Gregorian Chant and Modal Modernism. On the Non- Finnish Sources of “Modality” in Jean Sibelius’s Music

Abstract

In Jean Sibelius’s music traditional modal scales are not established as a
structural fundament of a large section, or organized strictly according to modal
systems; the modality is a vehicle of freedom and an instrument of increasing the
expressivity of the musical material, not unlike the work of many other composers
of that time. Sibelius, too, was an admirer of the sublime elements of nature and
interested in increasing the elemental power of the tonality by modal and atonal
solutions. The reasons for sometimes emphasising the Finnish folk music as the
carrier of modal and other non-tonal melodic and rhythmic characters was most
likely his patriotic correctness.