Ancient mode
The Ancient mode is a synthetic scale constructed and used by composer Djuro Zivkovic in his compositions since 2004. The first example is found in his Sophisticated Prelude No.1 for piano solo. Because of its vibrating, colourful sound, and the way Zivkovic developed it in his music, he has named it "the ancient".
Construction
The mode is built around the central tone, thus creating a "mirroring" scale:
The mode is similar to Messiaen's second mode, however the ancient mode has nine tones, with dense half steps around the central tone. The central tone is not a 'finalis', neither the tonic, it is just constructed in that particular way.
The mode can be transposed 12 times. It is possible to use tonal harmonic principles for modulation, such as diatonic, chromatic, or enharmonic modulation between these modes. The farthest modulation can be achieved in the distance of a major third (E – Ab – C).
Quality
The ancient mode has extremely diverse chordal possibilities. It includes a multitude of tonal associations and can create clusters, minor and major chords, pentatonic scales, diminished and augmented chords, and nearly complete major and minor scales. Comparing to all modes that can be made by combining 7, 8, or 9 tones within the frame of an octave (all their possible combinations), the ancient mode has the lowest difference-tone integrity.[1]
The difference-tone integrity means that the ancient mode produces many difference-tones outside itself; we could also say that this is phenomenological richness in reference. The highest difference-tone integrity has Messiaen's third mode, which is the opposite attitude: it refers strongly to itself. Within 8-tone scales, Messiaen's second also has low difference-tone integrity. Investigating scale classes with 7 tones shows that major and its related minor have the highest difference-tone integrity, which is opposite to the ancient mode. Thus, the lowest difference-tone integrity of the ancient mode may be the reason for its vibrating sound.[2]
Ancient mode in Zivkovic's music
Zivkovic has developed highly advanced techniques within the frame of the Ancient mode (further AM), with several striking constraints. These constraints include:
- chromatic ancient mode
- note movement
- chord building
- scale filtering
Chromatic ancient mode
Instead of using the plain, diatonic mode with 9 tones, Zivkovic has constructed several “chromatic” AMs by utilising the scale layering technique. The main principle consists of using the full chromatic scale as a starting point which is passed through the AM, by applying the filtering technique. In that way, the full chromatic scale, with all tempered tones, is at disposal and is used to construct the chromatic AM. The tones from the chromatic scale which are not found in the AM are replaced with additional tones, by repetition in the Basic construction:
However, Zivkovic prefers two flavours of the chromatic AM, so called Major and Minor AM:
References
- ↑ "Djuro Zivkovic, Daniel Meyer / Difference tones". Zivkovic D., Mayer D., Nierhaus G. (2015) Djuro Zivkovic/Difference Tones. In: Nierhaus G. (eds) Patterns of Intuition. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9561-6_11. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-9561-6_11. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help); External link in|website=(help) - ↑ "Patterns of Intuition". Djuro Zivkovic/Difference Tones January 2015 DOI:10.1007/978-94-017-9561-6_11. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-9561-6_11. Unknown parameter
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