A question about medieval music

Consider this Perotin composition here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpgaEFmdFcM&feature=related

In today's terminology, and to my ears, this sounds like it's in "E
ionian." The long held note is in E, which to my mind sounds like the
main note or "tonic" or something, and the notes played are E F# G# A
B C# D# E. Then, at about 1:28, they move to G# phrygian, which is the
same notes, and then move back to E major. Then they'll go to
different places later in the piece.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhqWgfGK1Xw

In contrast, this one sounds like it's mainly centered around "Eb
dorian," sometimes with some overtones of aeolian thrown in.

So my question is thus: when I hear this piece, and I say that it's in
E ionian, what's actually going on is that I'm hearing notes, and
subconsciously adding them to some assumed gamut in my mind of notes
played previously, until I end up collating all 7 notes and now I know
it's in ionian. If you don't have AP, I assume that you do something
similar, except instead of pitches it's just with relative scale
degrees and so on.

The specific thing I'm curious about is, when I synthesize all of
these notes being played into the sensation of E ionian, at some point
I also unconsciously figure out that also means it's "major." It has
that major feeling, "happy" or whatever you want to call it, whereas
the second composition has the "minor" feeling, although I might not
necessarily say it's "sad" in the context of this particular
composition - maybe more serious, contemplative, something like that.
But it's definitely minor.

I'm aware that these are not terms that medieval musicians or
composers would use to describe the music they were writing, because
in 1200 AD major and minor weren't even concepts that were invented
yet - people were playing parallel fifths and treating all thirds as
discords that have to resolve. They weren't thinking in terms of
triadic harmony at all, I suppose, but rather dyadically, taking
perfect fifths and moving them around in complex ways that then
reintegrate to a concordant trine at the end.

So do you think that the particular process I mentioned above, where
we as western listeners agglutinate a stream of melodic information
into the background sensation of "major" and "minor" and so on, and
derive some kind of emotional information from that, is something that
simply didn't happen, cognitively, for these listeners? That they just
heard this piece more in each specific moment, without coalescing long
strings of melodic information into some kind of larger harmonic
context? Or is it that they did that, but weren't aware of what was
going on until a few centuries later?

At this point I have a pretty good feeling for how thirds can be
dissonances, but I'm still not sure if this is another aspect of my
perception that differs from that of a medieval listener.

Maybe Margo Schulter, if she's still here, has some insight into this question?

-Mike

Mike,

(disclaimer - personal opinions here)

The answer for your first example I think comes from this part of the video
comment.

"The text comes from verses of Psalm 98 in the Vulgate's Latin (Ps.
98:3b-4a, 2), jubilantly singing of the moment when God's salvation is made
known to all the Earth. (Incidentally, the text naturally seems to call for
such a concord of many voices!) "

So it would seem that indeed the intent was to project "happy" or as the
text says jubilant. Lovely piece btw. The drones are a wonderful unifying
feature.

Mike, from reading the score it would appear that the 2nd one is in C
mixolydian

then at measure 235 there is a cadence on G trine and then it plays with C
mixolydian and C Ionian briefly and ends in G mixolydian.
I must say I love the dissonances that resolve to the 5ths. Nonetheless -
I don't hear this as sad. Its more towards a traveling upbeat bounce
tending majorish.

If you want to talk to Margo I suggest you join the Just Intonation yahoo
group. I don't think she is around these parts often, if at all, any more.

Shame that is.

Chris

On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 8:15 PM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>wrote:

> **
>
>
> Consider this Perotin composition here:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpgaEFmdFcM&feature=related
>
> In today's terminology, and to my ears, this sounds like it's in "E
> ionian." The long held note is in E, which to my mind sounds like the
> main note or "tonic" or something, and the notes played are E F# G# A
> B C# D# E. Then, at about 1:28, they move to G# phrygian, which is the
> same notes, and then move back to E major. Then they'll go to
> different places later in the piece.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhqWgfGK1Xw
>
> In contrast, this one sounds like it's mainly centered around "Eb
> dorian," sometimes with some overtones of aeolian thrown in.
>
> So my question is thus: when I hear this piece, and I say that it's in
> E ionian, what's actually going on is that I'm hearing notes, and
> subconsciously adding them to some assumed gamut in my mind of notes
> played previously, until I end up collating all 7 notes and now I know
> it's in ionian. If you don't have AP, I assume that you do something
> similar, except instead of pitches it's just with relative scale
> degrees and so on.
>
> The specific thing I'm curious about is, when I synthesize all of
> these notes being played into the sensation of E ionian, at some point
> I also unconsciously figure out that also means it's "major." It has
> that major feeling, "happy" or whatever you want to call it, whereas
> the second composition has the "minor" feeling, although I might not
> necessarily say it's "sad" in the context of this particular
> composition - maybe more serious, contemplative, something like that.
> But it's definitely minor.
>
> I'm aware that these are not terms that medieval musicians or
> composers would use to describe the music they were writing, because
> in 1200 AD major and minor weren't even concepts that were invented
> yet - people were playing parallel fifths and treating all thirds as
> discords that have to resolve. They weren't thinking in terms of
> triadic harmony at all, I suppose, but rather dyadically, taking
> perfect fifths and moving them around in complex ways that then
> reintegrate to a concordant trine at the end.
>
> So do you think that the particular process I mentioned above, where
> we as western listeners agglutinate a stream of melodic information
> into the background sensation of "major" and "minor" and so on, and
> derive some kind of emotional information from that, is something that
> simply didn't happen, cognitively, for these listeners? That they just
> heard this piece more in each specific moment, without coalescing long
> strings of melodic information into some kind of larger harmonic
> context? Or is it that they did that, but weren't aware of what was
> going on until a few centuries later?
>
> At this point I have a pretty good feeling for how thirds can be
> dissonances, but I'm still not sure if this is another aspect of my
> perception that differs from that of a medieval listener.
>
> Maybe Margo Schulter, if she's still here, has some insight into this
> question?
>
> -Mike
>
>

On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 9:33 PM, Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...> wrote:
>
> Mike,
>
> (disclaimer - personal opinions here)
>
> The answer for your first example I think comes from this part of the video comment.
>
> "The text comes from verses of Psalm 98 in the Vulgate's Latin (Ps. 98:3b-4a, 2), jubilantly singing of the moment when God's salvation is made known to all the Earth. (Incidentally, the text naturally seems to call for such a concord of many voices!) "
>
> So it would seem that indeed the intent was to project "happy" or as the text says jubilant.  Lovely piece btw. The drones are a wonderful unifying feature.

Sure, but is it major though? Would they have heard it as major? I see
two options

1) there was some sort of background thing that was happening, which
was part of the chaos of beautiful music they were hearing, which
correlates to what we'd now call "being in major," but it hadn't yet
been elevated to the realm of a mentally tangible construct to talk
about
2) the entire feeling of major just wasn't there at all, but maybe it
was still happy for other reasons

> Mike, from reading the score it would appear that the 2nd one is in C mixolydian

I think D aeolian, you mean, which is the same key signature as C mixo
(one flat). The whole piece is sort of halfway between D aeolian and D
dorian - sometimes they flat the 6, sometimes not. I note that when
playing ascending melodic lines they tend to sharpen it, and when
playing descending lines they tend to flatten it. This sharpening
isn't notated but can be confirmed by playing around on the piano that
the top note in the opening line is (concert) Eb F Db Eb Bb Ab Bb -C-
Db, which should be notated D E C D A G A B C, except the notation
leaves the Bb in there. I dunno why.

They're singing it in Eb, though, for whatever reason.

> then at measure 235 there is a cadence on G trine and then it plays with C mixolydian and C Ionian briefly and ends in G mixolydian.
> I must say I love the dissonances that resolve to the 5ths.  Nonetheless - I don't hear this as sad. Its more towards a traveling upbeat bounce tending majorish.

Subjective opinions aside, I hear it as minor. Whether or not the
overall mood of the piece is "sad" is another discussion (I don't
think it is). But I do hear the overall piece as being in minor.

-Mike

Hi Mike,

If you take the tenor clef in the very beginning of the 2nd piece to be
accurate the entire score needs to be transposed down one step.

I think it is reasonable to think there was emotion conveyed regardless of
the name (a rose by any other name...)

The text for the first example is pretty clear. Its hard for me to imagine
what emotion was meant to be felt with the second example's text, though,
being a processional and assuming the modern performers got it right, the
piece is certainly not dirge-like. Its hard for me to understand how you
hear it as minor-ish but that is a very subjective judgement especially for
a time when harmony was barely functional at a cadence let alone the
balance of the piece.

On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 11:06 PM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>wrote:

> **
>
>
>
>

On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 11:23 PM, Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Mike,
>
> If you take the tenor clef in the very beginning of the 2nd piece to be accurate the entire score needs to be transposed down one step.

I think the tenor clef is from some preceding monophonic chant, and
that this is partway through the score. Note the change to treble clef
in the second bar.

> I think it is reasonable to think there was emotion conveyed regardless of the name (a rose by any other name...)
>
> The text for the first example is pretty clear. Its hard for me to imagine what emotion was meant to be felt with the second example's text, though, being a processional and assuming the modern performers got it right, the piece is certainly not dirge-like. Its hard for me to understand how you hear it as minor-ish but that is a very subjective judgement especially for a time when harmony was barely functional at a cadence let alone the balance of the piece.

The overall vibe of the piece isn't dirge-like at all. Minor itself
doesn't necessarily mean "dirge-like" or even "sad," which is why I
deliberately didn't use that term. But my point is, whatever overall
mode or vibe you get out of it, it does sound "minor" to me, because
the root is Eb and they repeatedly sing a Gb in the scale.

The whole thing isn't in minor. At 1:18, they move to what sounds like
the III chord and start playing in what sounds like Ionian, and it
sounds exuberant and playful for a bit until going back to the more
focused meditative sound. This is probably different terminology than
what should be used to describe this music, but that's how it sounds
to my ears.

And I'm asking if the feeling that "being in minor" produces is
something that medieval listeners would also have experienced, or if
it results from a lower-level cognitive procedure that they hadn't
established.

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> Sure, but is it major though? Would they have heard it as major? I see
> two options
>
> 1) there was some sort of background thing that was happening, which
> was part of the chaos of beautiful music they were hearing, which
> correlates to what we'd now call "being in major," but it hadn't yet
> been elevated to the realm of a mentally tangible construct to talk
> about
> 2) the entire feeling of major just wasn't there at all, but maybe it
> was still happy for other reasons

I *think* I understand perfectly what you're asking, and it's a fascinating question.

> I think D aeolian, you mean, which is the same key signature as C mixo
> (one flat). The whole piece is sort of halfway between D aeolian and D
> dorian - sometimes they flat the 6, sometimes not. I note that when
> playing ascending melodic lines they tend to sharpen it, and when
> playing descending lines they tend to flatten it. This sharpening
> isn't notated but can be confirmed by playing around on the piano that
> the top note in the opening line is (concert) Eb F Db Eb Bb Ab Bb -C-
> Db, which should be notated D E C D A G A B C, except the notation
> leaves the Bb in there. I dunno why.

I agree with Mike 100% that it's in the mode with the modern name D dorian (with some Bb's making it aeolian sometimes). For medieval music you could just say it's in D, though, because they never used too many accidentals. There were really just 8 pitches (other than melismatic microtones) they ever used - the 7 unaltered letters plus Bb. Look up "guidonian hand" and "musica ficta" for more info.

I also think that in a lot of notation they didn't distinguish at all between B and Bb. You were just supposed to know, based on avoiding tritones, or simply whichever seemed to fit better.

> They're singing it in Eb, though, for whatever reason.

Almost certainly just because none of them have (very accurate) AP and they don't care. When I sang some medieval music in a college club, we would never use a pitch pipe or tuning fork or anything. The professor would just be like "ok, the first note is F. Somebody give us an F to use" and we'd start that way. I'm sure it was way off sometimes.

My personal guess about the overall question is that people of that time did hear different emotions in the different modes, that more or less vaguely correspond to our modern impressions. It's just that there were 6 or 7 different, independent ones rather than two big families "major" and "minor".

Keenan

On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 02:00, Keenan Pepper <keenanpepper@...> wrote:
>
> I agree with Mike 100% that it's in the mode with the modern name D dorian
> (with some Bb's making it aeolian sometimes). For medieval music you could
> just say it's in D, though, because they never used too many accidentals. There
> were really just 8 pitches (other than melismatic microtones) they ever used -
> the 7 unaltered letters plus Bb. Look up "guidonian hand" and "musica ficta" for
> more info.

Yes, in particular the (unquoted) part that you were "just supposed to
know" about certain notes, based on context; check out Margo
Schulter's fantastic overview of medieval hexachords, which is the
main source of my (still-weak) understanding of all this.

http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/harmony/hex.html

I have a sense that uncarefully casting our understanding in terms of
modern mode names and concepts could mislead our thinking about how
categories were "deployed" in a medieval context -- not that those
analyses are wrong or can't be used in deepening a modern
understanding of harmony.

I'd also wager a guess that talking about consonance and resolution as
"dyadic" misses the fullness of the trine concept, specifically the
importance of the octave as a consonance within that context. Again,
not that it's wrong, but it seems to recast something in a modern
terminological mold. Maybe our concept of octave equivalence was
perceived differently in that worldview? The solmization system in the
above-linked article suggests as much to me.

/jc

just to be clear - I said the 2nd piece was NOT dirge like.

I disagree on the interpretation of the preceding polyphonic tenor clefs,
but I'm dropping the discussion and leaving this reference - YMMV.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clef

On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 11:42 PM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>wrote:

> **
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 11:23 PM, Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Mike,
> >
> > If you take the tenor clef in the very beginning of the 2nd piece to be
> accurate the entire score needs to be transposed down one step.
>
> I think the tenor clef is from some preceding monophonic chant, and
> that this is partway through the score. Note the change to treble clef
> in the second bar.
>
>
>
> And I'm asking if the feeling that "being in minor" produces is
> something that medieval listeners would also have experienced, or if
> it results from a lower-level cognitive procedure that they hadn't
> established.
>
> -Mike
>
>
>
>

On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 2:14 PM, Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...> wrote:
>
> just to be clear - I said the 2nd piece was NOT dirge like.
>
> I disagree on the interpretation of the preceding polyphonic tenor clefs, but I'm dropping the discussion and leaving this reference - YMMV.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clef

I know what a tenor clef is, but what does this have to do with this
piece? The tenor clef changes into a treble clef in the second bar,
and everything after that is in treble clef.

-Mike

The way I read it was that the original score was in tenor clef and was transcribed to 8va below treble clef. I thought it would be most unusual for music from that period to use 8va below treble clef.

That's all. It was just an observation. Not that important to me.

Chris
*

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@gmail.com>
Sender: tuning@yahoogroups.com
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2012 14:46:09
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Reply-To: tuning@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [tuning] A question about medieval music

On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 2:14 PM, Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> just to be clear - I said the 2nd piece was NOT dirge like.
>
> I disagree on the interpretation of the preceding polyphonic tenor clefs, but I'm dropping the discussion and leaving this reference - YMMV.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clef

I know what a tenor clef is, but what does this have to do with this
piece? The tenor clef changes into a treble clef in the second bar,
and everything after that is in treble clef.

-Mike