Electronic Library of Scientific Literature - © Academic Electronic Press
No. 3-4 / 2002
The study considers a typology of modal thinking in its history and origin and characterizes the basic signs of particular types. The author starts from a hypothesis, that a modal thinking is typical for a much wider range of musical demonstrations, than musicology has admitted before. The study specifies: 1. modal thinking in the period of European Antiquity; 2. modal thinking in European Middle Ages and Renaissance; 3. modal thinking in European ethnic music; 4. modal thinking in ethnic music outside the Europe; 5. modal thinking in so-called artificial music (whether serious or entertaining), based on modes: a) traditional (in presented manners of modal thinking) and b) new-created. A tonal functional system approximately since the period of baroque in European music may be considered as a specific kind of modal thinking; major and minor scales represent in themselves two forms of heptatonic mode controlled by specific rules of horizontal/vertical organization of tones. The author endeavours to prove that modal thinking of all more developed music cultures from the past to the present is based on a modal tone system of heptatonic or pentatonic structure and on centralization of tonal or chordal centres.
The author focuses in his study on important sources of European music from the 14th century, which reflect the fundamental changes in the domain of music production and performing practice. On the basis of analysis, comparison and interpretation of these sources we may delineate musico-technical innovations and their morphology and penetrate deeply the changes in the period thinking about music. A theoretical conception of the work of Jean de Murs is in the centre of the author’s interest, confronted with the state of knowledge of the period, represented by a body of treatises, known as the Berkeley Manuscript Ms. 744. These works hand in hand with the work of Philippe de Vitry constitute a basic source material, documenting the level of musical thinking in the 14th century in France.
Long-drawn songs form a substantial component of folk vocal cultures of the Carpathians. The essence of these songs we find in songs joined with traditional forms of out-door work. On the territory of Slovakia we speak about hay-making songs, which belong to the repertory of girls and women in the season of cutting and collecting the hay in the sub-mountain and mountain regions, where the meadow farming predominated. These songs were sung mostly in free-time situations and their basic function was a long-distance communication, which conditioned the signs of their musical structure and performance.
The key to understanding of these signs dwells in an analysis of time-relations. Starting with a critique of some older records of hay-making songs we mention some conceptions, which endeavoured to define the relation between the parlando-rubato interpretation and the rhythmic/metric norm (L. Janáček, B. Bartók, K. Plicka). In terminology and definition of the time relations we lean on ethnomusicological studies, which focus on a problem of so-called free rhythm on the background of universal systematics of the time relations (M. Clayton), then on the basic typology of long-drawn songs in Moravia (J. Gelnar, D. Holý) and a category of a duration of a syllable in vocal music – so-called sylabochronos (P. F. Stojanov).
The hay-making songs represent a vocal form with free rhythm without metric norm. Our analysis identified three types of time relations in them: I. additive rhythm (a relatively regular pulsation of the smallest time/rhythmic unit); II. additively-divisional rhythm (a relatively regular pulsation of the time/rhythmic unit of a medium value, which is divisible); III. irregular rhythm. The basis of their structure is a rhythmic phrase (a verse), which contains a stable plan of short and prolonged rhythmic values. A number and a position of long rhythmic values is of a crucial significance. They became the basis for a specific modality of time relations, which reflects a dynamic relationship between the text and the tune of the songs. On the ground of a comparation of a rhythm of strophic songs and callings to distance the hay-making songs appear like a stylization of a communicative function of singing to distance in the nature. The knowledge acquired from the analysis of the time-relations is briefly summarized in the basic principles of a transcription.
The subject of the study is an attempt to explain the essence of “modality” of a songtype, occurring on the territory of the Moravian-Slovak frontier and its relation to Janáček’s music thinking. The author critically faces the standard ways of explanation of this problem in the Czech-Moravian (Jaroslav Volek, Jan Trojan) as well as in the German musicology (Adelheid Geck), which try to explain it from the point of view of a fashionably comprehended heptatonic diatonics and a major-minor harmony. The author develops the interpretation of the problem itself in agreement with Janáček’s own theoretical remarks and in connection with the ideas of Jozef Kresánek and Juraj Beneš.
According to the author, specific signs of Moravian songs (occurrence of so-called “oscillating” tones precluding the reduction of their substance on the basis of fashionably comprehended heptatonic scales, peculiarity of some melodic motives) are the result of a suboctave nature (notion of Juraj Beneš) of relevant tunes. On the basis of Kresánek’s knowledge about fourth-tonal character of archaic Slovak folk songs she arrives at a conclusion, that the tonal-harmonical specificities (particularly the principle of so-called “Moravian modulation”), which Janáček considered extremely typical for Moravian songs, are explicable as a consequence of hypotonal character of these songs.
At the end of the study the author points to two examples of Janáček’s usage of impulses of the “modality” of this songtype. She points to a principal manner of treatment of the dispositions, which the composer had revealed through his study of folk song tonality and principles of a style of folk groups playing.
In the first half of the 20th century the appearances of modality were closely joined especially with folk music, which was the basic inspirational source for shaping of the Slovak national music. The representatives of the Slovak music moderna used the characteristics of the Slovak folk song in an association with the chordal structures of the 20th century music.
In the second half of the previous century modality is manifested in new dimensions. Many composers accept, although not orthodoxly, the demonstrations of dodecaphony and serial technique. They are interested in particular possibilities of utilization of the 12-tone chromatic row as a basic material for creation of modes. From the exponents of the Slovak music moderna, only Eugen Suchoň prepared a concise system of composition with 12 tones, by means of which he coped with dodecaphony. However, the dominant feature of his composition remains a rational work with vertical sounds.
During the 50s and 60s the utilization of modality in the Slovak music begins to set free from folklore. The basic material is (similarly to dodecaphony) the 12-tone chromatic set and possibilities of usage of compositional principles of serial technique. Some composers in their works assert the principle of linearity very consequently, the others endeavour to use a definite, not consequent vertical result of relations (Ivan Hrušovský).
A different way of work in the realm of modality is the choice of a certain interval as a decisive element of the work. In this case an interval is a disciplining moment of a horizontal movement (Jozef Sixta). Roman Berger creates the basic models by the way of subdividing and crumbling, using the variation as a basic principle of his work. From the selected models he makes up a wide repertory of combinations of shapes in horizontal and vertical relations. For Ilja Zeljenka the work with micromodal cell happened to be imaginative. The cell became the nucleus of an organic complex of the whole composition, while the linear way of treatment of the material is very important.
Among remarkable ways of innovation of compositional structure in the Slovak music in the 60s and 70s we may find a reassessment of relations among the tones on the basis of modality. Modality is a variable system, which manifests itself in individual composers’ solutions remote enough from the rules of serial technique on the one hand as well as from relations to folklore basis, on the other hand.
The creative evolution of Ilja Zeljenka, one of the most notable representatives of the Slovak music avant-garde, leaned on a spontaneous composer’s approach towards mediated impetus from European music of the 20th century and headed towards an invention of his own method of variability, discipline and concentration. As early as in the 50s and 60s in Zeljenka’s compositions a kind of intervallic thinking is manifested, comprehended as a continuous evolution of basic models, melodic fragments, which only freely fit the paradigm of particular scales. The most important element is a variability of shapes as an intersection of jocose Zeljenka’s nature heading towards the variety of ideas and his sense for concentration, quest for associations while developing a restricted number of compositional-technical elements. This intention, conditioned by the specific circumstances of the Slovak music development in the 70s and a Zeljenka’s position in it, resulted in a specific phase of a reduction and a selection – in an introduction of a cell, a four-tone-model, serving as a genetic impulse to the creation of an organism of compositional complexes.
The author presents an outline of a model of “micropolyphonic” relations. The creation of this model was encouraged by a need to refine the expressional scale of a chordal component of the music expression. For formulation of this model operational notions as inner vertical, inner harmony, defining tone and sequent are used, which enable orientation among the relations in the framework of partial tones structure. He perceives this structure as a phenomenon, which has been until quite recently only intuitively recognized. He realizes the danger of “mythologisation” of this problem. Therefore he chooses the overall approach, based on principles of elementariness, simultaneity, spontaneity and conceptuality. The practical use of the model dwells in a possibility of a transformation of spontaneously improvised music to compositionally strictly formulated complexes.
Electronic Library of Scientific Literature - © Academic Electronic Press