Hi Jon, as I seem to remember, we're having dealt with this topic several times, already, as a quick search in the LSA archives will show. Therefore, I shall try to put it short and as clear as I can. All of this has nothing to do with temperaments and/or Pythagorean comma (like low major thirds differing from high diminished fourths or so).
First, when I talk about modes in late medieval and in renaissance music, I'm talking about certain melodic patterns (not keys, not scales). In general, there are eight modes, with the 1st and 2nd centred in Re, 3rd and 4th centred in Mi, 5th and 6th centred in Fa, and 7th and 8th centred in Sol. E. g. when listening to a piece in the 1st mode, you will soon be able to tell it by the movement of the tenor or descant, if there is, which ascends in the first few bars from Re to Sol. Lines in the 2nd mode have small movements that usually lurk around Re and Fa and a few tones below Re. You don't need to know key or pitch or scale (there are many pieces in a transposed 1st mode), just the habitual movements of the modes are enough. Second, how do you know which tone is which? You can tell it by the half steps, aka Mi-Fa. Mi-Fa works as a means of defining the quality, or referential position, of the tones of a line. E. g. the initial motive of O When the Saints can be described as Ut - Mi - Fa - Sol. How do you know? By the half step between the 2nd and 3rd tones. Now, when a piece developes, lines will sometimes transcend the range of their initial hexachord, or the composer wishes to define a new centre. Each time, the new centre has to be defined in order to make clear where you are (mutation). Definition is most often done by means of Mi-Fa, so audiences can tell. What was B may in the next bar be B flat, or vice versa. And that is how ascending lines may differ from descending lines. There is a famous song by John Dowland, Lasso Mia Vita, in which he made fun of singers who were not educated enough to actively know and apply the differences. Mi Fa Morire (makes me die) reads a line that is repeated several times on different levels, and guess what happens in the melody. -- Viele Gr��e Mathias Mathias Roesel, Grosze Annenstrasze 5, 28199 Bremen, Deutschland/ Germany, Tel. +49 - 421 - 165 49 97, Fax +49 1805 060 334 480 67, E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] , [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
