ATDTDA (33) - p. 939-42 Balkan music

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Espionage conducted under the cover of Balkan musicology?  The WWI "prequel" to The Lady Vanishes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_Vanishes_(1938_film)

A free Crocodile to anyone who can identify the scale of the hummed tune in that movie.

I asked my son, who's going for a dual degree in musicology and mathematics at Northwestern [excuse the parental preening] to comment on this section.  Here's his response:

The scale modes were of central importance to ancient Greek music
theory -- the four that were used were dorian, e to e; phrygian, d
to d; lydian, c to c  (the same as the modern major scale); and
mixolydian, b to b, which is what we now call locrian -- the least
used mode in European-based western music, which Pynchon mentions in
Gravity's Rainbow.  During the early middle ages, European music
theorists used the idea of the Greek scale modes to analyze Gregorian
chants.  Unfortunately, when they transcribed the modes from the
Greek system of notation to theirs, they kind of mixed them up, which
wasn't revealed until somewhat recently. In European music, dorian
is d to d, phrygian is e to e, lydian f to f and mixolydian g to g.
during the Renaissance, the modes were especially valued because
A)the connection to ancient Greece and B) the Greeks had associated
the modes with different emotions, and European music was, beginning
in the early sixteenth century, concerned with expressing emotion for
the first time.  Supposedly Alexander the Great once rose up in the
middle of a meal and made preparations for war after hearing a
'phrygian' tune... which is what we now refer to as dorian.  The
Greeks considered the greatest mode to be dorian... or what we now
consider to be phrygian.  Lydian is the most distant from phrygian in
terms of its sound.

wikipedia on the flatted vs. natural B:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_(music)

(see the History section):

"As polyphony became more complex, notes other than B needed to be altered in order to avoid undesirable harmonic or melodic intervals (especially the augmented 4th, or tritone, that music theory writers referred to as "diabolus in musica", i.e. "the devil in music"). The first sharp in use was F, then came the second flat E, then C, G, etc.; by the 16th century B, E, A, D, G and F, C, G, D and A were all in use to a greater or lesser extent."

TRP's being facetious about the natural B being forbidden.  If anyone knows otherwise, speak up.  

Eugenie Lineff (Eugenia Lineva) (1854-1919): a Russian emigre living in the US published a scholarly work on Russian folk music, Russian Folk Songs as Sung By the People and Peasant Wedding Ceremonies Customary in Northern and Central Russia.

Hjalmar Thuren:  Danish musicologist who recorded Faroese folk music in 1902.

http://www.framtak.com/fo_music/flugvandi.html

These folks are as obscure as the music they collected.  TRP collects and preserves them accordingly.

Laura