Brian Eno ‎– :Neroli: (Thinking Music Part IV)

This is a great piece of music, and it fulfils its title function very well. I've been listening to it while studying & it has made that a much more tolerable, even enjoyable, experience.

As far as the whole modal decription is concerned, to clarify matters a mode is a 'scale within a scale', that is to say a scale derived from the interior notes of a 'normal' scale eg. from the 3rd to the 3rd (Phrygian) or the 5th to the 5th (Mixolydian). There are seven basic modes, one for each note of the standard Western major/minor scale. The major scale could be considered the 'Ionian' mode and the natural minor is the 'Aeolian' mode. The phrygian mode which is utilised in this piece is more simply described as a natural minor mode with a flattened 2nd degree. Modality has nothing to do with chord construction techniques.

Modal means that a tune is not based on a common major or minor chord, but on a 6th or 7th, for example. So the base notes are not 3 (triad) but 4. It's more or less this.

"Neroli" is modal. In this case the mode is the Phrygian, whose flattened second evokes the Moorish atmosphere alluded to in the title" …boy, I feel stupid sometimes! If you know what this means, please let me know as I really would like to understand.
I do understand however that once again this is delightful sound (it’s nothing more then a piano, toggled every so many seconds) that brings you to the boundaries of music and gives you the choice as to actually listen to the music or just undergo it. I prefer the last one and put Neroli on while working or reading and it always manages to enhance the atmosphere so much with so little. This is definitely of Eno’s best work.

":Neroli:" is a modal piece, like "Music for Airports", "The Plateaux of Mirror", "On Land", etc. The result is atmosphere, ambience... It seems this CD has been used during childbirth in some maternity hospitals.