contemporary modal music
Cretan lyra with sympathetic strings
I play the Cretan lyra with sympathetic strings.
The music here is what Ross Daly calls contemporary modal music: new work by musicians rooted in the modal traditions that run from North Africa through the Balkans and the Middle East to Central Asia and India. It continues the old practice of composing within modes, but from a free perspective. It isn't an attempt to preserve any tradition. What it carries forward is the beauty of modality itself: music built from phrases rather than harmony, often in intervals that fall between the keys of a piano.