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The New Dictionary of Music and Musicians The New GROVE Dictionary of Music and Musicians EDITED BY Stanley Sadie 12 Meares - M utis London, 1980 376 Moda Harold Powers Mode (from Lat. modus: 'measure', 'standard'; 'manner', 'way'). A term in Western music theory with three main applications, all connected with the above meanings of modus: the relationship between the note values longa and brevis in late medieval notation; interval, in early medieval theory; most significantly, a concept involving scale type and melody type. The term 'mode' has always been used to designate classes of melodies, and in this century to designate certain kinds of norm or model for composition or improvisation as well. Certain pheno­ mena in folksong and in non-Western music are related to this last meaning, and are discussed below in §§IV and V. The word is also used in acoustical parlance to denote a particular pattern of vibrations in which a system can oscillate in a stable way; see SOUND, §5. I. The term. II. Medieval modal theory. III. Modal theo­ ries and polyphonic music. IV. Modal scales and folk­ song melodies. V. Mode as a musicological concept. I. The term I. Mensural notation. 2. Interval. 3. Scale or melody type. I. MENSURAL NOTATION. In this context the term 'mode' has two applications. First, it refers in general to the proportional durational relationship between brevis and /onga: the modus is perfectus (sometimes major) when the relationship is 3: l, imperfectus (sometimes minor) when it is 2 : I. (The attributives major and minor are more properly used with modus to distinguish the rela­ tion of /onga to maxima from the relation of brevis to longa, respectively.) In the earliest stages of mensural notation, the so­ called Franconian notation, 'modus' designated one of five to seven fixed arrangements of longs and breves in particular rhythms, called by scholars rhythmic modes. In these stylized patterns both long and breve could have two possible durations: if the shortest breve is assigned the value l, the breve could be l or 2, the long 2 or 3; for example: B L + B L (12 + 12), L + L (3 + 3), B B + L (12 + 3) and B B B + B B B (l l l + l l l). See also NOTATION, §III, 2(vii), 3, and RHYmMIC MODES. 2. INTERVAL. Hucbald (c840-930) listed nine 'modes' in his De harmonica, ranging from semitone to major 6th by semitonal increments, giving examples from the chant repertory for each (GS, i, 105). His discussion was transmitted verbatim through Bemo of Reichenau (d 1048; GS, ii, 64). In chapter 4 of his Micrologus (cl026) Guido of Arezzo gave six 'modes' 'by which the scale degrees are linked' from the semitone to the 5th with the exception of the tritone. He then mentioned an expansion to eight, adding the major and minor 6ths, and to nine, including the octave. Wilhelm of Hirsau (d 1091; GS, ii, l73t) reported both traditions - Guido's six 'modes' and Bemo's nine- replacing the word 'modes' with 'intervals', and he added examples from plainchant for the minor 7th and the unison. (Further references to early traditions for modus meaning 'interval' may be found in Vivell's edn. of Frutolfus of Michelsberg's Breviarium, p.64, n. l l.) The designation of interval by modus was repeated in manuals and treatises of later times, especially in Germany. In book l of Ornitho­ parchus's Musicae activae micrologus (1517) chapter 7 is entitled 'De modis seu intervallis', which in Dowland's translation of 1609 became 'Of Moodes, or Intervals'. As late as 1716 J. H. Buttstett, objecting Mode, §I, 3: The term Scale or melody type 377 to calling the unison an interval, repeated an old given wide currency in the English-speaking world tradition that 'The unison is not a mode but rather the when it was taken over by Reese for his Music in the first foundation of other modes, as [is] unity of the Middle Ages (1940, p.10): 'A MODE ... is composed of numbers' (Vt, mi, sol, re.fa, la, p.29). a number of MOTIVES (i.e. short music figures or groups of tones) within a certain scale'. In Winnington­ 3. SCALE OR MELODY TYPE. It is essential to distinguish Ingram's Mode in Ancient Greek Music (1936) both the between 'mode' as a concept in the history and theory of scalar and the melodic aspects of mode are summarized, European music and 'mode' as a modern musicological in a broad geographical and cultural context that concept, though the latter naturally grew out of the includes both the historical Western definition and the former. As an indigenous term in Western music theory then new aspects proposed by Western scholars of the term is applicable in three separate successive his­ Eastern music: torical stages: to Gregorian chant, to Renaissance Mode is essentially a question of the internal relationships of notes polyphony, and to tonal harmonic music of the 17th within a scale, especially of the predominance of one of them over the century to the 19th. These three stages of modality in others as a tonic, its predominance being established in any or all of a European music were historically continuous in the number of ways: e.g., frequent recurrence. its appearance in a prominent position as the first note or the last, the delaying of its expected occur­ higher levels of a single musical culture. rence by some kind of embellishment. [p.2] The nucleus of the concept of mode in its basic Mode may be defined as the epitome of stylized song, of song stylized in Western form may be illustrated in two early 11th­ a particular district or people or occupation; and it draws its character century Italian formulations: 'A tone or mode is a rule partly from associations contracted in its native home, reinforced per­ which distinguishes every chant in its final [scale haps by the sanctions of mythology. This is true of the Chinese tyao, the Indian rag, and the Arabian maqam: and probably of the [ancient] degree]' (Dialogus de musica, GS, i, 257); and 'The first Greek [harmonia]. [p.3] degree A and the fourth, D, are alike and are designated "of a single mode" because both have a tone beneath and To the terms above, for which 'mode' is used as a trans­ [have] tone-semitone-tone-tone above. And this is the lation, should be added 'echos', used in medieval Greek first "similarity in the scale degrees", that is, the first Christian music theory to describe the direct model for mode' (Guido: Epistola de ignoto cantu, GS, ii, 47). The what became the mode of Gregorian chant theory. To famous definition from the anonymous Dialogus the oriental technical terms one might add Persian emphasized both the classificatory function of mode and dastgiih or iiviiz, pa{et in Javanese gamelan music, and the primacy of the final scale degree; Guido here Japanese cha - with its usual enclitic, choshi - a word stressed the scalar-melodic environment of any given cognate with Chinese tyao, and written with the same scale degree, thus providing a structural def­ ideograph. inition for mode. These and other elements of mode and Taking the term in the modern, twofold sense, mode modality had a considerable earlier and subsequent his­ can be defined as either a 'particularized scale' or a 'gener­ tory in medieval theory and practice, but they epitomize alized tune', or both, depending on the particular musical the two most important features: classification, and and cultural context. If one thinks of scale and tune as tonal structure. representing the poles of a continuum of melodic pre­ In the first part of the 16th century theorists began to determination, then most of the area between can be use first the eight medieval modes of Gregorian chant designated one way or another as being in the domain of and then also an extended system of 12 modes to ac­ mode. To attribute mode to a musical item implies some count for such features of polyphonic music as the hierarchy of pitch relationships, or some restriction on choice of cadential pitches and of pitches for the open­ pitch successions; it is more than merely a scale. At the ing imitative entries, as well as to specify aspects of same time, what can be called the mode of a musical range and contour in individual melodic lines. How real item is never so restricted as what is implied by refer­ these theories of polyphonic modality were for 15th­ ring to its 'tune'; a mode is always at least a melody type century musicians is moot; but from the mid-16th cen­ or melody model, never just a fixed melody. This polar­ tury until well into the 17th polyphonic modality was a ity of scale and tune is an instance of the familiar oppo­ central feature of many repertories as well as of many sition of general to specific, which in music is often theories. Finally, during the 17th century various thought of as a contrasting of theory with practice. systems of polyphonic modes played complex roles in When modes (or their equivalents) are construed as the development of theoretical systems made up of pairs primarily scalar, they tend to be used for classifying, for of major and minor keys in what has come to be called grouping musical entities into ideal categories. When the tonal HARMONY or harmonic TONALITY. melodic aspects of modality are its predominant fea­ All three stages of European modal theory em­ tures, then modes are seen as guides and norms for phasized the classificatory and scalar aspects of mode, composition or improvisation.
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