Major |

French majeur, ital. maggiore, from lat. major – larger; also dur, from lat. durus – hard

The mode, which is based on a large (major) triad, as well as the modal coloring (inclination) of this triad. Major scale structure (C-dur, or C major):

(as a triad, coinciding with the 4th, 5th and 6th tones of the natural scale, and as a mode built on its basis) has a light color of the sound, opposite to the color of the minor, which is one of the most important aesthetic. contrasts in music. M. (actually “majority”) can be understood in a broad sense – not as a mode of a certain structure, but as a modal coloring due to the presence of a sound that is a major third up from the main. fret tones. From this point of view, the quality of major is characteristic of a large group of modes: natural Ionian, Lydian, some pentatonic (cdega), dominant, etc.

In Nar. Music related to M. natural modes of major coloring existed, apparently, already in the distant past. Majority has long been characteristic of some of the melodies of prof. secular (particularly dance) music. Glarean wrote in 1547 that the Ionian mode is the most common in all European countries and that “over the past… 400 years, this mode has become so fond of church singers that, carried away by its attractive sweetness, they changed Lydian tunes to Ionian ones.” One of the most striking examples of early major is the famous English. “Summer canon” (mid-13th century (?)]. The “maturing” of music was especially intense in the 16th century (from dance music to complex polyphonic genres). The era of functional music (and minor) in the proper sense came to European music from the 17th century Gradually freed from the intonational formulas of the old modes and from the middle of the 18th century acquired its classical form (reliance on three main chords – T, D and S), became the dominant type of modal structure By the end of the 19th century musical instruments had partly evolved towards enrichment with non-diatonic elements and functional decentralization In contemporary music, musical instruments exist as one of the main sound systems.

Yu. N. Kholopov