Modulation

[stevel]

To me it's plain II until the V degree has been affirmed (if at all) as I. Has nothing to do with contemporary pop. I learned it as the "Supertonic Chromatic" triad so... II, because it by no means forces a modulation - it can go straight on to V7 or Ic (6/4) in C, or other chords.

It may be to you, but not to a great number of other people. And a chord labelled V/X is not forcing a modulation. It simply shows that chord is tonicizing X.

Cheers,
Steve

[crimson]

A lot of good information in this thread. Thanks a lot to everyone for replies. I've really had a few 'aha!' moments reading all of this. I always wondered why classical music doesn't use modes, but maybe the modulation problems are the reason. I'm really starting to understand this whole modulation thingy. But I'd like to ask, does film-music use modes (and therefore avoid the common chord mod)? I've never seen the key mentioned in a film-music piece's name, and I've also never seen a film-music score, so I can't tell.

reith: No need to remove those Roman/chord markings in your posts, I should learn them out anyway And I think I'm already starting to understand this stuff.

[reith]

Originally Posted by crimson

....I always wondered why classical music doesn't use modes, but maybe the modulation problems are the reason.

Partly the reason although there's no reason why modes shouldn't modulate in a modern setting - the problem is losing sense of the mode if you start altering notes.
In traditional times like the renaissance, true, the music rarely modulates/changes mode, instead harmonising on a closely related progression, like the dorian and aeolian could move to their degree 3 (sounding like a minor to relative major modulation and back). You still get a semblance of that in (modern) minor keys when modulating to the relative major.
(Major and Minor scales are still called modes these days, by the way)
You'll find classical music that uses modes - Holst's Choral Symphony comes to mind and lots of Vaughan William's stuff is modal even if he uses the modes pretty loosely.

...But I'd like to ask, does film-music use modes (and therefore avoid the common chord mod)? I've never seen the key mentioned in a film-music piece's name, and I've also never seen a film-music score, so I can't tell.

My guess is you'll find modes in film music if the mood/film genre calls for it. Film music uses what it must! I've never seen a key against a film score nor on a suite based on a score. I was browsing through a full score of Bernstein's West Side Story recently and that had lots of key changes but no mention of key in the title.

reith: No need to remove those Roman/chord markings in your posts, I should learn them out anyway And I think I'm already starting to understand this stuff.

Thanks. Yes, they are useful because they abstract music away from specific keys, as ttw said.

[stevel]

I always wondered why classical music doesn't use modes, but maybe the modulation problems are the reason.

Well let's say that modulation couldn't exist without keys.

I mean, think of it this way: Every Major scale has the same pattern W W H W W W H right? This is why we have 12 unique keys. In Modal music, there was no concept of key - in the sense that Dorian was on D, and Phrygian was on E, and the Plagal modes had their respective starting pitches (Final). There were "transposed" modes - in fact, that's what they call them because really it's treated like a transposition - in other words, an original form of a mode wouldn't be seen with a transposed version of itself - so it's not like they "modulated". They simply transposed. And while the key of G is a "transposition" of C, when we encounter them in the same piece there's an implied or inferred relationship between the two.

So when early modal people wanted to "change the tonic", they'd move the Final to a different pitch level, thus Dorian would mutate into Lydian.

does film-music use modes (and therefore avoid the common chord mod)? I've never seen the key mentioned in a film-music piece's name, and I've also never seen a film-music score, so I can't tell

Crimson - you need to get out more :-). OK, film music started being written in the sound age (1929 onward). By then Schoenberg had already used 12 tone music. "Film Music" uses all kinds of resources - it may be tonal, it may be "modern tonal", it may be Jazz, it may be modal, it may be atonal - and even various things can be used - in Star Wars the main theme is pretty tonal. The Imperial Theme is parallel minor triads - not tonal, but not unlike Holst. The Sandpeople music is a pretty direct rip-off of Stravinsky and Bartok. And so on.

And since , oh, I don't know, roughly 1850 it's really not been fashionable to put the name of the key in a piece (only those who are stuck in the past or doing it as an homage do it). In fact, even composers like Beethoven didn't put the key in the title all the time. They just wrote "Sonata",and let the publisher put in the key. Debussy didn't write "La Mer in C" or "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun in Bb". "Bolero in F"? "Don Giovanni in Ab"? "Invention #1 in G" - people didn't always put the keys on pieces. That's something modern people who haven't really looked at any music and history do because they think they're supposed to.

So yes, Film music does use modes - among other things. Check out Bernard Hermann's score for Hitchcocks "Vertigo". Vertigo if you don't know is a condition of dizziness or the room spinning. To evoke this, Hermann used two Whole Tone scales moving in opposite directions IIRC. Decinitely not "In C".

Best,
Steve

[stevel]

although there's no reason why modes shouldn't modulate in a modern setting - the problem is losing sense of the mode if you start altering notes.

I think one would find it much easier to modulate from the same mode to the same mode - like D dorian to A dorian. In essence, that's not too different from moving from D Major to A major.

But here's a tip from classical music parlance: While most people today call C to Cm a "key change", it's not really. Classical theorists call it a "change of mode" (mode in this case means "type"). So since the Tonal Center - C - has not changed, it's called a change of mode.

Therefore moving to A Dorian from A Mixolydian would do the same thing. You wouldn't really modulate - you'd just start using some different notes while the "tonic" stays the same.

The tricky part comes in if you're trying to "modulate" from C Mix to Bb Dorian or something. The problem, without key-based tonality, you've got to etablish two new things - the tonal center and the mode (you only have to establish one new thing in tonal music - the new key, or the change of mode).

In traditional times like the renaissance, true, the music rarely modulates/changes mode, instead harmonising on a closely related progression, like the dorian and aeolian could move to their degree 3 (sounding like a minor to relative major modulation and back). You still get a semblance of that in (modern) minor keys when modulating to the relative major.

Yes, that's definitely a precursor of a tonal function.

(Major and Minor scales are still called modes these days, by the way)

Right - but in this case it means "version" - the Major mode, the minor mode, etc.

You'll find classical music that uses modes - Holst's Choral Symphony comes to mind and lots of Vaughan William's stuff is modal even if he uses the modes pretty loosely.

Well, there's a complete re-discovery of modes in the 20th century and a bit before. Debussy is certainly a primary example. But with the rise of Nationalism (Grieg, Sibelius, Mussorgsky, Vaughn Williams, Dvorak, etc.) you see a lot of folk music melodies begin to get used - most of which are modal in nature. The Russian Orthodox church still had a very strong Chant tradition that remained relatively unchanged and that influenced the Russian composers long after such influence had largely (largely, not completely) died out in continental Europe.

Even Beethoven has a movement in one of his string 4tets subtitled "In the Lydian Mode" (though his use of it is really a "classicalization" of modality).

Many of Bach's chorales are much more modal than people think. There are a lot of Phrygian and Mixolydian chorales. When most modern students of tonality look at them they can't figure out why they seem to end in the wrong key or on the V chord!

Steve