Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Why do we learn seven modes?

If you take college/university level music theory classes, you’ll learn Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian modes.

Why is this of any importance to classical pianists, or classical musicians in general? I never understood the point of learning modes. I’ve never used it except for very superficial analysis. “Oh cool, this piece is in Lydian!” Okay? That’s it? I’m not suddenly much more expressive knowing that a major scale with a raised fourth has its own fancy-shmancy name.

Maybe knowing modes is much more important in jazz and really early Western music? Fine, but my question is specifically for Baroque era through now.

Every now and then you come across modal writing in the 18th and 19th century but more often it is just voice leading. Late Romanticism and early 20th century classical certainly can get modal, and I think if one wants to understand Stravinsky, Bartok, Vaughn Williams, Brittain etc one needs to be familiar with the modes.

You definitely find Lydian being used in the 19th century. I am trying to remember some specific examples off the top of my head. Chopin comes to mind, the Mazurkas have moments that are modal. Beethoven has moments, even Brahms.

I think it is essential for 20th century classical music and worth understanding as part of a kind of minimum range of knowledge for being a well rounded musician.

Very helpful and interesting to me to notice when such things are going on -- to help me know, well, what's going on ....and it usually indicates something about the nature and basis of that music -- in ways that wouldn't happen if I didn't know that this is "modal," and often to know which particular mode.

I totally agree with Orange Soda King. Just yesterday a musician friend bent my ear for way too long about the definition of the seven modes. I kept thinking, OK, how will this significantly impact any of my playing other than knowing where the tonic is. So you may start on a tonic that is major or minor, but you still end up using the same chord progressions and their fitting arpeggios. I'm put off by the use of the fancy sounding mode names, why not just refer to numbers that we can all immediately understand; I guess those names make the user feel and sound more intelligent.
I may be naive, but it seems to me that Miles Davis, who I totally bow down to, and who became the most highly regarded jazz musician of all time for his use of modes, "modal jazz", actually was just severely limiting the chord progressions he was playing over. That limited chord format gave him a perfect pocket to freely improvise over. Listen to his much played version of "Time After Time". Tell me I'm wrong, Will

Understanding music theory at the level of modes ( which is pretty basic stuff ) is practical. At a minimum, if you can recognize that a piece you are working on is in a specific mode, it will certainly help your sight reading and memorization at a minimum. Anything you notice that is a bit different through listening and/or analysis will deepen your understanding of that piece of music and make your interpretation more compelling.

Me neither.

But then, I'm no intellectual. I just play the piano and sing. I also compose and arrange (and derange), and have been doing so ever since I could play beyond Twinkle, Twinkle as a kid in short pants. But putting names to what I write? If I write a passage in a certain mode, it's more by accident (actually, it's entirely by accident) than by design.......

Sometimes, when I read posts and threads in ABF about modes that I know nothing about and care even less about, I wondered how I ever managed to play the piano at all, let alone pass all those music exams.........

I find an understanding of modes deepens the understanding we have of a piece which utilizes them. The more deeply we understand what the composer was up to, the theory and analytics, the more deeply we can interpret their piece. In the same way as the importance of knowing what scale you are playing in any given Mozart concerto, it is equally as important to know which modes Messiaen was using in any given bar, and how he was using them. Id say the same applies for all composers prior to and after Messiaen as well, but I singled him out because of how it resuscitated and revolutionized the form of writing modally.

My question would be, why do we -only- learn 7 modes

Is it important to know some history ? Like does it make any difference in your day to know what happend in 1815 ? Does knowing classical litterature helps you in any way practically speaking ? In my case it does not. There are a lot of things we learn that indirectly feed us and help us to better understand a context or develop a general culture. In music it is the same.

knowledge is always usefull. But if you are only interested in the practical side of playing the piano, in particular if it is classical tonal music composed after 1700-1750, then modal theory will be of little use. That said, it does help to understand the evolution of music and it helps to understand compositions begore 1700. Gabrieli, Frescobaldi, Froberger and many others. Buf you can certainly play them without understanding how they are composed.

We learn them so that we'll understand what Alkan was up to when he wrote Petits Préludes sur les huit gammes du plain-chant.

In case you need more than merely 7 modes, I suggest:

A working knowledge of classical literature is important in practical terms for a performer (and of course listener) - which is what it's all about when one is talking classical music. As a performer and interpreter of great composers' music, that's what I'm interested in. Not names academics dream up - which bear little resemblance to the ancient Greeks' use of them. If you didn't know about the French Revolution and Napoleon, you wouldn't know the significance of, and why E flat was Beethoven's 'heroic' key, and thus be unable to understand and interpret the music correctly. And if you didn't know about the prevailing custom of the nobility and their servants, you wouldn't realize how subversive Le nozze di Figaro is, and that in turn would affect your ability to interpret the music as a performer (as well as understand it as a listener). If you didn't know anything about Shakespeare's plays, how could you make anything of the music of Mendelssohn, Verdi, Elgar, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, even Bernstein (not to mention many other composers) who wrote music based on them? Similarly for Faust (especially, Goethe's - think Gretchen am Spinnrade for instance) and lots, lots more.

Whereas the ability to put a name - or, more accurately, give a name - to a mode (which BTW wasn't the name used by the composers when they composed in those modes all those centuries ago: as far as they were concerned, they were just composing music in the prevailing styles of their time) helps not a jot in interpreting it as a performer, nor even when composing or improvising. It's just an academic exercise.

This is the best answer. lol

Well, it is relevant to analyzing and understanding medieval music, flamenco music, modal jazz, and other genres. Are you suggesting that a music theory course should ignore the theory of some genres? Should a music history course ignore the eras of music you don't personally play as well?

Most theory courses for classical curricula spend the overwhelming majority of their time dealing with the major and minor modes, consistent with your particular interest. Knowing what the medieval church modes are, and what 12-tone music is, would be a part of being musically literate, whether or not you play that music.

Bonus points to someone who can identify a fragment of Chopin's music that could be argued to be in the phrygian mode.

Oooo! Hope someone gets this.

I know I know.....and it is in Chopin's best key ( Hint C# min )

This is the first I hear of it being supposedly in just one particular piece of Chopin's.

The answer is obvious: Op.41/1.

But the burning question is: how does knowing that help one in interpreting/playing the piece?
The answer is: it doesn't. Not in the least.

Whereas knowing the background of the mazurka, what its roots are, and where Chopin was in relation to his era, and his contemporaries' music - all that will help in one's interpretation.

Also, Chopin's Op 53 measures 57-64. I wasn't aware of that aspect of the Mazurka 41/1, but it is not surprising, as it was composed shortly after Chopin returned to France from Mallorca. In Mallorca, Chopin likely would have been exposed to, and influenced by flamenco music, which often is in the phrygian mode.

If I remember correctly, Niecks, in his 2-volume biography of Chopin, claimed that when George Sand and Chopin were staying in a converted monastery in Valldemosa in Mallorca, flamenco guitarists would come to serenade him from outside, but this is not corroborated in Sand's account, "A Winter in Mallorca".

Another scale that is sometimes called the extended or augmented phrygian mode or oriental minor scale, but is not a church mode, is also used in flamenco music. It is in the Arabic maqam (mode) family Hijaz and actually is two scales from that family, one formed by combining the Hijaz and Nahawand tetrachords and the other by combining two Hijaz tetrachords. These do not require quarter tones, like many Arabic maqam. Bringing this back to western classical music, this scale was used by Rimsky-Korsakov (in Scheherazade), by Balakirev (in Islamey), by Sweelinck (in Fantasia Chromatica), and no doubt in many works by Spanish and Portuguese composers.

So, I think an expansive view of a music theory curriculum is helpful to analyze the full western classical repertoire.

Indeed. There's also a section in Islamey in E dorian.

A lot of traditional music from Europe and Central Asia different modes, and I imagine this is the source of most alternatives to major and minor scales in music from the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. Iberia by Albeniz is particularly rich in various characteristic structures from Spanish music.

Early modal music played a large part in the history of Western Classical music that I think it would be a great mistake to neglect it and its modes.

I happen to think it's as important to recognise the "flavours" of the various diatonic modes as it is to recognise major and minor.