Musica practica #1: Another Look at the Musical Tones (Modes)
A=440
75 minutes
All instruments/voices (incl. texted music) and levels of experience welcome, however prior familiarity with solmization and the hexachord system is a plus.
This two-class workshop will begin with a review of what defines each tone (mode) and how to identify the tone of a single melodic line or an entire polyphonic composition. Solmization and the arrangement of whole-tones and semitones is key to understanding the structure of each tone, so we will spend time solmizing and making sure not to confuse our mis with our fas!
The second class will then go further to investigate modal affinities and the transmutability of tone. For example, how does the character of a tune change if it is interpreted in tone 1 (Dorian mode) or tone 7 (Mixolydian mode), for example? L'homme armé is perfectly at home whether in "minor" (tone 1) or "major" (tone 7). What if one version of a song is in tone 1 but another is in tone 5 (Lydian mode)? We will experiment with these modal shifts, looking at monophonic and polyphonic examples, culminating in excerpts from Johannes Ockeghem’s Missa cuiusvis toni (“Mass in any tone you like”).