Myxolydian Mode

I had a headache this morning so Pliny the Elder went to the Lunch Hour concert in my place. When he got home he told me all about it.

I had a very nice lunch with your mother, he said, at the Blue Lemon Baguette Bar. Then we proceeded across the road to the Elder Hall. There we were given a programme to read while we waited for the music to begin. The theme was African Music. I was excited because as you know I served in Gaul, Africa and Spain, and of the music of those countries I thought African the most exotic.

And did you enjoy it? I asked.

No I did not. The music did not sound like African music at all. It was played in a mode that they called Jazz. If anything it sounded a bit like the Myxolydian mode. It was a kind of cacophony of sounds, everyone playing different instruments in different rhythms at different speeds, or so it seemed to me. Every now and then one of the players would stop playing and the audience would clap. I had no desire to do so myself.

Didn't you like any of it? I asked.

There was one piece I thought I was going to like, he answered. That was called Beauty of Sunrise. It began with the bellowing of elephants, played on the trumpet, very realistic. But then instead of evoking the beauty of the sunrise it degenerated into a sort of warlike Phrygian dance.

Oh well, I said, bad luck you. And how did you get on with my mum?

Very well indeed, he replied. But I'm not sure she knew who I was.