Customer Reviews

Modal Music Composition: Expanded Edition

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

The third edition (2010, ISBN 0975431838 ) has been available for a while now, for its traditional thirty-five bucks. I see this old edition is offered here for like three times that amount -- but the book is not out of print! What is out of print is older editions. Let the smartases up above wait till kingdom come for someone stupid who'd pay these crazy amounts when a newer version is in print and easy to get, here or from the publisher's website (same amount).

Not for the dilettante or casual reader!

I have a sense that this book offers more than I have yet been able to get out of it. I've been dabbling with modal harmonies and motifs in my own compositions for some time, and I was hoping to get a significant technical boost from this. So far I haven't. I'm still hoping for that to happen.

The back cover blurb states: "Only a modest knowledge of traditional (tonal) harmony and forms is necessary." I think that is a gross misstatement. Without a firm grounding in traditional theory, most of this book would make little sense at all. For example, the author makes a passing reference to parenthetic harmonies (pp 70ff) before launching into the particular application of secondary dominants in the various modes. One would be well advised to re-read Piston's dozen pages on the topic before trying to make sense of the author's comments.

The book goes into excruciatingly obvious detail on some basic elements, then skips and jumps over other essential material. For example, it gives exhaustive written descriptions of the various basic modal scales, in addition to illustrating them graphically and audibly, then simply assumes that the reader understands the meaning and importance of the tritone.

Many pages are devoted to modulations within a modal scale or scalar dyad, with analysis in depth of the various pivot chords available, but relatively little attention is given to the problem of modulating between the modes and the traditional tonal scales or into a modal scale outside of the particular dyad. I am presently working on a problem of getting from an A-flat seventh into a G Dorian by way of a few bars in b-flat minor, then back to an ambiguous G-major. I'm not sure just why I am doing that, and I may throw the whole idea away and do something else instead, but I would like to see at least a few paragraphs in this book dealing with this order of practice. I could look at a number of scores by composers of the past two hundred years for hints to an approach, but I was hoping this author would direct me toward some potential solutions.

Some of the examples on the accompanying CD are useful, at least for a person inept at the keyboard. And the three study compositions are interesting in their own way -- avant-gardish and eggheadish -- rather beyond the ken of a typical musical audience. One might think of Edgar Varese on a caffeine jangle. While more appropriate for Darmstadt than for Salzburg, they do give a sampling of available sonorities in the modal system. Unfortunately, they often seem directionless. Music needs to give a sense of forward momentum, and these tend to flounder around in aimless circles then just quit without a prepared cadence. There are wonderful melodies and cadences available in the various modes. Too bad there are none in evidence here.

So it's back to Fux and Piston and Hindemith and a library of study scores to resolve my problems, with an occasional hopeful look into this book for some additional ideas. Meanwhile I do give this book a solid four stars because there is nowhere else in the world that I know of where a person can find the specific information on modal harmonic structures contained here.

This is a very useful and well-written book with a lot of modal techniques for composers and songwriters. What I like best is the author took some thought in providing all the specific and comprehensive information on chord progressions and modulation for each of the modes. This is the kind of necessary information that other music books leave you to work out for yourself. There are also some interesting new ideas on modal melody and harmonic writing. I'm a bit puzzled by some of the quirky reviews seen here. I know a few other people who have read or own the book and they share my opinion that the material is well organized and sensibly presented and that the book fills a need in this area.

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.

This book is my biggest disappointment of all my purchases over the last 10 years. Actually I want to do only one thing: return it back for customers who will appreciate this book more.
It does not give any real jazz example for a pianist. It consists of many words, lines, paragraphs and chapters that are hard to swallow. At least for me. The book does not cover the modal techniques a jazz musician is interested in.
I am much more enthousiastic about f.e. Berklee Jazz Piano from Ray Santisi which gives real good stuff for a jazz pianist. Berklee Jazz Piano BK/CD (Berklee Guide) Very inspiring. That was one of the books I bought together with this one, The Modal Music Composition.

If somebody is interested to buy the book Modal Music Composition from me or that Amazon.com is prepared to take it back I would appreciate that very much.

Mathias Weerts
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