Product Description

Modal Music Composition:Expanded Edition serves as a reference work unlikely to be superseded and also as a source of fresh ideas for composers and songwriters looking to use modal music as a true alternative to the tonal system. Only a modest knowledge of traditional (tonal) harmony and forms is necessary. No knowledge of modal music is assumed. Numerous examples and tables provide important information in easy-to-use form. Three more chapters and 40 more music examples have been added to this new edition. Three extended study compositions illustrate the procedures more vividly than standard examples. The 3 study compositions and examples are recorded on the included audio CD. This book, therefore, fills the need by composers and songwriters alike for a comprehensive description and analysis of the melodic and harmonic characteristics of the modal scales and their interrelations. Although composers have often used modal passages, it is acknowledged that the modal scales have less harmonic stability than the still predominant major-minor scales. To remedy this, Dr. Cormier has taken a fresh look at the modal scales and developed a systematic set of procedures that can maintain modal stability while retaining their special character

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #373866 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-21
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 370 pages

About the Author
Stephen M. Cormier has long pursued twin interests in science and music. He studied cognitive and neuro-psychology as well as music at the George Washington University. He has a particular interest in the association of cognition and information processing with emotion, as seen in his published monograph, Basic processes of learning, cognition and motivation (Erlbaum Associates).

Customer Reviews

Terrific book!
I've found this book to be an extremely helpful guide to writing modal music. The author has really thought out just about every piece of information that a songwriter or even serious composer would need to know to write a modal work. The detailed melodic and harmonic information is clearly presented either in tables or in the many very useful examples. Anyone with a short course or two in regular music theory could follow it. In addition, the author presents a lot of interesting ideas and suggestions to improve the structure and coherence of modal compositions. Although my interest is mainly in songwriting and jazz related pieces, I found much of the material thought provoking and very practical. I would think that composers of complex music would get even more out of the ideas than myself. The included audio CD has recordings of most of the examples (played on a piano). Also on the CD are 3 "study" compositions written by Cormier for a clarinet choir (each about 6 minutes long) which are a terrifically innovative way to present the material in more "realistic" fashion. (The study compositions are discussed in detail with the scores in the Appendices.) In short, an excellent reference and good value.

Excellent theory, nice process, but write your own musical examples
Three and a half starts actually.

This book IMHO is pretty effective in identifying and generating modal sounding environments using established Western melodic and harmonic procedures, i.e., secondary dominants, chord functionality and modulation construction. As a harmony book (Piston), I was impressed with his knowledge of Western historical practice, from organum to Schoenberg, emphasizing the dominance of the major-minor tonal system over the modal system, the evolution of consonance, the emancipation of dissonance and the possible resurgence and the modernization of the modal system. I especially liked his logical but practical, step by step, often repetitive (yes, some of us need that!) approach in delineating modal characteristics of a given musical passage. The argument of scalar dyads--linking the chord functions of Lydian with Dorian, Ionian with Aeolian, and Mixolydian with Phrygian--is clearly brilliant and well described. As a personal aside, I believe it's probable now, using some of the author's procedures, to generate music bearing a perceptible Locrian flair--which in my 20+ years in the music field was thought to be "impossible" to hear or unstable to sustain. (Of course all you death metal composers already knew what THAT world sounds like! LOL.)

I would have given this book 5 stars if the author didn't have so many typos in his musical examples. For extra credit, he could have improved the voice leading in all of them by eliminating parallel/hidden octaves and fifths in the outer voices, generating smoother movement between voices esp. in modulations, and defining in written analysis whether a chord is major [V], minor [v] or diminished [vo]. It would also be helpful if his study examples didn't sound so dull and academic (and cheesy: he could have used real instruments/players to play these pieces). Perhaps, in his next edition, he should hire some composition students to write the study examples, which is what George Russell did to support his Lydian Chromatic Concept book. That way, one can better hear what Dr. Cormier has so effectively posited theoretically.

My two cents. Purchase this book without reservations, but have a pen handy to edit out the music example typos, improve their voice leading and perhaps write better study examples. All in all, I'm very glad this book was written and is currently available to the public at large.

One side of the modal equation
This is a very clear, clean and professionally written book on one "exoteric" side of modal composition. The author would actually deserve more than 5 stars for this side. The CD is understandable, clear to the ear and illustrative. Mr Cormier thus merits 5 stars for didactics. The example compositions sound something like "modal Aaron Copeland" and here we have the transition to the missing "esoteric" side dealt with in depth for example in the following book:

The Harmony of the Spheres: The Pythagorean Tradition in Music

Although in the preface Mr Cormier relates the musical experience that led him to deepen his knowledge of modes, too little of this shines through this book. In contrast to the recording that sparked his interest, his examples use a "well tempered" piano instead of one tuned to the exact intervals of a particular mode.

Mr Cormier does not attempt to directly enter the realm of the salient expressive qualitative characteristics of each mode, let alone their correspondences explained in the complementary work referred to above.

Perhaps one underlying question is whether the composer is more interested in amusing the mind or in transforming it.