Muse

Downloads

Discography

Lyrics

Links

Contact

Why "Phrygian"?

Honestly, I think it sounds cool and it looks nifty too. Of course, there's more to it than that...

One of my favorite songs by XTC is off of Nonsuch, "Then She Appeared." It's a song with great imagery and fun words/sounds. For some reason, whenever I think of the song, I get the phrase "Then she appeared / Dressed in Tricolour and Phrygian cap" stuck in my head. And the phrase plays over and over with the softly lilting guitar strain until it seems to become a song all it's own. (Luckily for me, this hasn't lessened my appreciation of the song any.)

Now, the odd thing is: I never understood the couplet. I'll be honest, I wasn't very studious in my history classes. Had I been, I might have known what "tricolour and Phrygian cap" alluded to. Instead, I just didn't understand them - didn't understand them, and it never occurred to me to figure them out.

Now as a music major, Phrygian meant something completely different to me than it's usage in the song. To me, Phrygian is a type of mode - it's a rather minor-sounding key, with a slight Oriental-flair to it like most modes. (It was, after all, named after an ancient middle-eastern country.)

The Phrygian scale (which is the succession of seven notes in the Phrygian mode) was originally initiated on E as such: E F G A B C D E. Written out in steps it equates to: Semitone, Tone, Tone, Tone, Semitone, Tone, Tone. (A semitone being a half step between notes and a tone being a full step.) Knowing the semitone/tone structure, you can construct a Phrygian scale beginning on any note. Starting from C (which is the most common of all notes), it would have 4 flats and look like this: C Db Eb F G Ab Bb C.

If you're familiar with the compositional side of music, you'll know that the Phrygian mode is characterized by a Neapolitan 6th, which is used by composers as a predominant (coming before the chord resolution of a key - or I - instead of a more typical V or IV) or pivot chord (to facilitate a key change).

Now, all of this is very interesting to someone like me who likes looking at music, but what does it mean in relation to the song? When I finally realized that the song's words probably meant something, that's what I was trying to discern. However, my mind kept trying to interpret the lines as "Then she appeared, dressed in three colors and a modal key," which of course, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

So, I resorted the the reader's best friend: the dictionary. Looking it up, however, I was given the description "a native or inhabitant of ancient Phrygia." - Like I hadn't figured that part out yet. Then it dawned on me to do a search for "Phrygian cap." Well, the web is full of lots of stuff and 99.9% is not what you're really looking for. Such was this case. I found lots of drawings of the types of headgear worn by Phrygians, but for the life of my I couldn't understand what the woman in the song would be wearing something that resembled a Smurf hat with earflaps.

Then it dawned on me that, since she was wearing "tricolour and Phrygian cap," that perhaps the two were related. Finally my brain had kicked in...

Tricolour, when not simply referring to something that has three colors on it, usually refers to patriotic French clothing. The French flag is three colored stripes (blue, white, red), thus the term Tricolour. And it just so happens that French revolutionaries (as well as some American revolutionaries of the 18th century) wore Phrygian caps as a symbol of freedom.

Why was a Phrygian cap a symbol of freedom? Well, back when Rome was the world superpower, slaves who had gone through manumission were given a Phrygian cap as a symbol of their freedom. So, French and American revolutionaries reused the symbol - just as other walks of life (academics, architects, etc.) were returning to the Classics.... you remember learning about Neoclassicism in History class, right?

And that's my pointless little article about why I named the site "Phrygian."