YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

118 THOMAS HOLME HANSEN
of the sixteenth century made use of only five modes (the Lydian passes over into
Ionian, …): Dorian, Phrygian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Ionian”, and that “these original
modes could be transposed … a fourth higher”. 33 This reduction of Glarean’s twelve
modes to a modern hybrid of five – or in some cases six – units became a widespread
phenomenon in twentieth-century literature on Renaissance music, an approach for
which Jessie Ann Owens has coined the term ‘neo-modal’. 34 Within a broad framework
of ‘modality’as the prevailing critical language since the 1950s, Owens distinguishes
two approaches and points to the neo-modal as “by far the most common
critical language in use today”. 35 The textbooks display several variations on this particular
theme, an example of the persistency of the approach being the 1994 book by
Gilbert Trythall, who in his one-page exposé of the modes states that “sixteenth-century
compositions are in one of six modes”, thus adding the Lydian mode to the ones
listed by Jeppesen. 36 As is well-known, our insight into the ‘modal’ world of the sixteenth
century has been significantly expanded during the past decades, and as the
main figure of the other approach Jessie Ann Owens rightly points to Bernhard Meier,
who, in his highly influential work Die Tonarten der klassischen Vokalpolyphonie
(1974), 37 on the one hand “provided a synthesis of theoretical writings about mode
and illustrated how the system worked with music”, and on the other demonstrated
“the validity, both in theory and in practice, of the distinction between authentic and
plagal modes in polyphonic composition”. 38 But, despite the fact that the prescriptions
regarding mode perhaps more than anything else in the textbooks have been
needing an update, the newly gained insights have been very slow in penetrating the
neo-modal demarcation-lines. In some of the works, though, the presentation of mode
is ‘acceptable’ 39 and in a few it is up-to-date. In this respect, though, it must be added
33 KNUD JEPPESEN (1930), in the English translation (1939), p. 78.
34 J.A. OWENS, Concepts of Pitch in English Music Theory, c. 1560–1640, in C.C. JUDD ed., Tonal Structures
in Early Music, (Criticism and Analysis of Early Music, 1), New York – London, 1998, p. 186.
35 Ibidem, pp. 185–186.
36 H. GILBERTTRYTHALL (1994), p. 5. Cf. ROBERT GAULDIN (1985), pp. 12-13; and THOMAS BENJAMIN
(1979), pp. 18–19.
37 B. MEIER, Die Tonarten der klassischen Vokalpolyphonie. Nach den Quellen dargestellt, Utrecht, 1974
(English rev. transl. E.S. BEEBE, The Modes of Classical Vocal Polyphony, Described According to the
Sources, New York, 1988).
38 OWENS, Concepts of Pitch, p. 185. For a survey of Bernhard Meier’s work, see, for example, F. WIERING,
The Language of the Modes. Studies in the History of Polyphonic Modality, Ph.D. diss., University of
Amsterdam, 1995, pp. 31–48. When the dissertation was published in 1998, these pages were left out – see
F. WIERING, The Language of the Modes. Studies in the History of Polyphonic Modality, (Criticism and
Analysis of Early Music, 3), New York – London, 1998.
39 See for example, HAROLD OWEN (1992), pp. 355–357; and ROBERT STEWART (1994), pp. 1-2.