What is a ripperologist?

[mariab]

Lynn, throughout the 60s there were regular bust-ups between those who favoured the Aolian and those who supported Mixolydian. The beach at Margate looked like a war zone.

Just saw this. LOL!

[Wickerman]

I also think it's a circular argument to say 'why bother publishing research when new research could come along rendering it valueless'. Your suggestion would seem to be don't research,...

Oh no Tom, I chose my words carefully.
I don't consider "theories and assumed facts" as research.
I was making a distinction between works which introduce valuable data and works which promote theories & suspects based more on what is not known rather than what is known.

Regards, Jon S.

[mariab]

a bit of music-ology?

Aeolian is one of the old Greek musical modes. These were adapted by the mediaeval church in the middle ages for Gregorian Chant. There was a Mixolydian, as Carol points out. It begins on G and ends on G. It is like the key G maj EXCEPT that the F is not sharped.
Most of the modes lack the strong "tonic pull" of our "Western keys." That is because the half tones do not line up as in keys.

Lynn is completely correct. Aeolian music {pronounced “Eolian“} had its provenance in the Eastern Greek islands (the Cyclades, such as Santorini, Samos, Lesbos, etc.), and Aeolos was the (minor) god of wind. Even today, windsurfers sometimes pray to Aeolos as a joke. :-) Maybe you've encountered the term “aeolian energy“ for “wind energy“?
An Aeolian cadence would be containing the a minor and f major chords (with a couple bs), but lacking tonal pull, i.e., not containing the dominant sept or the tonic. It would end up “openly“. In 18th/19th century classical music jargon an Aeolian cadence would contain the Neapolitan sixth (i.e. the chord on the sixth degree diminished by a b, very popular in Italian opera around 1780-1830) and it would be similar to a “deceptive cadence“, i.e., a cadence sounding like it would reach the tonic chord, but “deceptively“ ending on the sixth degree. Famous example of this, the “melancholic“ ending of Rossini's Guillaume Tell {Wilhelm Tell}, which intentionally avoids the tonic chord, playing with a bunch of “deceptive cadences“. Rossini’s ambivalent harmonic treatment of the ending of Guillaume Tell can be understood as a comment on the utopian nature of the idea of political liberation, in a scene where the sheer purity of the alpine nature is celebrated as a contrast to faulty humanity. Beethoven too uses “deceptive cadences“ very effectively in his third symphony (Eroica).
The Lydian mode (with a provenance from Persia) is similar to f major, the Mixolydian, like Lynn said, to g major. Modal scales lack tonality, feature added/missing accidentals (bs and #s), and have been used in classical music and especially in opera to picture archaism (as in old times), exoticism, and even eroticism. (Aida's vocalises when seducing Radamès are in Lydian mode, the Russian choruses in Boris Godunov are in pentatonic Mixolydian, etc.). Modal progressions are also used a lot in blues, which explains where The Beatles got it.

Clearly, Ripperologists should not be depended upon to solve the mysteries of band name origins

He he. Maybe a few of them, like yourself, are capable of this. By the by, there's a mag out there called Kissology. But maybe you're already a subscriber.

Some people just like to be Flippantologists.

What's a Flippantologist? I'm most definitely a Buffologist, which by now constitutes a semi-official term for people analyzing Buffy, the vampire slayer, while a couple colleges in the US have already offered classes on this subject. No joke!

Clearly we need a "Ripperologistologist" - someone who studies ripperologists ;p

Well, there's the book by Robin Odell (2006). I actually dig meta-analysis, and many thanks to SPE for having clarified how the Wilson quote/term (Ripperologist) came to be.

[Supe]

Lynn,

Sexual ratio was abour 2-1 male/female. And there was a marked upswing in initial JtR interest that coincided with the centenary in 1988. There's your "free taste."

Don.

[lynn cates]

promo

Hello Don. Care to share a quick one from those surveys? You know--titillation?

Cheers.
LC

[Supe]

Those seriously interested in who Ripperologists are -- when studying Jack and when not -- should take a look at Ripperologist 80 (June 2007), Ripperologist 85 (November 2007) and Ripperologist 91 (May 2008) in which Jennifer Pegg (Shelden) and I had a series of articles that surveyed and interviewed a wide cross-section of people in the field. Darned interesting stuff, if I say so myself.

As far as those not yet in print, there are still plenty of areas to explore and that is one reason the New Independent Review was launched -- to give new writers an opportunity to publish.

Don Souden,
editor NIR.
newindyreview@aol.com

[Scott Nelson]

A Ripperologist is like a bowl of pudding.

[Hunter]

And of course Chris has another claim to fame in that he by his own admission can kill and gut a deer carefully removing its uterus and kidney with anatomical precision in a matter of minutes in almost total darkness whilst wielding a long sharp knife. hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm does this sound familiar?

Well, I didn't say I admire Cris for that. ;-)

Well, ya'll don't expect me to eat the damned thing with the hide on it and the guts still it, now do ya?... LOL

How do ya'll get you're beefsteak served to ya?

At least I get my food by matching wits with a wild animal in a fair chase environment. That's more than I can say for 'Ol Bossy' who is unwittingly herded into a slot and a pneumatic bolt driven through its head so someone can only think about pourin' A1 sauce on it with no thought of how it got there.

[Robert]

Lynn, throughout the 60s there were regular bust-ups between those who favoured the Aolian and those who supported Mixolydian. The beach at Margate looked like a war zone.

[Steelysama]

Clearly we need a "Ripperologistologist" - someone who studies ripperologists ;p

[lynn cates]

all mixolydianed up

Hello Robert. Speaking of the Beatles, their "Norwegian Wood" was written in Mixolydian mode, if I recall properly, as was Arlo Guthrie's "City of New Orleans."

Cheers.
LC

[Robert]

The Long And Winding Mode :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca_GCvApODg

[lynn cates]

in the mode

Hello All. Aeolian is one of the old Greek musical modes. These were adapted by the mediaeval church in the middle ages for Gregorian Chant.

There was a Mixolydian, as Carol points out. It begins on G and ends on G. It is like the key G maj EXCEPT that the F is not sharped. Ionian is EXACTLY the same as C maj.

Most of the modes lack the strong "tonic pull" of our "Western keys." That is because the half tones do not line up as in keys.

Cheers.
LC

[Robert]

Carol, surely the Beatles version of Twist and Shout came out in 1963?

[Carol]

Hi Chris or John,

What does 'aeoilian' mean? Thank you. (I daren't leave this Laptop to look it up as we've never had one before and it keeps outwitting me).

Carol

I believe it's a musical 'mode' as in a note progression. There's others like the myxolidian mode and the pentatonic scale which are intrinsic in western melodic themes. God, that sounds pretentious!

I think that's as good as I can get.

JB[/QUOTE]

Hello John,

Thank you very much. I think I'll sign off now - what with trying to understand your knowledgeable post and this flipping Laptop I need a lie down!

Carol