Back to AtD. Music of the Spheres-- Not

[Phillip Greenlief]

Thanks, Philip.  Good, thorough explanation.  

Maybe you could comment on something else. if, in the Medieval Lydian,  the #4 was often avoided  even though proper to the mode  (the devil thing of the AtD passage),  does this mean that the unsharped 4 would also have to be avoided in order to keep the composition from dropping out of the mode.  In other words, what's the without which nothing to qualify for Lydian?

P 


thanks, paul.

let me begin by clarifying that when i say this note was "banned", i'm talking about church music in europe ... as most of you probably know, the central focus of composers before the baroque period was composing music for church services .. sure, there were lots of pithy little madrigals and fanfares for the royal courts, but most euro composers like frescobaldi, lasso, josquin, and the rest were mainly focused on writng mass and motets ... for the church.

but india, japan, and many other countries? different scales, diiferent systems of organizing tonal material, different cultural aesthetics.

in other words, outside of europe this particular note (the tritone, or #4, b5) was used in abundance ...

back to your question, if you "unsharp" the 4, then you are left with a major scale ... which was used frequently.

a lot of the medeival composers were using something that today is termed "modal counterpoint)" ... so these modes were in use and gave flavor to the music.

the truth is, we speculate quite a lot when we discuss this. musica ficta is the first known "textbook" on tonal harmony, and that text doesn't arrive until the end of the rennaissance, beginning of the baroque period. even early music specialists (must) admit that they are interpreting scores from medeival and rennaissance composers. this is especially true when you talk about the music of ancient greece ... you see recordings of ancient greek compositions, but what you don't really see is a statement from the performers admitting that they are guessing what these ancient texts (scores) really mean. 
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