over b
for their fourth degree
above the final, f; this b corresponds to f' in the Hypoionian mode (see
Lydian
and Hypolydian).The
name assigned by Glarean in the Dodecachordon (1547) to the plagal mode
on C, which uses the diatonic octave species g–g' divided at its Final, c', and consisting of
a third species of 4th (tone–tone–semitone) plus a fourth species of 5th
(tone–tone–semitone–tone), thus g–a–b–c' + c'–d'–e'–f'–g'.
Glarean, and those who followed him in classifying polyphonic music, regarded
compositions set in cantus mollis (i.e. with a one-flat signature) and
having F as the principal scale degree as embodying transpositions of the Ionian or Hypoionian mode. Most
16th-century musicians, however, seemed to consider such compositions as
embodiments of the 5th and 6th modes of the traditional set of eight, which
from the beginnings of medieval modal theory had required the prevalence of b over b for their fourth degree
above the final, f; this b corresponds to f' in the Hypoionian mode (see
Lydian
and Hypolydian).
Ex.1 shows the tenors of two compositions by Josquin Des Prez that were printed in the Dodecachordon as instances of the Hypoionian mode. There is no way of knowing how Josquin himself might have designated their modes, but had he even thought of them as modal at all (ex.1a was a popular song) it would have been in terms of the original eight church modes, there being no other framework current in Josquin's time. In chapter 7 of Aaron's Trattato … di … tuoni di canto figurato (1525), ex.1a, under the title Coment peult hauer ioye, is assigned to the Mixolydian mode (mode 7) because of its Ambitus g–g' (Aaron allowed c' as an alternative final in the 7th mode because c' is the last note of one of the differences of the 7th psalm tone). It is more likely, however, that a practising musician would have thought of this tenor, as well as that given in ex.1b, as being in a transposition of the Hypolydian mode up a 5th, with a ubiquitous lowered fourth scale degree. This transposition of the Hypolydian mode, with its new final or ‘confinalis’ on c', was used frequently not only in Gregorian chant but also later in the 16th century in polyphonic collections ordered according to the church modes. Such a collection was described in a letter of Leonhardt Lechner, a pupil of Orlande de Lassus (see G. Reichert: ‘Martin Crusius und die Musik in Tübingen um 1590’, AMw, x (1953), 185–202):
And this is the plain and simple old school of thought about the modes, to which belongs also Orlando [i.e. Lassus], whose first motets with five voices (of which Confitemini domino is the first) [i.e. the five-part Cantiones of 1562] give testimony, being arranged and printed according to the ordering of the eight modes, of which only the sixth and the first are transposed.
Ex.2a gives the beginning of the tenor of Surrexit pastor bonus (no.19), one of Lassus's two Hypolydian-mode pieces in the collection. It is unmistakably the same melodic type as the tenors given in ex.1, which Glarean had assigned to the Hypoionian mode. Ex.2b gives the first part of Lassus's Surrexit pastor bonus, which Glarean would have classified in the Hypoionian mode – several later writers following the 12 modes did so – and which seems close to the key of C major in tonal terms; for its composer, however, it was a sixth-mode piece, i.e. in the Hypolydian mode transposed.
HAROLD S. POWERS