Moods of the 8 Gregorian modes
  • AngelaRAngelaR
    Posts: 354
    Hello, everyone! I wrote something this month. (Fair warning, some might find part of my treatment a little unconventional, especially the Beatles song in chant notation.)

    I hope some here will find it interesting/helpful. Merry Fourth Day of Christmas!

    https://www.chantacademy.com/post/praying-with-gregorian-chant-part-iv
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  • Xopheros
    Posts: 106
    That is an interesting summary and I like the "unconventional" approach of presenting post-medieval examples, too. This brings its own problems, though.

    "Greensleeves", e.g., is from the Renaissance period which means that musica ficta was not notated, but had to be added by the performers according to some rules. These rules were in many cases ambiguous or fuzzy, but in the case of the SI in the first phrase, there was a clear rule: "Una nota super LA semper est canendum FA" (see this recent thread for an explanation of this rule). The version with the si bemolle is thus original, whereas replacing it with a si naturale as, e.g., in the popular orchestra arrangement by Vaughan Williams is a modern invention.

    Moreover, it seems that the perception of the mood of the modes changed over time. Mode III, e.g., was used in medieval times for the "Exsultet" during Easter night and other exuberant stuff, whereas chorales of the reformation used it for sorrowful texts like "Aus tiefer Not" or "Erbarm dich mein".
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  • Chant_Supremacist
    Posts: 302
    Futuristic is a fun adjective for mode 7. Did you canvas people for those?
  • AngelaRAngelaR
    Posts: 354
    @Chant_Supremacist I picked those up from various blog articles about the modern modes. I thought they'd be handy to include, as they might help readers to formulate their own thoughts about how to describe the modes.
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  • Chant_Supremacist
    Posts: 302
    A thought I wanted to share on the subject of modal affect. We perhaps shouldn't think only in terms of "this mode has this affect/affect spectrum" (which can be true) but also "this piece was put in this mode so that it would be interpreted with this affect."

    This idea resituates modal affect as also a question of the singer's intention, not just something that happens by virtue of the mode.

    It may be anachronistic (if we assume the affects were assigned post hoc, at the times the theorists wrote them down and did not grow organically with the repertoire), and it doesn't resolve every interpretive problem, but I think it is useful if some other interpretative model for a chant doesn't present itself.
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,599
    As interesting as the comparative "mood" associations seem as an abstract notion, in practice over decades I've found they have no tether to experience. It's akin to astrology - equivocal enough to cover any desired interpolation of meaning.
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  • Chant_Supremacist
    Posts: 302
    There's a difference between equivocation and poetic figuration.

    I won't die on the hill of, say, attributing an "angelic mood" to mode 7, because I'm not sure I can access the full poetic association the word angelicus had for someone 1000 years ago. But I think we can ask questions that regress the idea of affect or ethos to defensible components, and build up from these; and it's possible, though potentially unconfirmable, that a newer poetry which makes sense to us would map to the older one.

    It's commonplace now that the actual Gregorian repertoire does not fit so neatly into the old story of 8 church modes, and it follows that 8 ethoi cannot adequately describe the repertoire. On top of being a poetic endeavour, it's going to be a simplification, and moreover the individuality of compositions - some more than others - is always going to be valuable and worthy of attention.

    We should bear in mind too that if we struggle to identify an ethos upon hearing or singing a chant, the fault could lie with our sensitivity or our rendition. I know that my own sensitivity and skill are so-so.

    I mentioned asking questions that regress the idea. I'm not going to write an essay here, but for example, do particular intervals have an affect? Does a fifth have an affect, distinguishable from that of a fourth? Do major and minor thirds have distinguishable affects?

    Is there any way to articulate the difference between intervallic affects? Are there words that feel apt for a fifth, but not for a fourth?

    As a generalization, are particular intervals repeated more often within the structural notes of different modes? I have some notions here but haven't done the legwork to confirm them; but to go a different way, one with a clearer answer, do certain intervals repeat more often within the structure of the authentic vs. the plagal modes? Does this create, as a different starting point, an identifiable affective difference between authentic and plagal?

    Under questioning like this, I get the sense that modal affect is a very plausible idea, enough so at least for me to continue picking away at it for a long time to come.
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  • Charles_Weaver
    Posts: 208
    Under questioning like this, I get the sense that modal affect is a very plausible idea, enough so at least for me to continue picking away at it for a long time to come.


    Yes, this is exactly how I feel. I like noticing melodic connections, and perhaps I have mentioned this before, but in the Low Sunday Communion at "Noli esse incredulus" and also in yesterday's second alleluia in the ordinary form at "et resurgere," there is a motive (let's call it la sol fa sol fa mi re) that I strongly associate, after some twenty years of chanting, with the theme of our Lord's resurrection. It gets reused in O filii. I think there are probably hundreds of these little associations (many of which are the subject of marginalia in Cardine's Graduel neumé) that one can form spending a life chanting. It is a worthy pursuit.

    As for whether particular intervals have an affect (of course they must), Dom Saulnier's older book on the modes has some excellent reflections by Canon Jeanneteau that reward frequent rereading.
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  • Chant_Supremacist
    Posts: 302
    Yes, that's another layer that deserves thought, the motives. Thank you for bringing that up, and with such an edifying example. I would regard most motives as a complex of structural and ornamental notes, though that one is pretty spare. I'm not sure if you agree. While I suspect the idea of affect stands or falls on structure, that might be my left brain overriding my right, and either way it makes sense to look for a contribution from intervallic complexes. I wish there was a reference book just about Gregorian motives.
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