Recapitulation

September 11, 1997

A Few things about MODES. Medieval church modes and their ancient Greek names; the confusion resulting in old names for "new" modes. In antiquity, the concept of mode involved:

a scale
an ethos (mood) attached to it
a collection of melodic formulae typical for a certain mode

Diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic modes (tetrachords). The enharmonic type involved intervals different/smaller then the semitone. The tuning system.

Pope Gregory the Great organized/systematized the Western liturgy and chant following the Byzantine model. That model has survived in the Eastern Orthodox liturgy and influenced to some extent the folk music of Eastern Europe. Bartok as one of the first composers to study as an ethnomusicolog the folklore of that region.

General characteristics of the East European folklore.

Pitch materials
- Diatonic modes similar to Western church modes and to Byzantine modes
- Chromatic alterations possible
  - some sounds can appear both altered and not altered
  - same sound can have different alterations in different octaves.
- The more recent the music, the better chance to be in major or minor (under the influence of Western culture)
- Pentatonic layer
- Pre-pentatonic scales
Rhythmic materials
- Three rhythmic systems:
  - Divisionary (same as Western music, newer melodies). Divides a larger value into fractions.
  - Additive or aksak or Bulgarian rhythms (e.g. 2+3+2). Groups together fast pulsations into larger units. Frequent in dance music.
  - Parlando-rubato. Recitation, free flowing ~like. Encountered in lyric laments.
Textures different from traditional Western music
- heterophony: the simultaneous presentation of two or more variants of the same line (also used extensively by Enescu and Boulez)
- ison or pedal tone under a unwiding melody.

Most of these characteristics are going to be used by Bartok, Stravinsky and by composers of more recent music. Three Pieces for String Quartet (first piece) by Stravinsky (on reserve) used as an example. The work involves: ison, pre-pentatonic scales and an aksak type meter. Based on four ostinati of unequal length, it creates a "static", non-developmental type of music, extremely original for the year 1914 when it was composed.