Re: Name that Mode!(Re: Jewish music connection w/ old jingle?)

[Owen Davidson <owend...>]

Josh, I'll have to confess that I'm not at all familiar with the makam Nikriz.  
Can you spell it out?

As for the mode I'm trying to pin down here, it is most resolutely makam Rast.  
As used in Greek music, it has a definitely major tonality.  The flatted third 
is an accidental or ornamental tone which always resolves to the major third.  
The same
applies to the minor fifth.  By the major seventh, I mean not the hypotonic, 
but the note immediately below the octave, which again is an ornamental rather 
than a scalar tone.  You could make a case that the skeletal mode is (in C for 
piano
people):
C (Eb) E F (Gb) G A Bb (B) C D

Note that the D is missing from the lower tetrachord. This mode is much used in 
Smyrniot music.  A wonderful example is  Roza Eskinazi's tsifte-telli "Ksanthi 
Evraiopoula (the Blonde Jewish Girl)."  The overall feel of the mode is light 
and
playful, you might even say sexy, as opposed to the heavy and miserable, or 
even shockingly stark tone that so often characterizes Greek song.  (Which I 
guess is why I love it so.)

Joshua Horowitz wrote:

> Hi Owen,
>
> > That's the one!  I was put off at first by the wide interval between the 
> > first and
> > second degrees, until I played with it for a while.  I think of that C# not 
> > as the
> > second degree of the mode, but the flatted third.
>
> But if you stick a C in there, what do you do with the D that follows? I
> think when you interpolate the C, you create another mode (Mi Shebarakh
> or Nikriz, or Altered Dorian, as you wish) with a different set of
> parameters (In the Mi shebarakh mode you have a sub-tonic tone group
> which in this case would be: F G A Bb. This tone group doesn't exist in
> the mode in question whereby the scale starts with Bb-C# but there seems
> to be no sub-tonic group.
>
> > Greek music also sometimes uses the major
> > seventh degree as another melodic "stepping stone," though the actual 
> > seventh degree
> > of the mode is quite clearly the minor seventh.
>
> Yes, if, by the major seventh note you mean BELOW the tonic, that's what
> I mean. But that's Makam Nikriz, isn't it?
>
> >  Since the mode, in a scalar sense,
> > remains the same across all the borders, physical and cultural, but in 
> > terms of melodic use, is distinctly different in each ethnic group, it 
> > seems logical to use each groups terminology when referring to it.  Pretty 
> > convoluted sentence, huh?
>
> I totally agree there on both counts, we should use local terminology
> and your sentence was convoluted, but what if there is no Romanian term
> for the mode? Josh
>

--
Owen Davidson
Amherst  Mass
The Wholesale Klezmer Band

But in the Wine-presses the Human grapes sing not, nor dance
They howl & writhe in shoals of torment; in fierce flames consuming,
In chains of iron & in dungeons circled with ceaseless fires.

Wm. Blake


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