Word: modality
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Three centuries of tonality have led the modern listener to expect certain familiar kinds of progressive harmonies, but masses and motets written in the old church modes presuppose a different set of expectations. Just as the modal fabric of Renaissance music is foreign to the twentieth century ear, the context of modern music--a permanent background of muzak in supermarkets, television soundtracks and the stereo next door--bears no resemblance to the silence that Byrd and Gesualdo labored to fill. There are no grand gestures in this music, nothing simple for the listener or the performer to grab onto...
Tending the Image. The astonishing thing about Stravinsky's development up to this point was that unlike Schoenberg, he never turned his back entirely on the tonalities of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries or on the modal style of earlier eras. In the 1940s, Stravinsky, always a wandering cosmopolite, moved to Hollywood, near Schoenberg's home. Yet the two rivals maintained a chilly distance from their respective hilltops. It was only in 1953, two years after Schoenberg's death, that Stravinsky finally embraced serialism. Of the dozen or so twelve-tone works he produced prior...
Harvard radio station WHRB played yesterday Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women Numbers 12 and 35" and "Euphoria" by the Holy Modal Rounders...
...award has been given annually since 1962 to groups of scientists varying in number from one to twelve. The award carries no prize aside from the modal and the citation...
...racketing thump of a rock beat. What follows this seemingly incongruous prelude is a swirling, eye-and ear-catching panoply of ballet maneuvers, from chastely classic lifts to Broadway shuffles, set to an eclectic score (by Alan Raph and Lee Holdridge) that blends the modish and the modal. The climax is a joyous, foot-stamping, yet thoroughly unblasphemous rock version of the Ite, missa est chant that ends the Latin Mass. At the diminuendo finale, the dancers lay rows of votive lights across the stage and drift silently, monkishly, into the wings...