Mode is a Chord Symbol: An Alternate History of the Lydian Chromatic Concept

In 1959, George Russell wrote, “The Lydian scale is the sound of its tonic major chord.” With this single gesture, he opened a potential to merge the concepts of mode, chord, and key. But rather than continue on to say, “this chord is a Lydian chord,” he left chord symbols untouched, kept his focus at the key level, and built a theory that subsumed tonal function into the sound of the Lydian mode. Russell, of course, had practical constraints—to tamper with chord symbols would be to alienate his theory from the repertoire and community it served. But what if he had indeed proposed a “Lydian” chord, and had gotten away with it? This talk sketches the history of that path not taken, from the infamous “diminished minor” versus “minor flat-5” debate, to the departure from a triadic construction of chords, to the adoption of a rootless “chromatic polymodality” as key and chord signatures. Russell’s is a theory of possibility and permission—it offers an improvisational freedom, while providing enough formal structure to satisfy our rational minds, and a convincing link to a tradition we trust. This is the creative spirit of theorizing, and Russell gave us mode as a way in. A talk given live over Zoom at the American Musicological Society 87th Annual Meeting History of Music Theory Study Group Special Session on Mode Handout and more info at: https://shapesmusic.github.io/Shapes/mode-is-a-chord-symbol