วีดีโอ

That’s right, IT’S 200% SUCCESSFUL BABY LET’S GOOOOO 🥇🏆☝️1️⃣💪🤓 In all seriousness, thank you, I appreciate that. “Something wholly different,” or at least different from what I assumed most entries would do, was a goal. 🙏😌🤝

Thank you 😎💪🤓😌🙏

This is the Lydian mode as it was conceived of and used in the Renaissance period (the late 1500s particularly). All your references to tonal functions and tertian harmony make it clear that you’re only familiar with the modern conception of Lydian. Well, they’re not the same, especially in how they’re used. I don’t blame you for not knowing Renaissance music theory as it was understood in its own time, hardly anybody studies it anymore, but if you did you would see that you’re trying to apply modern ideas where they don’t belong. Using a modern lens to look at something conceived through an ancient lens isn’t inherently bad, it can certainly still be useful, but to say this isn’t Lydian is simply ignorant.

@@samuelwnovak I don't know a lot about early music so please forgive me if I am wrong, but weren't the western modes (including what asukalangleysoryu6695 is referring to as lydian) developed during the medieval period for use in plain chant a while before the 16th century?

@@madeleinemcghee6816 The answer to that question is nuanced: in some ways yes, but in other ways no. The names of the modes themselves (and the basic idea that a ‘mode’ is something like a ‘scale’ and can be used to theoretically describe melodic material) were taken from surviving Ancient Greek music theory, which had its own vast multi-century history before our lineage of ‘Western music theory’ even began. Fun fact: they’re all named after geographical regions/corresponding ethnic groups in Ancient Greece, most of which were in modern Turkey. However, these names and the concepts they described in Ancient Greek music were mostly unrelated to the concepts their names were later appropriated for. The Greek ‘Hypodorian mode,’ for example, is barely comparable to the later medieval Hypodorian. So in that way, no, the modes weren’t developed in the medieval period, they predated it by over 1,000 years. However, as you suggest, the theoretical groundwork for what we contemporary musicians know as ‘the church modes’ was indeed laid in the medieval period. Guido d’Arezzo’s Micrologus (written approximately 1026) and the Dialogus de musica (also written around the same time by an author scholars still aren’t sure of) were two important early treatises. It’s crucial to note, though, that this early medieval modal theory was devised to organize and categorize chants that already existed: the music came first, and the theory came later to help describe the music. So to say “the modes were created for use in chant” isn’t strictly true because it implies that the theory was made to be used like raw material to compose from, which was not actually the case (at least not until much later). You might also be interested to know that the earliest evidence for a system of categorizing chants based on modes are chant books from the 8th century, not the 11th. I’ve never seen more than a few pictures so I’m not sure what musicologists really think about them, but my understanding is that some organizational system of modes is clearly there, it’s just not explicitly described like how Guido and other later theorists did. I say all that to make clear that the further back we go, the more ambiguous everything gets and it becomes harder to really claim anything with certainty. Ultimately, the history of modes and modal theory in Western music is a giant, vague, disorganized mess because the terminology means different things at different points in history, and even worse, each individual historical period can have multiple simultaneous competing theories. So unfortunately for us, to say anything definitive about the modes is basically impossible unless prefaced with “according to this theorist…” LOL

@@samuelwnovak I see. You are correct that I am unfamiliar with Renaissance music and especially with the theory of it, although I have watched some youtube videos by Early Music Sources, a channel ran by doctor Elam Rotem, an expert and researcher of Renaissance music. If what you're saying is true, then I would like to apologize profusely for my extremely patronizing comment: I thought you were a beginner musician who had just discovered the lydian mode and I was trying to offer some well-meaning guidance. A youtube comment isn't the best place for writing detailed analysis, but you have piqued my interest: would you be as kind as to offer me some deeper insight into this piece? What makes this piece lydian instead of ionian/major in the Renaissance context, and how does the Renaissance interpretation of this piece differ from my modern analysis? To me, like I stated before, it still just sounds like a fugue in F major.

The piece was composed in 2023 👶

Agree with all of this!

What

what bro

A fugue can have 2 voices (Bach wrote a few himself). What makes it a fugue is how the subject is used. Inventions are contrapuntal works that don't have a subject like a fugue does, and can have more than 2 or 3 voices (3 voiced inventions are also called sinfonias, because of Bach).

One could make several arguments about why that isn't strictly true, but most of them come down to the fact that nearly all the genre titles composers have used to label their pieces (like fugue, prelude, sonata, overture, symphony, etc.) aren't nearly so clear-cut and set-in-stone as the abstracted models theorists use to describe/explain/teach them. They mean different things and have different defining characteristics at different points in history. In the case of fugue, the earliest mention of that word in a theoretical work was in 1330 (Speculum musicae by Jacobus de Ispania), in which it was basically a synonym for canon. Furthermore, most contemporary musicians would probably be surprised to learn that, even though JS Bach is now considered the undisputed all-time master of fugue whose works are the quintessential models, theorists around 1900 were arguing that not one of the 48 in his Well-Tempered Clavier are legitimate, "correctly written" fugues "because he allows himself too many exceptions" (Fugue by Ebenezer Prout, 1891). I say all that to make clear that it's hard to be completely objective about these distinctions since the terms themselves are historically fluid. To properly discuss whether a piece is more appropriately called an invention or fugue, we’d of course need to know what characteristics qualify each. I could probably write a 10-page essay about the differences between inventions and fugues (and why the contemporary conception of inventions as just a simple subspecies of fugue is actually tough to defend), but, briefly, the number of parts is not the deciding factor, but rather the specific compositional techniques used. The popular conception of what constitutes an "invention" derives from the work of JS Bach, namely his 15 2-part Inventions. If one tried to learn about inventions (and especially how to compose them), any decent account of the necessary compositional techniques and general procedure would include the idea of “imitation at the octave.” In imitation at the octave, in case you or anybody else reading this didn’t know, a short melodic theme (which has historically been called a "subject" in discussions of imitative polyphony) is presented on the tonic first in one part, then again on the tonic in another part in a different octave. Fugues, on the other hand, do not use imitation at the octave but “fugal imitation” i.e. the alternation of entrances of the subject first on the tonic in one part, then on the dominant in a different part (or vice versa). It’s also worth mentioning that despite the fact this this technique of imitation at the octave is central to discourse about what inventions are, only a minority of Bach’s Inventions (Nos. 1-4, 7, 8, and 10; so 7 out of all 15) are imitative, and one of them doesn’t use imitation at the octave (No. 10 uses fugal imitation, so you might even call it a fugue or fughetta). I’m sure most would agree that it’s odd that we should take Bach’s Inventions as the archetype but then ascribe a quality to that archetype that most of the archetypal examples don’t even display. Go figure. Regarding this piece, it’s important to know that it’s really an entirely separate conception of "fugue" than the one we usually mean when we say "fugue." We usually refer to Baroque-style tonal fugues when we say "fugue," but this is a Renaissance-style modal fugue. There are similarities of course, but one of the most important aspects of tonal fugues, modulation through different keys, isn’t a factor in modal fugues since the concepts of tonal centers and modulation hadn't been developed yet. However, if one HAD to argue for whether this piece was closer to the popular conception of inventions or fugues, it would still certainly be fugue because it uses specifically fugal imitation. That was a lot for a TH-cam comment, but a complete response would require a whole lot more LOL. For a history of fugal theory, see Part One of Alfred Mann's The Study of Fugue, which is the first 70ish pages of the book. For a history of Renaissance modal theory (and what an inconsistent trainwreck it was), see the video “Modes in the 16th and 17th centuries” on the Early Music Sources TH-cam channel. Thank you for listening!

@@samuelwnovak this was a very thoughtful and informative response, thank you so much

I appreciate your attentive listening! It definitely does have the tonal gravity you describe. That said, aside from the fact that I personally just like the little surprise left turn away from what the line seems to suggest, a suspended 7th going anywhere other than the adjacent 6th wouldn’t be idiomatic to the 16th century style I’m going for and that Fux’s method models itself on. That hypothetical octave would really be more of a Baroque-and-later kind of dissonance treatment and would probably make a Renaissance composer raise their eyebrow. Thank you for your insightful comment 😌🙏🤝

Email samuelwnovak@protonmail.com and I'd be happy to send you a PDF. Or, if you don't mind waiting, I've scheduled a video with scrolling score to be posted March 14.

It's a guitar piece I wrote in 2019. I'd be happy to send you a PDF of the score if you'd like.

I disagree. Made my evening today. Quite enjoyable. Recording could be a bit nicer though. But lyrics are great.