Twentieth-Century Polymodality

This chapter introduces students to the notion of twentieth-century polymodality focusing on the layering of different scales and resulting chromaticism. The lesson proceeds in three (mutually reinforcing) learning stages: the analytical examination of characteristic instances of scale combinations in the music of Béla Bartók leading to analytical representations as mismatched scale segments or polymodes, the assembly and disassembly of various symmetrical polymodes furthering the understanding of the chromatic and common-tone interactions in scalar layering, and guidance for short compositional deployments of layered textures.