Great vid! Thanks so much for sharing! Did you stopped your composition-series? I really like to hear more. Did you write any books about composition? Greetings from Germany! Sandra
So.. why in the heck would they start the scales on notes that have no emphasis....? I mean everything is circular anyway so why have hypo Lydian for example start on C if C is not an emphasis? Sounds fishy...
"Everything is circular anyway" They're not. In strict medieval Gregorian chant, melodic phrases are at most an octave wide, and usually only a seventh wide. In the authentic Lydian mode, F G A B(b) C D E F, the lowest your melody will go is the finalis F at the end. The highest is an octave above F, but that's uncommon; usually it's just E or D. So in the authentic Lydian mode, there are effectively no more notes below F. Meanwhile, in the plagal Hypolydian, there are more notes below the finalis, three of them. So now your melody can move farther below the finalis, but can no longer move above C. That's why the scale starts on unimportant notes, because those unimportant notes are at the edges of your singers' ranges. Keep in mind these are vocal melodies, and the singers at the time weren't too skilled (in fact in these old texts you see the monk music theorists complaining about them all the time). And the purpose of musical instruments was pretty much just accompaniment at this point, playing along to the melody of a singer. So in other words, if you wrote a melody an octave wide or more, it'd be very likely that no one would ever sing it. Also keep in mind that these rules were written by music theorists to classify a chaotic pile of melodies they needed to sort. The composers just came up with melodies that sounded nice (and that their singers could sing). Music theorists tried to fit those melodies into a logical ruleset, and the same has been true for the entire history of music theory, from Pythagorean tuning to medieval church modes to atonal music analysis.
In practice it doesn't always work that way, but theory is never 100% applicable to practice. That's also why traditional neume staves have only 4 lines instead of the modern day 5. The range is unlikely to require more lines.
@@fakename8850 As long as the root note remains the same, it's still the same scale no matter what the singer's range is. It's like inverting a chord. Same chord, different note position.
![Demonstrating All 7 Modes in Parallel [MODAL MUSIC THEORY]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bwaeBUYcO5o/mqdefault.jpg)
thamks sir now I make medieval HARD DANCE
I think it's great to have Medieval Modes taught by someone who was actually there.
yeah... the plague was rough.... but I made it.
Thank you for the kind words. I haven't delved into playing Medieval Music - which would be fascinating, methinks!
Regards,
paige
Where is the next video? Link?
Where can I go online to download this as a pdf file?
Maybe something more about playing medieval music? This video was so helpfull! :)
Thx Mr.G your videos help a lot
Great vid! Thanks so much for sharing! Did you stopped your composition-series? I really like to hear more. Did you write any books about composition? Greetings from Germany! Sandra
I wish I know some music theory so that I could actually make sense of this scientific work!
great vid next part?
So.. why in the heck would they start the scales on notes that have no emphasis....? I mean everything is circular anyway so why have hypo Lydian for example start on C if C is not an emphasis? Sounds fishy...
"Everything is circular anyway"
They're not. In strict medieval Gregorian chant, melodic phrases are at most an octave wide, and usually only a seventh wide. In the authentic Lydian mode, F G A B(b) C D E F, the lowest your melody will go is the finalis F at the end. The highest is an octave above F, but that's uncommon; usually it's just E or D. So in the authentic Lydian mode, there are effectively no more notes below F. Meanwhile, in the plagal Hypolydian, there are more notes below the finalis, three of them. So now your melody can move farther below the finalis, but can no longer move above C. That's why the scale starts on unimportant notes, because those unimportant notes are at the edges of your singers' ranges.
Keep in mind these are vocal melodies, and the singers at the time weren't too skilled (in fact in these old texts you see the monk music theorists complaining about them all the time). And the purpose of musical instruments was pretty much just accompaniment at this point, playing along to the melody of a singer. So in other words, if you wrote a melody an octave wide or more, it'd be very likely that no one would ever sing it.
Also keep in mind that these rules were written by music theorists to classify a chaotic pile of melodies they needed to sort. The composers just came up with melodies that sounded nice (and that their singers could sing). Music theorists tried to fit those melodies into a logical ruleset, and the same has been true for the entire history of music theory, from Pythagorean tuning to medieval church modes to atonal music analysis.
so that scale is a specific range they are confined to? the plot thickens...
In practice it doesn't always work that way, but theory is never 100% applicable to practice.
That's also why traditional neume staves have only 4 lines instead of the modern day 5. The range is unlikely to require more lines.
Luke Martin T
@@fakename8850 As long as the root note remains the same, it's still the same scale no matter what the singer's range is. It's like inverting a chord. Same chord, different note position.
Just learn the Modes. No need to add Hypo. Cool as a history example I guess.