Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 10 Number 3, December 2009
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Fiona McAlpine. Tonal consciousness and the medieval West (Varia musicologica ; 10). Bern: Peter Lang, 2008. 474 p. ISBN 978-3-03911-506-8 (softcover).
Reviewed by
University of California, Santa Barbara
There is plenty of research and supposition available regarding the development of our modern sense of tone and tonality in music. Depending on the researcher and the line of scholarship, the origins of tonality can be conjectured from any of a variety of causes, from the development of Renaissance polyphony to that of early Baroque opera, from theoretical origins and Rameau’s treatise on music, to a basis rooted in the medieval modal system. It is this latter origin that is the topic of this particular book. The author has a well-known pedigree in medieval music, based not only on her own scholarship but on that of her father, David Michael Wylie, who is mentioned in the dedication.
While there are any number of books that attempt to link the development of our tonal system of music to the medieval modes, the author does a step-by-step walk through of the eight modes, using a proliferation of examples and analysis to detail how a new reading of the modal system indicates that centering on a tone has a strong basis in music well before the concept of modern tonality. She examines the concept of modality from the beginning, exploring and analyzing the medieval theorists and their writings regarding the modes. In Chapter 1, for instance, the medieval theorists and treatises of Aurelian, Regino, Hucbald, the Enchiriadis group, the Commemoratio brevis, the Dialogus de music, Guido de Arezzo, John of Afflighem/Trier, and Berno of Reichenau are all briefly discussed by way of introduction into the major sources for our understanding of the medieval modal system. The author then provides an explanation of some of the current research and directions that medieval musicologists have expounded on these sources, along with a specific breakdown of a thirteenth-century song by the trouvere Thibaut de Champagne to explain her thesis that, while not specifically indicated in any medieval treatise, it is apparent in most medieval music that there is a “tonal consciousness” that pervades Western music from its origins.
The next three chapters provide an extensive examination of the eight modes. Chapter 2 focuses on the Dorian modes, Chapter 3 on the Phrygian modes, and Chapter 4 on the development of the “Major” modes Lydian and Mixolydian and their use in the vernacular languages. Most of the examples cited and discussed are monophonic chants and songs. In Chapter 5, the main focus is on organum. In the Postlude, the author once again states the thesis of the book: “that medieval music, both monophonic and the earliest polyphonic, can be characterized by a drive towards an endpoint.” There is an extensive bibliography and an index at the end of the book.
I found this book to be very insightful, because it does not assume that the reader knows the entire history or research on this subject. In order to present her thesis, the author takes the time to go through all of the medieval sources, provides numerous examples to support her thesis, and in the end her line of reasoning and thought find closure through the presentation and examination of the surviving record. A very interesting and thought-provoking tome.