# Is Chant Tonal?



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Yes, chant is tonal, in the general sense, because it centers around a key note.

*The Harvard Dictionary of Music* makes a distinction between the two meanings of

_*Tonality:* 1. Loyalty to a tonic, in the broadest sense of the word.

2. Also, the terms "tonality" and "modality" are mutually exclusive, the former referring to music written in a "key" (major or minor mode) and the latter to pieces written in, or showing the influence of, the church modes._

_This second usage is obviously not compatible with the broad definition of tonality above, which includes all tonal relationships, whether "tonal" or "modal."

If the explanation of mode as the constituent scale is accepted, (see Mode 1.), then tonality exists in different "modal" varieties, based, e.g., on the church modes, the major and minor modes, the pentatonic mode, the whole-tone mode, the diatonic mode (see Pandiatonicism) or, as in some modern music, the chromatic mode._

_Other uses of the term "tonality," e.g., in the sense of "tonal system" (almost synonymous with what has been termed modality above), or in the sense of major-and-minor tonality (as opposed to modality in the accepted meaning of the term), also have become firmly entrenched in current usage._

_*Mode:* A term used for two entirely different concepts, both rooted in medieval music, namely (1) one of scale formation, and (2) one of rhythm.
(1) Mode, in the widest sense of the word, denotes the selection of tones, arranged in a scale, that form the basic substance of a composition. 
(2) In a narrower sense, the term "mode" refers only to those scales that go back to medieval church modes._


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