Sound Reasoning
Table of Contents
Part II: Hearing Harmony
18.1 Hearing Harmony: What is Harmony?
18.2 Harmony in Western Music
18.3 Expressing Harmony
18.4 Listening Gallery: Expressing Harmony
18.5 Harmonic Rhythm
18.6 Listening Gallery: Harmonic Rhythm
18.7 Cadences
18.8 Listening Gallery: Cadences
18.9 The Tonic
18.10 Circular and Linear Progressions
18.11 Listening Gallery: Circular and Linear Progressions
18.12 The Major-minor Contrast
18.13 Modes and Scales
18.14 Hearing the Mode
18.15 Listening Gallery: Hearing the Mode
18.16 Tonic, Mode and Key
18.17 Listening Gallery: Tonic, Mode and Key
18.18 Music Within a Key
18.19 Listening Gallery: Music Within a Key
18.20 Postponed Closure
18.21 Listening Gallery: Postponing Closure
18.22 Chromaticism
18.23 Listening Gallery: Chromaticism
18.24 Dissonance
18.25 Leaving the Key
18.26 Harmonic Distance
18.27 Modulation
18.28 Harmonic Goals
18.29 The Return to the Tonic
18.30 Final Closure
18.31 Listening Gallery: Final Closure
18.32 Reharmonizing a Melody
18.33 Listening Gallery: Reharmonizing a Melody
18.34 Conclusion
18.14 Hearing the Mode
Common Practice tonality is essentially a two-party system: Music is either in Major or in minor. Composers can blur the situation by shifting quickly between modes or blending them. But, with rare exceptions, these modes are the only alternatives.
A tonic cadence gives the strongest indication of the music’s mode. Recognizing cadences in in Major and minor will help you distinguish between them.
Major:
Minor:
Also learn to recognize the different scales of which each mode is comprised:
Major:
Minor:
There are other perceptual cues that aid in discriminating between the modes. Major and minor are often characterized differently. There is so much variety that any prescriptions are inevitably simplistic. Nevertheless, compared to music in Major, music in minor tends to be low, slow and constrained in register; or more frantic, tense and disjunct. Here are some prototypical examples of music in each mode:
Music in Major:
Music in minor:
You can use your emotional reactions to reinforce your aural analyses. In general, music in Major will provoke feelings of calm, triumph or joy, whereas music in minor will sound more subdued, aggressive, troubled or turbulent. Major is the mode of well-being; minor is the mode of distress.
Thus, learning to recognize the difference between Major and minor involves more than ear training. It engages mind training and feeling training: Evaluate the musical character and your emotional responses; these, along with analyses of the cadences and scales, will help you master this crucial distinction.
The exercises that follow are designed to increase your facility in distinguishing between music in Major and minor.