[Giz Bowe:]
>>OK, you're notating a blues in D -- that's D mixolydian. What's your
>>key signature, the standard 2 sharps with an accidental for every C,
>>or 1 sharp to reflect the mode?
[Christopher B. J. Smith:]
>... the one I suggest to my students - the first option you mentioned.
I would think surely the answer to this would depend on whether the music
was conceived modally, or in traditionally major/minor terms (with or without
chromatic modification of notes or chords).
If the overall harmonic context or style suggested that the passage was in
a major key, and used the kinds of harmonic structures that are based on the
major/minor key system, then I might use the appropriate major or minor key
signature, even if some particular accidental which was characteristic of the
passage occurred repeatedly.
However, I can conceive of a musical style which is so inherently based on
various modes, and might switch freely between all the 7 available modes within
a given key signature, that it would just make no logical sense at all to
arbitrarily divide those modes into "major" and "minor" and then use the
matching major or minor key signature.
In reality, there are aren't major or minor modes at all, because the
concept is rather different. If a "major" mode is defined as one with a
preponderance of major (or augmented) intervals in it above the tonic, and a
"minor" mode as one with a preponderance of minor (or diminished) intervals, you
only have "more major" and "less major" (or "more minor") modes - not "major" or
"minor" ones. In other words, it's a spectrum where the modes fall in different
positions - not a major/minor dichotomy where a mode has to be one or the other.
Arranged in order from "most minor" to "most major", the modes would go:
Locrian, Phrygian, Aeolian, Dorian, Mixolydian, Ionian, and Lydian. Where are
you going to put the dividing line between major and minor modes, if you want
two hard categories (for determining the key signature)? Dorian is in fact in
the middle - so it is a major or minor mode? It could just as easily be put in
one category as the other, because its intervallic properties put it exactly
midway between the Locrian and Lydian, which are at the most extreme minor and
major ends of the spectrum. Counting above the tonic, the 3rd and 7th are
minor - but the 2nd and 6th major: major and minor are balanced, seen in terms
of intervallic make-up.
I realize many will consider it minor, based purely on the presence of a
minor 3rd - but this strikes me as very arbitrary indeed. If you decided to use
the 6th instead as the determining interval, Dorian would be major, not minor.
Seen in this way, this comment by Christopher strikes me as simple common
sense:
>it makes sense when one is in a
>mode to use the key signature of the mode, like D minor is the same
>as F major, so C mixolydian should be the same as well, right?
However, Christopher also presents reasoning for using only the major and
minor key signatures:
>But on the other hand, musicians are used to conceiving keys as
>relating to EITHER major or minor ones, right? So any major mode
>would take the key signature of the major KEY with the same tonic (G
>mixo would take one sharp, but use F natural accidentals), and any
>minor mode would take the MINOR key signature (D dorian would take
>one flat, but use b natural accidentals).
But if the music is modally conceived and frequently uses various modes,
this just doesn't make sense. Sure, musicians may be used to conceiving of
music as either major or minor - but if that conception doesn't match the style
of music, one might as well bite the bullet straight away, and move away from
that conception right from the start. If a notational practice is unorthodox or
unexpected, surely that is not an argument against using it, if that notation
merely reflects an unexpected quality inherent in the music. Better use such
notation than to use a conventional style of notation that appears to support a
conception of the music that is not in fact there.
Although one doesn't normally associate Rachmaninov with the modes, there
are in fact several piano Preludes by him which have long stretches of
completely diatonic music, with hardly an accidental for pages at a time, and it
is not difficult to hear modes in many passages. There are various other pieces
in a similar modal style by various other composers - perhaps one of the
best-known is Vaughan Williams' "The Lark Ascending". And it wouldn't be too
difficult to think of many other examples by a wide variety of composers from
the last century or so. (And of course there is old modal music, but I don't
know enough about that to know how key signatures were used there, and whether
music then moved freely from one mode to another.)
In these more recent examples of tonal music, the tonal centre moves around
very fluidly within one diatonic scale (key signature), and does not stay in
just the major or minor key associated with the key signature: in fact, it is
very easy to conceive passages of this music as being in this or that mode. The
complete or near-complete absence of chromatic notes allows modal colour to be
about as obvious as it can possibly be.
So, in music like this, it would certainly be quite nonsensical to change
the key signature of a modal passage to match the major or minor key that would
start on the note that is the tonic for the time being - and then to put in all
the accidentals that would be needed to just include the notes that the original
(modal) key signature would dictate anyway.
Trying to write modal music based on major or minor key signatures, apart
from just not making sense (to me, at least), also rests on the assumption of
classifying modes into major and minor, which I argued against above.
So, in music that is modally conceived, it seems best to me to accept the
modal nature of the music, and use key signatures appropriately to match the
mode.
However, the original question was asking about a type of music that I
would imagine would probably include quite a few accidentals besides the minor
7th (perhaps the odd minor 3rd or diminished 5th also?), which would make it not
fit any particular mode; and I would probably be inclined to use the major key
signature, if the music had a major feel to it, and didn't seem to be based on a
system of different modes.
>And be prepared to argue with some people about it.
... As seems to be the case with most notational practices, no matter how
obvious one method may seem to one. I wonder why people (myself included) get
so passionate about this or that particular convention in notating something,
and at times get quite defensive of their own practice.
Regards,
Michael Edwards.
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
