Why is Eastern Music a Mode of Western Music?
Western music (to me at least) is best captured in the major scale. And Phrygian, which is the 3rd mode of the major scale can be used to get a more Eastern sound (for example Jefferson Airplane/White Rabbit). Phrygian dominant (where phrygian's 3rd note is raised, also formed by taking the fifth mode of harmonic minor) is esp important as it is exactly Maqam Hijaz, the main maqam (scale) in arabic music, used in songs like Miserlou. Phrygian Dominant is also called the Freygish scale aka Ahava Rabbah, used in Hava Nagila.
So I was wondering why is Eastern music a mode of Western music. How did this happen? Is it a coincidence? It seems too perfect to be a coincidence.
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It's a statistical coincidence. In cultures with twelve or fewer pitches per octave, there are only so many modes or maqamat or scales or ragas or pitch class sets or whatever.
In this case, the maqamat and the European medieval modes are both old enough, and roughly contemporaneous (7th or 8th century), to make it historically dubious that an instance of one was derived from an instance of the other.
The early music of the Christian church has been strongly influenced by the modes of the Greek but also by the Byzantinian, mozzarabic and oriental music. The 2 modes: Ionian and Aeolian (major and minor scale) have been developed from those modes.
The aeolian mode had to be adapted to what we call harmonic and melodic minor. Why these 2 modes are the leading modes in western music? It could have been as well the dorian, mixolydian and phrygian, and then the others (ionian and aelian) would be the ones you’ll had to wonder.
Some Eastern scales (by no means all of them - you can paint a horse to look like a cow, but not to look like a pigeon) can be approximated by scales formed from the 12 notes in an octave of Western music.
The resemblance is about as accurate as Peter Sellers' 'Goodness Gracious Me' is an accurate depiction of a high-class Indian doctor. You can tell what it's trying to be...
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