pretty boring when one is used to modern harmony in which chords change in regular fashion through a sequence of "strong" chords consonant with the melody(?).

John

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 12:03 AM

Monks were like squirrels... they'd find any piece of music and scribble it down for later consumption, stealing them and filing the serial numbers off. Many an old hymn tune started out as a raunchy folk song.

'Sacred' music = Any music that is part of the Holy Sacrament (Eucharist, Communion, Mass) or refers to a member of the Christian Trinity, or is taken from Holy Scripture.

'Religious' = Any music that praises or narrates all the great things the Trinity has done.

'Secular' = Any music that does not immediately pertain to the Christian religion, usually about pretty fair maids walking in May, what ploughboys get up to and how badly the new landlord is treating you.

LTS - gleaned from ancient notes taken in an RSCM workshop!

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 12:33 AM

"The essence of the harmonic discipline of Bimodalism lies in the simultaneous blending of major and minor modes in triads with the same fundamental root." If this sounds dissonant it's because it is.

Here is more than you ever wanted to know about the subject including a bimodal piece you can download and listen to if you can stand it.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 03:24 AM

Bev and Jerry:

The first sentence of the site you linked -

When I created the harmonic school of Bimodalism in the late 1950s, I thought it should have occurred as a musical discipline before the advent of atonality. But, as we know, it did not.

Sorry, but this is some "genius" who thinks he's invented something new, but has failed to find and understand existing usage of the term. He's welcome to call his **** anything he wants to, but it ain't music to my ears, and it's NOT what those with whom I discussed bimodal music with very early in the 1950s were talking about. Those who demonstrated it to me cited usage a century before 1950.

The reason his stuff sounds like well digested used food is because he's thinking much too hard about how "original" he is. The atonality heard in his sample is strongly influenced by the creaking of his elbows while he's patting himself on his own back in the background.

I think we must look elsewhere for the conventional meaning of bimodal music.

John

Subject: RE: A pleasant musical oddity
From: GUEST,Rowan at the library
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 03:55 AM

Anglo players can do the Lyke Wake Dirge in this manner with buttons from the adjacent rows. But I'd always associated "bimodal" with stats, myself.
Cheers, Rowan