# Tonal music and cliche



## JANK

Hello all, I am new to this forum. I am a composer with a generally traditionalist taste and style, and I'd like to have a discussion on why or why not tonal music is/isn't dated.

As an artist searching for my voice I must admit I have schizofrenic tendencies with regards to my artistic philosophy/theory, so you may find that I will want to play devil's advocate at times. I myself compose completely functionally ("common-practice") tonal music but I also write a lot of music that doesn't conform to that style.

Tonal music is something that we hear all around us, in the movies, pop music, folk music, elevator music, and jazz to name a few examples. It is therefore something that we are familiar with. However, atonal music (although not necessarily serial music) is something we are also exposed to in the movies. Think, what would a scary movie be like without atonal music? It wouldn't be very scary. Moreover modal music is also something that we are somewhat familiar with though not to the extent of tonal music.

So why is it that tonal music is considered to be dated by most "serious" composers? I propose to you that the answer lies in the fact that the common-practice harmonic vocabulary has become cliche. Since tonal music has such prominence in popular culture, it has become too typical, even mundane. The reason for this is not because the system of functional tonality is in and of itself naive by modern standards, but because its prominance in our culture lends itself to exploitation by the naive and unlearned. Therefore it has been abused and bastardized be more exponents than have composed "learned" tonal music. We in the modern art world have come to asscociate bastardized tonality with tonality itself, or at least I have. In fact the season we are in now exemplifies this. Take Christmas carols and slap pop orchestration on top of it and you've got complete cheese (something we hear a lot of during this time of year).

The ideas that "we've heard it all" so to speak or "its already been done" are common sentiments among modernists but what they fail to realize is that it hasn't. The problem lies in the lack of interest in tonality as a vehicle for new art because of what I mentioned above. It hasn't already been done, and as far as I'm concerned as long as there's a tune that hasn't been composed, unless I compose it nobody will. On the flip side however, traditionalist composers as myself should not turn a blind eye to modernism. For modernism has opened up a whole new world of harmonic and polyphonic possibilities that should be studies and kept as cards to play. Just don't show all of your hand at once.


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## soul_syringe

hi! i read this book on "venus in exile" the murder of beauty in 20th century art: in literature, fine arts and music. it might not have anything on music explicitly but you can definitely apply the same arguments and paradigm shifts on avant-garde art with contemporary music vis-a-vis the classical, as you say, "traditionalist" style. you'd find a lot to think about there then you can develop your own hegelian dialectic on music! lol! 
also, try reading heidegger's poetry, language and thought especially on the "what are poets for." a huge chunk of what it says applies greatly to music as well!


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## Guest

Hmmm. Twentieth century art is plenty beautiful. What're the odds that the Venus in Exile author made the same error that the author of Surprised by Beauty: A Listener's Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music did, mistaking pretty for beautiful? No, twentieth century art is not pretty, though by now, a lot of it is familiar enough to be pretty. But that's always the same. No self-respecting serious artist wants to be merely pretty. Beauty is the goal. And if you think Johns and Boulez and Fluxus and the Oulipo crowd aren't beautiful, well, you've made the same mistake!


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## zlya

I agree with you JANK. I agree that most modern composers talk about tonality as old fashioned, and I agree that this is a ridiculous view to take. 

The very fact that tonality has been done is what allows complex and original musical creations based not only on the notes and their relationships themselves, but also on the listener's EXPECTATIONS regarding these relationships. Many modern composers seek to shock the audience into feeling something simply by throwing out strange sounds and effects. It is far more shocking to hear something surprising when you have expectations of what you should hear. At the most basic level, if I hear
I-ii-V-7-
I expect the resolution to I. If I don't get it, if I get a dim-7 instead, I'm surprised, and that makes me feel something. This is one of the major sources of emotion in music. Ok, so it's not that shocking, seeing as it's been around since before Bach, but with the rich vocabulary of extended tonality there is much more possibility for creating emotion-inducing music. Throwing random sounds at the listener without this framework based on thousands of years of expectation and convention may be intellectually interesting, but I don't see how it can generate real emotion.


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## Guest

> Many modern composers seek to shock the audience into feeling something simply by throwing out strange sounds and effects.


Who, Zyla, who? Name some names. Who does this?



> Throwing random sounds at the listener without this framework based on thousands of years of expectation and convention may be intellectually interesting, but I don't see how it can generate real emotion.


Hmmm. Aside from the grotesque unfairness of "throwing random sounds" as characteristic of twentieth century music, I must ask: You wouldn't be calling my emotions false, now, would you? Why, you don't even know me.

Not that you'll take my word for it, but plenty of twentieth century music generates plenty of real emotion. Kutavicius' _Lokys the Bear_ for one. Lachenmann's _Gran Torso._ Bokanowski's _L'Etoile d'Absinthe._ Cage's _Cartridge Music._ Conrad's _Four Violins,_ Lucier's _I am sitting in a room,_ which was a defining piece of music for a whole generation of listeners.

And so much more. Fair's fair!


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## zlya

some guy said:


> Who, Zyla, who? Name some names. Who does this?


You'll note I said "many", not "all" or even "most". Actually, in this case I was thinking mostly of composers I know, rather than famous names. I don't listen to much modern music, but my friends have a tendency to force their compositions on me. Could be that my friends are just lousy composers. (Something I've thought secretly for some time, but never really wanted to tell them!)



> Not that you'll take my word for it, but plenty of twentieth century music generates plenty of real emotion.


In fact, I will take your word for it, which raises a very interesting question.

Why, do you think, this music makes you feel emotion? Is it the dynamic contrast? The twisting of familiar sounds? The reference to similar music you have heard? Do you think this music would generate the same emotions in someone hearing the style for the first time. Many current theories of emotion in music are based on expectation or reference. Does modern music create such references not to other music, but to outside sounds? Does it work on a purely evolutionary level? (Loud sounds=danger). Does it build up conflicts and resolutions using factors other than pitch?

I'm not asking you for detailed analysis, just what it is that makes YOU feel emotion. What particular sections of the music pull at your heart?

Thanks


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## Guest

Zyla, this deserves a thoughtful answer, and I'm off tomorrow at four a.m. for New York and a festival of noise artists (noise=exhilaration and sometimes noise=comfort) and then Poland for Musica Electronica Nova and then France for the IMEB electroacoustic festival. 

Briefly, I started out liking the undercutting of expectations--if that sounds too negative, then think of it as promising you a sandwich and giving you a five course meal. I liked asymmetrical rhythms and interesting intervals (the tritone is still a favorite) and tight harmonies--you know, minor seconds, clusters. I listen mostly to electroacoustic music nowadays--the rich palette of both usual and unusual sounds. And I've spent a lot of time with the non-phase minimalists, that is, the drone people and the noise artists, who present very long drawn out, often noisy "chords" with very tiny and widely spaced changes. That's difficult for listeners to Western classical music, who need a lot of variety.

I'd like, if you can bear it!, to add to this as I get a minute here and there in the next couple of days...

(Your comment about your friends made me grin, by the way!)


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## Guest

OK, here's my minute or two. I have to take it now.



> Why, do you think, this music makes you feel emotion? Is it the dynamic contrast? The twisting of familiar sounds? The reference to similar music you have heard? Do you think this music would generate the same emotions in someone hearing the style for the first time. Many current theories of emotion in music are based on expectation or reference. Does modern music create such references not to other music, but to outside sounds? Does it work on a purely evolutionary level? (Loud sounds=danger). Does it build up conflicts and resolutions using factors other than pitch?


I'm not sure what you mean by "dynamic contrast." Contrast is certainly part of it, but that's part of all music. Twisting of familiar sounds is certainly part of it. I do enjoy hearing sounds out of their ordinary contexts... But then, I enjoy sounds in their ordinary contexts, too. Here in my friend's apartment in the Village, I was awakened by an impact drill, then, after I was awake, I became aware of car horns and sirens and the various sounds of a building. That's all very pleasing. (Cage pointed out once to someone asking much the same kind of question about emotion that we make emotional responses to all sorts of things. A thunderstorm can elicit an emotional response. For me it's largely the pleasure of hearing sudden loud rich (complex) sounds.

I don't know how it works with other people, but I doubt that hearing something for the first time would work very often. I know that it _has_ worked at least once. Beatriz Ferreyra first heard electroacoustic music at a "concert collectif" in 1963. She knew right away that that's what she wanted to do. (Forty four years later, she's still doing it, by the way!)

I don't think it's an evolutionary thing. Doesn't seem so to me. (See my comment in my previous post about loud sounds.)

Very much so can conflicts and resolutions be built up with factors other than pitch. I'm surprised by how much ink has been spilled (and pixels... well, whatever you do with pixels) insisting that tonality is the only way to do conflict and resolution. You can do it with rows, as any half-way decent twelve-tone piece will show. Of course, rows still means pitch. You can do it with rhythm, with dynamics, with harmony (meaning any sounding together of two or more sounds). With any change, from pitches to complex sounds, with fast to slow, feedback to cows mooing--anything, really.

I listen to a lot of music which rather ignores the whole issue of expectation and reference--or maybe it just creates its own. I like improv--and if that's done well, you simply don't know what you'll be hearing next. Which I like. I like the feeling of imbalance, of surprise, of having patterns seem to be building up only to break into other patterns or no patterns at all (if that's even philosophically possible--I'm not at all sure that it is.)

So, there's my story. And I'm stickin' to it.


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## zlya

Thank you for your explanation.

I understand what you're saying about undercutting expectations. In my opinion that's one of the main factors in good tonal music. What I don't understand is how that works in atonal music. How can you undercut an expectation if you don't know what to expect? If you're hearing computer generated clicks and buzzes rather than pitches, how can you expect anything at all? 

Our impressions of conflict and resolution are based on the idea that certain sounds are more final than others, more safe. The tonal consonances are not arbitrary, but based on a variety of factors including the biological processes in the inner ear. Even in serialist music (tone rows) conflict and resolution are largely based on pitch relationships and tonal consonances, though these may work on different levels (such as the resolution from a chromatic subset to a diatonic cluster). I suppose you could resolve a chainsaw to mooing cows, and on a very fundamental level that constitutes a conflict-resolution progression, but on a very unsubtle level. (Has anyone done that, by the way? I mean, not necessarily chainsaws to cows, but unsafe sounds to safe sounds. Would be interesting to hear).

I suppose that's another reason I prefer tonal music. Tonal music can be extremely subtle, because it's had thousands of years to evolve, so that every note, every dynamic, every relationship interacts on a psychological level with every other piece of music the listener has heard. This allows some amazingly complex progressions, much more complex than simply sudden loud sounds (which is what I meant by dynamic contrast, by the way).

According to my friends the mediocre composers (people do commission their music, so they can't be THAT bad) they feel that every piece of music they write must be completely new and different from everything else ever written, by them or anyone else. That makes these subtle relationships a bit harder.

So I'm not trying to disparage your taste in music, but I do think that tonality has greater, if not exclusive, power to inspire emotion even in non-musical people. You see it every day, people crying at the end of movies, not really knowing why. Can atonal music do that? So it is stimulating to those who have studied it, or spent a lot of time with it, but can it make every-day people cry? Sometimes I wonder if modern art music is even really music, or if it is some entirely different sound-based art form--not worse, just different.


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## Guest

Zyla, your last post was a long one, but the response I just deleted, in which I answered each point, was even longer, hence the deletion. What follows is mercifully slight. Hopefully it does not seem slighting, as well.

Your point is that tonal music is superior because it's best at creating expectations, it's more subtle, it inspires emotion (illustrated by non-musical people crying at movies).

If all that is true, then the advocacy seems puzzlesome. If tonality is so obviously superior, then why does it need to be defended? Two things certainly happened in the 20th century--a lot of people concluded that tonality had been developed as far as was possible, so that different means of structuring pieces had to be found, and a lot of people continued to write tonal music, some of it very fine indeed. I don't see that there's much to say about either thing. People in the first group came up with some interesting ways to make music that didn't rely on tonality--people continue to do that. People in the second group had to constantly battle the inevitable: that their music was going to sound like it had already been done. As indeed it had. You can do good things in either case; the one that looks forward is likelier to continue doing good, though, I'd think. And with less despair. Why write like Brahms, for instance. One, Brahms has already done it. Two, you can't really do it, 'cause you're not Brahms. All you can do is pastiche. If you're Cage, better to be Cage and be done with it!

Otherwise, expectations and subtlety and emotion are all possible with new musics (nontonal ones) just as much as with tonal musics. The only way to prove that (if proving's what you want) is on yourself, by listening to more music. That's how you came to like what you like now, isn't it? Just keep doing that, I'd say. I can only repeat that I find all the things you find valuable in nontonal musics, and I find a lot of other, also valuable, things there that aren't in tonal music to the same extent, if at all.


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## Elaryad

I read your "dialogue", and I would say that I understand you both because I listen to both kinds of music - tonal/atonal. I really knew noise music before I started to listen to classical music so I'm kinda walking backwards.

*some_guy*, I'm curious about what have you been listening. I need some good advice on minimal, electroacustical, serial, atonal, whatever, music. I was listening to a sample by La Monte Young and it was the worst thing I ever heard, I need some ground here. I like noise but not _this _noise. And I'm also sleepy.

See you soon.

PS: I was wondering about emotions... were do cerebral music and emotional music meet? I think I found some "meetings" but I don't know if you'll like the answer, and I don't really know how to explain. You were talking about music for the intelect, sound for the sake of sound (isn't there the "art for the art's sake"? - music was late!), and *Zlya *was talking about emotions and I perfectly understood it. So atonal music is the complete desconstruction of harmony? of expectation? Were are the emotions? And what are we talking about here? About intelectual emotion or about other kind of emotion that we could compare to the lost "aura" of Walter Benjamin?

See you tomorrow.


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## World Violist

I could see both ends, though I really don't tend to listen to atonal stuff (though I do like me some Ives every once in a while!). I do definitely agree that tonality is often seen as some sort of cliche, though I really don't see why. Atonality, though, I can't think of as un-emotional or not artistic... just a bit harder for our conditioned ears to comprehend, though I must say that twelve-tone row gets a bit far into the "elitist" realm of music.

I don't know, maybe I just need to hear more of it.


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## Elaryad

*World_Violist*, I can think about atonal music as un-emotional sometimes, and completly artistic. I see atonality as more "expressive" music, I mean, more connected with things that we ear on everyday life. But it's so close and so far away at the same time! Tonality is not a cliché, it can be also used as cliché (pop hollywood music) and not by far a cliché as a general idea.


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## Rondo

Atonal music is certainly less accessible than the tonal variety, not to mention much more esoteric (goes without saying), which doesn't do much at all to aid in its elitist perception.


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## soundandfury

*I never truly shut up...*



some guy said:


> If all that is true, then the advocacy seems puzzlesome. If tonality is so obviously superior, then why does it need to be defended? Two things certainly happened in the 20th century--a lot of people concluded that tonality had been developed as far as was possible, so that different means of structuring pieces had to be found, and a lot of people continued to write tonal music, some of it very fine indeed. I don't see that there's much to say about either thing. People in the first group came up with some interesting ways to make music that didn't rely on tonality--people continue to do that. People in the second group had to constantly battle the inevitable: that their music was going to sound like it had already been done. As indeed it had. You can do good things in either case; the one that looks forward is likelier to continue doing good, though, I'd think. And with less despair. Why write like Brahms, for instance. One, Brahms has already done it. Two, you can't really do it, 'cause you're not Brahms. All you can do is pastiche. If you're Cage, better to be Cage and be done with it!


Firstly I'd like to counter your assertion that modern tonal works must inevitably sound like they've 'already been done'. For example, I think that Andreas van Haren's music sounds perfectly new, and not at all clichéd, despite being nicely tonal. The reason is that it follows the 'rules' most of the time, so whenever it doesn't quite, it jogs something down in the limbic system, in a way that is only possible if there are expectations in the first place. In that respect, modern tonal composers are no different, fundamentally, from someone like Mozart: they are almost, but not quite, following the idiom. In fact, clichés give one immense power - it's like, if you wrote a book that read like a Mills & Boone, and then halfway through one of the characters got tuberculosis, and the rest of the book dealt with the protagonists' struggle to come to terms with the fact that he/she was going to die soon, but you _still carried on writing with Mills & Boone-ish simple lexicon and style_, you'd have a much stronger impact on the reader, and probably involve them deeply in the protagonists' pain, than you could achieve with a book where every other word is 'blood' and someone gets their head chopped off on every page. This only works because of our *expectations* about something, which derive from our experience of other, *similarly styled* things. If something isn't close enough to anything else we know, we have no expectations, so nothing can give us the _frisson_ of 'Oh, I didn't think of that happening!' (Have I made my point clearly enough with that tangle of hypothetical simile?)

Secondly, you seem not to understand why this advocacy is necessary. I often see this mistake made - 'if you were right, you wouldn't need to keep saying so' - so let's get it over with. Many people are labouring under the impression that classical music is done, finished, that anything tonal is old hat. The reason for this is that the popular media portray classical music in a very unjust way, painting it as an elitist, reactionary thing, purely for posh people to go to in order to prove how posh they are. To dispel this myth, two different things are happening (hmm, I seem to be echoing your structure a bit...) Some people are writing music, labelling it as classical, but making a huge effort to make it sound as different from traditional music as possible. Some of it is very good, most of it is clearly motivated by a desire to be new. The value of music often originates from what it tells the listener about why it is there - if it's only there to be 'a piece of classical music that's not old fashioned, zomg look!', it isn't really communicating anything. (As I say, _not all_ atonal music is like this, but _a lot of it is_ esoteric merely for the sake of obfuscation)
Others try a different tack: since the problem is not with the music _per se_, but rather with the perception of it, instead of changing the music to challenge the perception, why not change the perception to reflect the truth about the music? This is why people like myself and zlya feel the need to advocate tonal music: so that people know what it really is.

_I've said it before and I'll say it again. People shouldn't repeat themselves!_


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## Guest

soundandfury said:


> Some people are writing music, labelling it as classical, but making a huge effort to make it sound as different from traditional music as possible. Some of it is very good, most of it is clearly motivated by a desire to be new. The value of music often originates from what it tells the listener about why it is there - if it's only there to be 'a piece of classical music that's not old fashioned, zomg look!', it isn't really communicating anything. (As I say, _not all_ atonal music is like this, but _a lot of it is_ esoteric merely for the sake of obfuscation)


Apparently you are just as capable of being unfair as the anonymous "popular media," eh?


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## soundandfury

Leaving aside your tendency to answer only those specific parts of an argument that you consider you have a cutting response to, often (elsewhere on these fora) removing every last shred of context...
All music I have come across which makes a virtue of 'escaping' the classical idiom, I have been unable to find any merit or interest in, merely a desire to 'be new' for its own sake. For example, practically the entire canon of John Cage. Please do show me otherwise.
PS. <humour replyseriously="false";>For a definition of Post-Modernism, it seems we can look to the Simpsons. I have just now watched an episode, which defines it as 'weird for weird's sake'.</humour>


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## Guest

Um, in any discussion, people will respond to whatever they feel competent responding to, or to whatever they think needs a response. That these things will not always correspond to what the person responding to thinks is important is only to be expected.

After all, look at what you yourself did with my post in which I mentioned Kodály's _Háry János,_ and a few other things, simply to point out that I had heard some twentieth century music before realizing that there was such a thing as "twentieth century music." But you ran with your hobby horse of DO[ing] something new WITH the existing idiom, completely ignoring the main point of that post, which is that at least for one listener all these things that you all find so hard to understand/appreciate/admire/enjoy are easy to understand/appreciate/admire/enjoy.

That's what happens in a discussion, so my advice is not to trouble about that particular thing. (Just by the by, how do you suppose people responded to "the existing idiom" when it was "the new thing"?)

As for the rest of your post, that falls into one of the oldest and deepest traps of this type of discussion--that your perceptions are roughly equivalent with reality. You fail to find any merit or interest in Cage's ouevre. Well, no one's gonna argue with that. It's what you perceive, at this stage in your life. But to conclude from your failure that there's something wrong with the music itself, well, that can't be right!


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## soundandfury

Well, I gathered that you had asked me to respond to that post. I said that I indeed saw your point about those composers, because I liked a couple of them too. I then explained what I liked about them, and asked if you could lead me to anything still more modern which had that quality, because I would like to get more of a first-hand perspective on modern music.
The point I was trying to make about your responses is that you would typically select a couple of words from a paragraph, and rather than answering the main argument of the paragraph, you would pounce on anything you interpreted as ambiguity. Pidgin example: "I don't like what I've heard in this genre, but I hope to keep looking for something that will appeal to me. The are the reasons I like the things I like: $this$ and $that$ and $the_other$; can you show me any music from this genre that has that, because if not then I have no idea what it is you like about this music, since it has none of the things I thought music was about - in which case, what do you think music is about?"... "A-ha! What makes you think that what you like is relevant? Your perceptions have nothing to do with reality!"

The only time when "the existing idiom" were ever "the new thing" was the first time someone sang. Baroque music innovates with the idiom of Renaissance monastic chants. Classical music extends upon the Baroque idiom. Romantic music studies past music and takes idiom from it in order to express large amounts of feeling. Some 20th Century music, however, states that the previous idiom had a corrupting effect on music and all preconceived relations between notes must be smashed (id est: Serialism). A number of other 20thC genres behave similarly.

As for the rest of the post:
I "fail to find any merit or interest in Cage's ouevre". True; that is simply what I perceive. But I do not conclude from my failure that the problem necessarily lies with the music itself - as should be evident from the "Please do show me otherwise," which you conveniently ignored. I conclude only that my tastes and/or philosophy are not compatible with Cage's music; having espoused my tastes and philosophy I wish only to know whether any of the music of which you speak so highly matches them, since if so I am clearly missing out on some music which must, from your own enthusiastic response to it, be of a very high standard and which could be very interesting indeed to me.
I ask again: is there any music which makes clever use of tonal cliche, that would be identified as 'modern', and which is still actively being written? If so, I would, quite honestly, like to hear some.


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## Guest

soundandfury said:


> having espoused my tastes and philosophy I wish only to know whether any of the music of which you speak so highly matches them


No, none of it does.

There is music written now that does match your tastes. It's not music I would speak highly of. You've found some of it for yourself. A lot of what Naxos has been putting out recently would possibly fill that bill as well.

But I think, briefly(!), that in exploring any art, it is more worthwhile to look for what people are actually doing, and try to enjoy that, rather than looking only for what you already like. That latter doesn't seem at all like exploration, to me.


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## soundandfury

I suppose I'm not an explorer, just a listener who likes to stick with what's familiar. I guess we'd better take our (mostly) separate paths through classical music again. It was pleasant to discuss this with you, though. Bye!


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## Guest

Well, I hope to see you again when you're ready for adventure!!

In the meantime, there's Poulenc and Prokofiev and Shostakovich and Pettersson and Kabalevsky and Kallinikov and Britten and Janacek and Khatchaturian and Bax and a ton of others that other people on this forum will be much better at listing for you.


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## Knaves13

I may not be very experienced in classical music (I just started dabbling in it as of the past few months), but this is something that I have been thinking about very much lately. I feel that atonal music is innovation for the sake of innovation.

I see good music just like a good book or movie. It can be taken at many different levels. The first level is enjoyment. Anyone, even a stupid person can watch a great movie like, let's say, The Birds, and get intrigued by the horror, suspense, and interesting story. However, once you get past the surface level you notice the deeper, underlying image. You notice little symbols that you had to really think about in order to notice. 

I feel it's the same in music. Good music should be able to be enjoyed by almost anyone, but trained ears can get more enjoyment. Anyone can listen to Mozart or Beethoven and feel the emotion emanating through the music. Once you get past the surface you can then listen as a musician. You listen to how the melody varies, what the harmonies are, modulations, counterpoint etc. You start to listen to how it is all put together. I think atonal music is mainly about listening to how it is put together, without the easily appreciable part. It is music purely for the trained ear. The idea of any art is to express yourself so music should be a form of expression. But, when talking to people about atonal music I often hear "you just have to learn how to hear the emotions." I don't think that's right. Music should be enjoyable and easily understandable on a basic level by almost anyone, not just those who are well versed in music, and well planned with many twists and turns on a deeper level. 

I think that atonal music is just the deeper level which leaves out an important element. There is a strong human desire for tonal music which means that tonal music can never be cliched and outdated. No matter how overdone it is, music isn't about advancing into new forms, it is first and foremost (in my opinion) about expressing emotions, stories, ideas, etc. No art should just be about doing something new, which I feel is what atonal music is about. People like to hear tonal music so why should people stop writing it? 

Sorry if the above is not very well put together, I'm very tired at the moment and a bit sidetracked. Hope you all understand what I'm getting at.


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## PetrB

Your question is moot in light of the fact that the truly professional film composer is ready to fluidly write in any genre of music altogether, and that would include the million ways of working tonality as well as the million ways of working atonality, and any in between mix of the two - the better of the film composers can write a few convincing pages which sound like Stockhausen, Berio, Ravel, Mahler, Korngold, etc. you name it and they come up with it. 

Need a little soft jazz under this scene? Sure

Need something akin to early 20th century modernism here? Sure. Do you want it to sound more like Honegger, Hindemith, Carl Neilsen, Bartok, what? Just name it.

Need some Dub step here, a bit of 50's rock there? Sure.

The fact a film composer gets the final cut of the film and delivers a score and all parts, the orchestra not having to rehearse (although they are professional, the professional film composer is aware they will get one read-through and that read through is the final take) is yet another feat of skill and prowess some of the finest of classical composers cannot muster up.

A limited ability, let alone vocabulary, is not going to bring you anywhere close to being a film composer


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## PetrB

Your question is moot...

...in light of the fact the truly professional film composer is ready to fluidly write in any genre of music altogether: that would include the million ways of working tonality as well as the million ways of working atonality, and any in-between mix of the two - the better of the film composers can write a few convincing pages which sound like Stockhausen, Berio, Ravel, Mahler, Korngold, etc. you name it and they come up with it. 

Need a little soft jazz under this scene? Sure

Need something akin to early 20th century modernism here? Sure. Do you want it to sound more like Honegger, Hindemith, Carl Neilsen, Bartok, what? Just name it.

Need some Dub step here, a bit of 50's rock there? Sure.

The fact a film composer gets the final cut of the film and delivers all the completed music, full score, and all parts WITHIN THE SPAN OF TWO WEEKS, written so the orchestra will not having to rehearse (although they are professional, the professional film composer is aware they will get one read-through and that read through is the final take) is yet another feat of skill and prowess some of the finest of classical composers cannot muster up.

A limited ability, let alone a limited vocabulary, is not going to bring you anywhere close to being a film composer.

The more ways you can write, whether those ways are to your taste or not, the better off you are when returning to your preferred vocabulary. You will certainly need all that vocabulary to 'compete' or have any chance at all at employment as a film composer. Very few film composers are constantly hired for 'one sound.' All you have to do is survey a number of films scored by John Williams over the span of his career to get an idea of how versatile one needs to be to meet the requirements.

I am not going to address the pathetic need to argue for a limited tonal vocabulary because it is all you can come up with and all you have to work with. It is you who are stuck with that. 

All music is tonal. If you don't grasp that, I have little hopes of your becoming Any Sort of Worthwhile Composer.


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## PetrB

The crux of the briefest of answers is in your heading, *"Tonal music and cliche"*

If you are going to compose tonal music, there is no need to reproduce the common practice era, or the later developments in the late romantic or even early modern eras. So... that is usually the crux / pith of all such arguments and complaints, reduced to 'why don't they write music like they used to?' The simple answer to that being because 'they' do not, and never have, composed 'music like they used to.'

The most hallowed and beloved of the composers of yore were all pretty much not 'writing music like they used to' and contemporaries of each era dealt with it, commonly, as many do now: most could not deal with it, and it became popular with a minority.

So, _*if you avoid the cliche*_ and write tonal music which is fresh-sounding, regardless of its vocabulary, there are no worries.

It is that 'retro-reactionary' composer who has decided to write like Brahms, (or name your past music and composer) who has, really, nothing interesting, at all, to say.

If you are yearning for music to have 'stopped,' in the year ______. You are rather beyond hope in getting your wishes 

If you are willing to follow your convictions, and can and write something tonal yet fresh, well.... fine.


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## Mlaizus

First of all, I'd like to say that I'm still at school and something of a musical novice. So please go easy on me. 



> Music should be enjoyable and easily understandable on a basic level by almost anyone, not just those who are well versed in music, and well planned with many twists and turns on a deeper level.


Knaves13, I agree with you completely. In fact, for me, one of music's purposes is to communicate (an emotion, a programme, a message etc.). Surely then, music that is easier to understand is better at communicating, thus making it good music. (Although I'd like to add that music does have other purposes and other aspects by which it can be judged or appreciated.) Tonal music is easier to understand. And yes, maybe that's because it is, to a certain extent, "cliche". But still, you don't have to be particularly well-educated in music to appreciate it. You don't have to learn the music's own special language, as it were, it's in plain and simple English.

PetrB, I agree that the most skilful composers can write in any style. But isn't there more to music (or any art for that matter), than simply being new or "fresh"?

Let's assume that all composers want to write good music. But let's also assume that music is subjective. Therefore, what is "good music" to one person may not be to another - and that's ok, because it's subjective. Instead of everyone just trying to be new, we should write the music that we like. If that happens to be atonal Modern music, fine. If it, instead, happens to be tonal "cliche" music, fine. (I'm in the second camp, by the way.)

Perhaps, as I (hopefully) become a better musician, I'll learn to appreciate more types of music, including atonal music. But right now, I prefer tonal music. So I'll write tonal music. And if that sounds cliche, it doesn't really matter. I like it. And, since tonal music is clearly not dead yet, other people must like it too.


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## Krisena

The time will never come that the inhabitants of TalkClassical will stop whining about atonal music. Even though contemporary composers have moved away from the whole debate and now frequently mix tonalities (that includes atonality), forms and everything that's old and that's new, people here are still stuck in the "modernistic shock" that happened almost a 100 years ago. Atonality is just another colour on the big palette of musical devices. Please just get over it. Sorry for sounding irritated, but I am getting tired of this.


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## ArthurBrain

Krisena said:


> The time will never come that the inhabitants of TalkClassical will stop whining about atonal music. Even though contemporary composers have moved away from the whole debate and now frequently mix tonalities (that includes atonality), forms and everything that's old and that's new, people here are still stuck in the "modernistic shock" that happened almost a 100 years ago. Atonality is just another colour on the big palette of musical devices. Please just get over it. Sorry for sounding irritated, but I am getting tired of this.


Well, couldn't have put that any better. The only thing I'd add is that it can be equally tiresome when people disparage tonal music as being outdated in turn. They're both valid along with anything else in the rich tapestry of the musical spectrum.


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## millionrainbows

Huh? The only "complaints" I've seen about tonal music are on that thread called "I find it difficult to listen to tonal music," which I thought was a sarcastic parody. I got a good laugh, anyway.



ArthurBrain said:


> ...it can be equally tiresome when people disparage tonal music as being outdated...


As far as tonal music goes, that's sort of like defending white men. Do they really need defending? Who is the minority as far as music? Certainly not the "three B's."


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## bigshot

It is a lot easier to create randomness than highly organized music. It isn't a matter of "it's all been done before". It was no easier in Beethoven's time as it is now. You just have to accept the challenge and not look for shortcuts.


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## ArthurBrain

millionrainbows said:


> Huh? The only "complaints" I've seen about tonal music are on that thread called "I find it difficult to listen to tonal music," which I thought was a sarcastic parody. I got a good laugh, anyway.
> 
> As far as tonal music goes, that's sort of like defending white men. Do they really need defending? Who is the minority as far as music? Certainly not the "three B's."


I should have specified that I've not seen it here so much as elsewhere in the main. It's intellectual snobbery to disparage either way as no musical system(s) should need defending anyway, in my probably not so humble opinion....


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## bigshot

Musical styles should prove their own value. We shouldn't apply handicaps like in a game of golf.


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## nikola

I think that what 99,99% of people and musicians can't recognize 'beautiful' or at least interesting on some more deeper or more shallow levels can't be that much objectively GOOD (but sometimes, many people can recognize trash as 'good', so there are no strict rules for taste). I guess I'm talking now about atonal music. But atonal music can be great just like tonal music. I think it all depends on talent of person who compose it. There are many generic tonal melodies in 20'th century and that is one of the reasons that could make someone to believe that tonal is 'old-fashioned' and that you can't find 'new and good melody' anymore what is nonsense.
I personally love tonal music, but I don't like generic uncreative, too simple, 'I've heard it already million times' type of melody. I want something that will grab my attention or something so much interesting or unconventional that will crawl under my skin after more listenings.

Actualy, I think that there is no anything that is 'old-fashioned'. Old fashioned can only be certain styles like some crappy synth music in horrors from late 70's or early 80's. 
But you've said that atonal music we can find in horrors. Question is WHY is there atonal music in horrors? It's there because atonal music is simply so wrong music. Everything is wrong about atonal music. I don't mean that atonal music is BAD, but it's WRONG because tonal music is aesthetically not just beautiful, but close to human psych. Mind can understand tonal music, while mind can't understand atonal music. That's why atonal music is often in horrors because it's so 'wrong' to hear something atonal. It's not natural for human to accept atonal music. It's like you would see man with head of bird instead of human head walking down the street. And that is unnatural and wrong. And something that is wrong has devastating impact on human psych. In horrors often happens something that is not natural and what is wrong and that makes atonal music perfect for horrors because unnatural music fits to unnatural scene.

But atonal music will always be unacceptable for human ear because it can't be 'beautiful' unless you compose such atonal masterpiece that will make perfect sense what will actualy turns that into 'beautiful', but on the other hand that's why some people (including me sometimes) will like to listen to 'ugly' atonal music because it can be so sick, perverse and twisted that actualy makes it so appealing sometimes.

You can also combine tonal with atonal. I think there are many possibilities and in music nothing is wrong to do, but I think there is difference only between quality and trash and that depends on talent, metality, hearing, sensibility and many other things considering composer him/herself. 
There has to be something original that will touch people or at least some people on right level. But people today are mostly not used to something unvonventional. They never were. For example, this is one song that I really love, but it's 'weird' in some sense. Most of Elton's fans disliked it because it's unusual and they say that 'melody is weird and goes nowhere'. I actualy think that melody is weird, but it goes exactly where it should. This is the song:





It's dramatic and probably slightly overblown ballad, but it's melody construction is for sure not generic, it's not 'lost' how it seems, it's not lame, phony or bloodless ballad like most of songs today. It's something different even though those 'differences' are in some probably subtle levels. Is it really good song? I wouldn't know. I just know that I like it and that it sounds different to me. We can always hear something that is new. I actualy don't believe that you can exhaust all options for new possible melodies. That's myth.
There are some melodies that sounds so simple and conventional, but still great. For example 2nd mvt of Beethoven's Pathetique piano sonata. He composed simple melody. But is it generic? For sure not. It's brilliant. It's little masterpiece that can evoke many emotions. And considering that Beethoven was mostly interested in complexity of form and structure than in tune, but he really made a tune here.

I think that options can not end and you should do whatever you love to do actualy. I would love to be a composer, but actualy, my technical knowledge considering music is almost zero. I'm more a listener and my opinion is mostly very much subjective (even though I, like everybody else, appreciate my own opinion the most.. lol).
You should be happy that you can actualy create music without worrying too much about tonal and atonal. Simply do what you like to do.


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## clavichorder

This thread predates my own similar one by a long time and is considerably more level headed. I found absolutely nothing in the OP that ought to be argued with.


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## Mephistopheles

I think it's just a lack of imagination. Baroque and Romantic music are very dissimilar, and yet they are both tonal with minor differences. To think that nothing more can be done with tonal music is silly - the tonality isn't everything. Personally though, I think tonality can be made interesting by experimenting with standard tunings. I think the serialists missed a trick when they just took the 12 tones of the piano for granted without changing them.


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## BurningDesire

Mephistopheles said:


> I think it's just a lack of imagination. Baroque and Romantic music are very dissimilar, and yet they are both tonal with minor differences. To think that nothing more can be done with tonal music is silly - the tonality isn't everything. Personally though, I think tonality can be made interesting by experimenting with standard tunings. I think the serialists missed a trick when they just took the 12 tones of the piano for granted without changing them.


I wouldn't really call it a lack of imagination. Alot of it simply stems from dogma. Personally I think you could still make interesting music with purely common practice tonal procedures, since its still quite enjoyable and interesting to listen to such music. Sets, the 12-tone system, serialism, and new tuning systems are just different ways of writing.


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## TresPicos

Krisena said:


> The time will never come that the inhabitants of TalkClassical will stop whining about atonal music. Even though contemporary composers have moved away from the whole debate and now frequently mix tonalities (that includes atonality), forms and everything that's old and that's new, people here are still stuck in the "modernistic shock" that happened almost a 100 years ago. Atonality is just another colour on the big palette of musical devices. Please just get over it. Sorry for sounding irritated, but I am getting tired of this.


Thank you.


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## GGluek

Schoenberg himself said there's still great music to be composed in C major.


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## Guest

And how long ago did he say that? 

He's been dead for over sixty years. Perhaps his pronouncement about C major is not quite the latest thing in freshness as pronouncements go....


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## BurningDesire

some guy said:


> And how long ago did he say that?
> 
> He's been dead for over sixty years. Perhaps his pronouncement about C major is not quite the latest thing in freshness as pronouncements go....


It doesn't matter if he died sixty years ago, or 2 days ago, or 300 years ago. He was right in saying that. Just as there's great music to still be written using any sorts of techniques.


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## Phil loves classical

Came across this interesting thread. Tonal music is actually harder to write than atonal with all other things equal, as balanced scales like 12-tone, octatonic, and whole tones don’t need resolution, or have it partially built-in. Tonal pieces at the same technical level of atonal pieces require more tweaking to sound right, since tonal scales are unbalanced, and have more variety of context. My $.02.


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## Woodduck

Phil loves classical said:


> Came across this interesting thread. Tonal music is actually harder to write than atonal with all other things equal, as balanced scales like 12-tone, octatonic, and whole tones don't need resolution, or have it partially built-in. Tonal pieces at the same technical level of atonal pieces require more tweaking to sound right, since tonal scales are unbalanced, and have more variety of context. My $.02.


Have you composed both tonal and atonal music? How do you determine when they are at the same technical level?

This also occurs to me: is it harder to write tonal music, or just harder to tell when atonal music is well-written? Or are those the same question?


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## BabyGiraffe

Phil loves classical said:


> Came across this interesting thread. Tonal music is actually harder to write than atonal with all other things equal, as balanced scales like 12-tone, octatonic, and whole tones don't need resolution, or have it partially built-in. Tonal pieces at the same technical level of atonal pieces require more tweaking to sound right, since tonal scales are unbalanced, and have more variety of context. My $.02.


Hey, Phil... do you know that microtonal dudes and modern academic music theoretist have created a whole "science" of scales (unfortunately, it has more in common with discrete mathematics than with "music theory") and your statement is completely laughable.


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## Phil loves classical

Woodduck said:


> Have you composed both tonal and atonal music? How do you determine when they are at the same technical level?
> 
> This also occurs to me: is it harder to write tonal music, or just harder to tell when atonal music is well-written? Or are those the same question?


I've experimented and written both, yes. I found that it is easier to leave a piece as it is, and call it atonal, than having to bust my butt to resolve and harmonize properly, with 7th chords, 9th chords. They have to flow seamlessly to the next. Balanced scales are much easier to work with and harmonize.



BabyGiraffe said:


> Hey, Phil... do you know that microtonal dudes and modern academic music theoretist have created a whole "science" of scales (unfortunately, it has more in common with discrete mathematics than with "music theory") and your statement is completely laughable.


There is a lot of quarter tone music is really just tonally based structures, but have some chords and transpositions that are different. The pure microtonal scales like 13 steps not based on multiples of 12 don't need to resolve just like atonal music. It doesn't matter how complicated those scales are derived, or music is generated (I'm an engineer by training), if the music doesn't need to resolve, then it really isn't hard to write. I can use Fourier series, or other complex sequences to derive the music or tone frequencies, but is not really hard to write actually. Any math or computer nerd can then become Beethoven? I don't think so.

Complex thematic tonal music can't be written algorithmically, or else it would require the composer to be an artistic genius already.

Did it ever to anyone that atonal music is harder on the listener than it is on the composer? The listener is left with all the work to disseminate, harmonize and link the progressions in their heads, while with tonal music the composer has to do all that.


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## Phil loves classical

On comparing tonal and atonal on a same technical level. Compose a tonal and atonal melody with the same rhythm, transform the melodies and introduce others and develop. It takes more work for the tonal one to stay tonal, than the atonal one to stay atonal.


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## DaveM

Phil loves classical said:


> ...Did it ever to anyone that atonal music is harder on the listener than it is on the composer? The listener is left with all the work to disseminate, harmonize and link the progressions in their heads, while with tonal music the composer has to do all that.


*********Amen!**********


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## Ariasexta

> So why is it that tonal music is considered to be dated by most "serious" composers? I propose to you that the answer lies in the fact that the common-practice harmonic vocabulary has become cliche. Since tonal music has such prominence in popular culture, it has become too typical, even mundane. The reason for this is not because the system of functional tonality is in and of itself naive by modern standards, but because its prominance in our culture lends itself to exploitation by the naive and unlearned. Therefore it has been abused and bastardized be more exponents than have composed "learned" tonal music. We in the modern art world have come to asscociate bastardized tonality with tonality itself, or at least I have. In fact the season we are in now exemplifies this. Take Christmas carols and slap pop orchestration on top of it and you've got complete cheese (something we hear a lot of during this time of year).


Typical marxist argument. Seriousness totally relies on dialetical perspective.


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## BabyGiraffe

Phil, your whole idea about resolving, developing etc are based on certain style. Your ideas about atonal are also somewhat vague. The same transformations of the material that are used by Bach, Beethoven and company are also used by the modernists. I'm not sure why you think that one can be "resolved", but the other - not. Not all music has to be major/minor triads, major, natural/harmonic/melodic minor scales and use set of stylistic gestures like the classical cadences, forms etc... 

Any math or computer nerd can probably become Beethoven, if sits down to compose seriously.

Music doesn't have to sound "nice" or to be accepted by a certain culture.

I'm pretty sure that composing in a unknown idiom is harder than composing familiar music. I certainly can compose in many tonal styles, but according to you atonal music is easy, so I should be able to compose something ala Stravinsky (diminished/octatonic sonorities) or Liszt (augmented/whole tone sonorities) without problems even if I have never tried composing atonal music...


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## Ariasexta

Atonality=marxist garbage, nuff said.


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## EdwardBast

Writing good tonal music is difficult. Writing good atonal music is difficult. Writing bad music is easy, tonal or atonal.


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## Phil loves classical

BabyGiraffe said:


> Phil, your whole idea about resolving, developing etc are based on certain style. Your ideas about atonal are also somewhat vague. The same transformations of the material that are used by Bach, Beethoven and company are also used by the modernists. I'm not sure why you think that one can be "resolved", but the other - not. Not all music has to be major/minor triads, major, natural/harmonic/melodic minor scales and use set of stylistic gestures like the classical cadences, forms etc...
> 
> Any math or computer nerd can probably become Beethoven, if sits down to compose seriously.
> 
> Music doesn't have to sound "nice" or to be accepted by a certain culture.
> 
> I'm pretty sure that composing in a unknown idiom is harder than composing familiar music. I certainly can compose in many tonal styles, but according to you atonal music is easy, so I should be able to compose something ala Stravinsky (diminished/octatonic sonorities) or Liszt (augmented/whole tone sonorities) without problems even if I have never tried composing atonal music...


I'm not saying tonal music is better, just that that it takes more work to resolve. Stravinsky's polytonal works are I think some of the most complex music, and I think more amazing than Beethoven. Liszt is really tonal and stretched its boundaries. I'm going more into say Schoenberg and Stockhausen, the latter's compositional methods are complex, but would there be much of a difference in using some different notes? There is basically no sounding wrong at that point. They can use complex rhythms, etc. but we are just talking tonal vs. atonal.


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## Guest

EdwardBast said:


> Writing good tonal music is difficult. Writing good atonal music is difficult. Writing bad music is easy, tonal or atonal.


I agree and it is sad that it has to be said again and again.It is just a different language with less handles to hold on other than one's own sensitivity and abilities.


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