Music and the Making of Modern Science

Moving the Immovable 39

without offending the ears. ” What traditional practice and proverbial wisdom would not

allow, a contemporary master has accomplished, an innovation Glarean acknowledges and

explores.^6

Josquin ’ s remarkable change of mode sets a penitential text from the Psalms: “ Out of

the depths have I cried unto Thee; O Lord, hear my prayer. ” Another dark biblical text on

the lamentation of King Saul over the death of his son Absalom drew Josquin to set his

motet Abasalon, fili mi with a shifting modal center and an extremely low tessitura of male

voices. The change of modal center seems to symbolize or even reenact the felt experience

of turning from the depths to the heights of divine understanding and forgiveness. As part

of the general musical understanding of his time, Josquin probably knew the astronomical

associations of the modes, as in figure 3.1 , in which a motion from Dorian to Phrygian

would correspond to going from the sun to Mars. For him and his learned hearers, this

shift in mode would suggest a huge cosmic displacement without precedent in ordinary

experience, musical or astronomical. Even more, Glarean notes that Josquin accomplishes

this miracle without startling the ear. He bridges Dorian and Phrygian by using intermedi-

ates between them, a process that may illuminate the general problem of how the immov-

able might be moved.

Following well-established compositional precedents, Josquin organized his phrases

through their cadences, musical formulas that serve as punctuation. The “ final ” or “ perfect ”

cadence affirms the mode at the end of the composition. Intermediate cadences affirm

Figure 3.4

The modes according to Glarean ( ♪ sound example 3.2); note that the Ionian (corresponding to the modern major

scale) and the Aeolian (modern minor scale) were not included among the traditional modes. Note that adding

a B ♭ to the Lydian mode turns it into Ionian based on F (F major).