Sixteenth-Century Polyphony and the Modal Paradigm

Abstract: We often assume that Renaissance music is shaped by the system of "modes"--the set of scales that functioned something like tonality for music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But Renaissance-era music theorists and composers didn't always agree on what the modes were, how they worked, and how they ought to be applied to composition. This essay explores whether mode is "real," when mode is meaningful (and interesting) for understanding Renaissance music, and what other kinds of tools we can use to explain why Renaissance music sounds the way it sounds.

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