🦋 Speaking of crossing the Alps...
At The Fiddler's Companion, I found another Napoleon-themed Irish reel: "Napoleon Crossing the Alps". I've been playing it this morning and have uploaded the music in PDF format. I am curious what it means that the key signature is one sharp, but the tune resolves to A -- is this some kind of wacky modal thing? Also weird: The source at Fiddler's Companion has an accidental sharp marked at every occurrence of F♯, which seems redundant and makes the music difficult to read. I removed the accidentals.I was thinking it might be possible to make a medley of "Napoleon Crossing the Rhine" with this; but I'm not sure what kind of transposing I should do or alternately, how to modulate between the two.
 Update: My mom (who knows about such things) says, this is Dorian mode: A tune can be built (and resolve) around any of the notes in the
scale - this is modal writing. The mode that resolves to the 1st
note of the scale is what we call major. The one that resolves to the
6th note is what we call minor. the one that resolves to the second
tone of the (major) scale is called dorian. This modal writing is
used a lot in traditional tunes.
You can get the idea of the sound by playing a scale using only white
notes. First play c-c, that's ionian (major). Then play d-d,
that's dorian. e-e is phrygian , f-f is lydian, g-g is mixolydian. a-a
is æolian (minor), and b-b is locrian. (Edited with some suggestions from my brother, who also wants to point out that ionian and æolian modes are Not Really major and minor, because tonal music is different from modal music. My sister wanted to point out in this regard that "we have the nerdiest family EVER.")
posted morning of Sunday, October 19th, 2008
➳ More posts about Songs
➳ More posts about Music
| 
