Musical Modes and Eleanor Rigby

I received a marvellous dictionary of music as a gift last Christmas, and it has been about one of the entries that I have been thinking today.

It relates to modes of music, musical scales, of which there are eight. These are named the Dorian, Hypodorian, Phygrian, Hypophygrian, Lydian, Hypolydian, Mixolydian and Hypomixolydian. In typically Western and modern systems the use of modes has been severely limited; we get by with just two of these, which we refer to simply as major and minor. These modes are respectively "happy" and "sad", however each of the other modes may be described by entire spectra of other emotions. Try descriptions such as "voluptuous", "vehement", "pious" and even "uniting pleasure and sadness". So broad a range of emotions is accomplished with just the two modes, so imagine how we'd be able to reinvent and expand the poignancy of much mainstream music if only we leaned to use the other modes! A far fetched but amusing extract from my book:


"Europe in the Middle Ages inherited, through Boethius, the idea that ethos and mode were associated, and also a number of illustrations of the supposed connection. A favourite tale was that of a young man so aroused by the Phygrian mode that he was on the point of breaking into a young woman's room, when a change to the Hypophygrian mode restored him to a proper frame of mind."

from "The Oxford Companion to Music" edited by Alison Latham


Think of "Eleanor Rigby" by the Beatles. It is a beautiful but tragic tale of loneliness and a wasted life. The music is sad, but it has an extra dimension of quietness, of unspoken tragedy. It has touched countless people, and inspired numerous covers (at least 61 as proper album releases) by artists from the weepy and lame Tony Bennett to the dark and Gothic Godhead. Think about Godhead for a second. Just one of an army of bands enjoying success because the music they create is rooted in feelings of depression, cynicism, misdirected lust, disillusionment (being cool because you're just so deep and dark and eternally tragic)... all that gothy stuff set to resonate with the disaffected alternative youth of today. Why pick a cover from such an old and seemly happy and innocent band unless it expressed some of that rare darkness that the band would wish to cultivate?

"Eleanor Rigby died in a church and was buried along with her name. Nobody came.
Father McKenzie, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave. No one was saved."

"Eleanor Rigby" was written in the Dorian mode, beginning in E.

Incidentally, Eleanor Rigby was created as a fictional character by Paul McCartney for the song. It was originally supposed to be about somebody called Daisy Hawkins. However, there exists the gravestone of a real Eleanor Rigby in a certain churchyard, who lived and died in Liverpool, a mere few feet away from the place where Paul McCartney and John Lennon first met.


P.S. Check out the Godhead cover, it really is rather awesome.

St Peter's Parish Church in Woolton, Liverpool