Considerations on the harmony of current light music and therefore of Sanremo songs.
The Ionian scale and the harmony derived from it is a product generated by the chromatic lydian scale, one of many. We can use it as it has been used for centuries; the important thing is to know this origin of it and, above all, it is important to know that it is not a generator of chords. Obviously, I leave the consequences of all this to the interlocutor's judgment. The favored scale of the linear, teleologically oriented Western mentality is the Ionian major scale. It has been the preferred scale of Cartesian rationalists, predators of various kinds, imperialists, gangs, military/industrial complexes, Western minds in general, at all levels of Western societies.
Mine are not criticisms, but observations. The important thing is to know that harmony arises from a lydian scale and Ionian harmony is a small aspect of it in wide current use and also in the past and perhaps the future. But historicizing the phenomenon, I wonder how long it will last. All in all, the answer is not something that interests us much given the short span of our lives.
It is not certain that what has been done for centuries can be done for many other centuries; I am not even saying to change, the important thing is to have the awareness of WHERE YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU ARE DOING!
Obviously, Sanremo harmony is a product of Western societies, but over time something is changing. In fact, a few decades ago in the field of so-called light music, II/V/I progressions were common and the V was particularly emphasized by the tritone or by a substitution; consequently, its cadence on the I was more highlighted. All this was a legacy of the harmony introduced in Italy from the United States after the second world war, and if we go further back in time, the harmonic architecture of J.S. Bach was set on II/V/I. Over time, even if this setting is still prevalent, things are or rather are going through modifications.
In a certain sense, the harmony of current light music—and therefore I am also speaking of Sanremo compositions—is moving towards the modal, acquiring a vague flavor but not the structure and intentions.
When we speak of "linear modal," we mean that in a composition only one mode or at least a few modes are used, each having a long duration, meaning the harmonic rhythm is slow. There is also "linear modal" with fast harmonic rhythm, in which there are modes arising from the individual notes that constitute the Ionian scale. It is clear that in light music compositions, it is not modes in the strict sense that are used, but tertiary chords arising from the notes of the Ionian scale. That is, if we have the C Ionian scale, the notes are C,D,E,F,G,A,B and therefore the modes will be C Ionian, D Dorian, E Phrygian, F Lydian, G Mixolydian, A Aeolian, B Locrian. The chords, instead, will be C,E,G - D,F,A – E,G,B – F,A,C – G,B,D – A,C,E,- B,D,F. Well, in Sanremo music and in a large part of current light music, these diatonic triads originating from the Ionian scale are widely used. Almost always, the V which in our example corresponds to G7 is not used as a dominant but as a chord that does not resolve on the I (therefore in a modal way); when it happens that it resolves on the I, it does so in a sweet manner without exaggerating the function of the tritone and therefore using only the triad G,B,D without including the F which would emphasize the cadential aspect of the chord due to the presence of the tritone, or by using the G7 sus, i.e., adding the fourth which reduces the cadential sound of the VII chord.
The consequence of all this is that melodic lines become less elaborate and therefore new melodic lines are poorer, and to attract the listener's attention, repetitions of melodic fragments are used heavily. The image does the rest. I do not know to what extent it was modalization that made the image more important, or whether it was the importance of the image, which has grown in recent decades, that generated modalization for the purpose of not disturbing the image with more interesting melodies. Certainly, at this point, the discussion borders on considerations of a sociological, political, etc., nature... but that is not the subject of this article.