Saturday 9 May 2009
Tune of the Day: Hava Nagila
Traditional Hebrew folk song
The title of this well-known Jewish song of celebration means ‛Let us rejoice’.
The peculiar sound of the song comes from the use of the phrygian dominant scale, which is constructed by raising the third of the phrygian mode. Thus, this scale is like a natural minor scale with a minor second and a major third, and that's what makes it unusual, as the interval between the second and third degrees is an augmented second.