Bruce Olson wrote: > I had assumed that use of key-mode specification in ABC came in > only through a bit of misguided fuzzy logic. Figuring out how to > describe something completely in the minimum number of independent > parameters isn't always straightforward.
As others have pointed out, the description of a tune purely by key signature isn't complete unless you are using equal temperament; you don't know the exact pitches of the notes unless you know the mode. Secondly, if you consider what *else* the modal system lets you do, it economizes on the overall number of concepts required. The lattice- theoretic operations implicit in the Campbell-Collinson scheme for describing gapped scales (as I use on my website) mean you can name a whole bunch of modes simply as the lattice meet of existing ones; no need to memorize umpteen unrelated names as in the Bronson scheme (I doubt I will *ever* be able to remember what pi-3 is without looking it up in a book). >>> Notation can be unambiguously satisfied by giving the number >>> of sharps or flats on the key signature; It doesn't require any >>> interpretation of keynote or mode to do that. >> That wasn't the way the major Scottish nineteenth century anthologists >> thought. Look at the Glen Collection and you see a section "Tunes in >> B Minor". Even the Gows included mode indications in their own odd way. > What way? I just went through the 6 vols. of 'Strathspey Reels' and I > didn't see such. See "Delven Side", p.15 of the Complete Repository volume 1. It's in E dorian, described as "In E<natural> with <flat> 3d." Bryan Creer quotes from: http://www.standingstones.com/modeharm.html >> It was not until the early 20th century that researchers in traditional >> music realized that traditional music used Renaissance modes. You find them used explicitly, attached to each relevant tune, in John Davidson of Aberdeen's "National Gems for the Violin", a very interesting collection published by Mozart Allan in Glasgow around 1900, before any of the English folk song collectors had anything in print. They had been used sporadically before, even by Scott Skinner, who was otherwise about as Victorian in outlook as you can get. The English folklorists were simply adopting a scheme which had been in continuous use for describing Scottish traditional music ever since Tytler's treatise in the eighteenth century. >> 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?" > The point being that the "ignorant peasants" were perfectly capable of > singing their songs without knowing anything about modes. The modes were > applied as decriptive classifications after the fact by middle class > folklorists who were just the sort of classical musicians that some of the > most dedicated supporters of modes on this list seem to despise. I think you'll find that any expressions of despisal are directed at exactly the same people Vaughan Williams was taking the piss out of in that quote. What was new about his use of the scheme was that academic attitudes to English traditional music did not give it credit for having an autonomous intellectual structure, as had been done before for Scottish and Irish music. Using the modal scheme countered attitudes that said flattened sevenths in major tunes had to be mistakes. With that background, there is no real distinction between a notation and descriptive classification; people who think all the sevenths in a tune are wrong aren't going to transcribe it right. The modal system led to much higher standards of accuracy in print collections of English music, and allowed people to notate tunes that would have previously been dismissed as gibberish. > Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams don't seem to have convinced the > English Folk Dance and Song Society who never seem to use modes in their > published music. See Lloyd's preface to the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs (which the EFDSS owns the rights to, and which is where the author of that website probably got the above quote from before mangling it). Because all the tunes in that book end on the tonic, the information he gives identifies each mode as precisely as is needed. You are left in no doubt at all of how the Greek modes work, and how to apply them to each tune, if you read the whole thing. This was probably the single most influential book of the entire British folk revival, and pretty much all folk guitarists now working can trace some aspect of their style to RVW & ALL's analysis of these tunes. John Walsh wrote: [on the intonation of the bagpipe scale] > Seumas MacNeill published a scale he measured from some top > professional players of that time---that would have been in the late > sixties or early seventies, I think, and I wish I could remember the > reference--- 1954-1961. There is a reference in Collinson's "Bagpipe, Fiddle and Harp" (which gives a not-very-helpful summary) to MacNeill's "Piobaireachd" (BBC Publications, 1968). > and I'm told the scale has changed since, not only in pitch---up from > A to Bb now--- It hasn't been as low as A for nearly 100 years. I've played with a guy in a session who was using his grandfather's practice chanter, from before WW1; it was nearly down to A flat before he tweaked it. Recently some bands have been going above B flat (sounds horrible). > but that the intonation of the scale itself has changed, possibly from > a need to play with brass bands, possibly because of a change in the > audience's ear. Playing with brass bands doesn't happen often enough to affect much, and is probably less common now than it used to be. Intonation has always been variable; I don't think recent changes have been in any systematic direction. =================== <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> =================== To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
