On Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:38:19 GMT, "Steve Latham" <llatham@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
>
>"paramucho" <paramucho@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>news:47f9ab07.14989243@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>>
>> In Mozart's time Major and minor were still thought of as "Ionian" and
>> "Aeolian" by many, although there was some debate as to whether the
>> minor was actually "Aeolian" or in fact "Dorian".
>>
>
>A quote from Mozart:
>
> Herr Demmler took the
>first part, I the second, and Herr Stein the third. I then played
>a solo, my last sonata in D, for Durnitz, and afterwards my
>concerto in B; then again a solo in the organ style, namely, a
>fugue in C minor, then all of a sudden a splendid sonata in C
>major, fini****ng with a rondo, all extem****e. What a noise and
>commotion there was! Herr Stein did nothing but make faces and
>grimaces of astonishment. Herr Demmler was seized with fits of
>laughter, for he is a queer creature, and when anything pleases
>him exceedingly, he can't help laughing heartily; indeed, on this
>occasion he actually began to swear! Addio!
>
>It does not appear to me that he is using Aeolian, Ionian, or Dorian.
This
>was 1777. At 21, I'd say it was still in Mozart's time.
I didn't claim that the terms major and minor weren't in use in the
period, I said that the older terms were still used by "many" not by
"all".
In any case, my post had an explicit caveat regarding Mozart and modal
thinking:
Which is not to say that Mozart was thinking "modally" at the time,
which was considered to be old fa****oned or suitable only for some
church music.
So I fail to see the point of your quote at all.
Theorists such as Alexandre Frere argued that the minor key is based
on the Dorian. Lester thinks that one reason we see minor key
signatures with one flat to few is because people were thinking
"Dorian". Others think that these key signatures were derived from the
so-called "Church Keys" which were a kind of half way house between
modes and keys.
There's a huge diversity of ideas in the CPP. Bach initially learned
music using organ tablature and he is obvious at home modally when he
needs to be. Hadyn was probably taught the Guidonian Hand when he was
a boy singer at St. Stephens in Vienna, not long after Fux vacated the
premises. The distinction between "keys" and "modes" is not always
made. Some argue for 42 keys (counting the different names of the
black notes, e.g. F#, GB). Major and Minor are called Sharp and Flat
by Purcell, saying that only the quality of the third, major or minor,
is im****tant in determining key. The dust doesn't settle until the
period is almost over and done, as is the habit with these things.
Walther's MUSICALISCHES LEXICON (1732) describes the "old modes"
fairly fully and the "new modes" briefly, "in no way taking sides in
the heated disputes, both past and present," (Lester, BETWEEN MODES
AND KEYS, p136) on the subject.
>Though the translation from German, or Latin, or whatever he was writing
in
>that day may have been mis-translated by overzealous tonalists.
They're lurking around every dark corner, waiting to strike :-)
He probably used the terms "dur" and "moll", hard and soft, which
refer to the quality of the third of the scale, and which are still in
use in Germany.
Joel Lester's two books, BETWEEN MODES AND KEYS: GERMAN THEORY
1592:1802 and COMPOSITIONAL THEORY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY present a
good picture of the thinking in 18th and 19th centuries. THE CAMBRIDGE
HISTORY OF WESTERN MUSIC THEORY (2003) has a huge amount of
information on all periods (including a Joel Lester article on
Rameau).
Ian
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