# Schoenberg and The Music of the Future



## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

*"...I have great esteem and respect for many who still adhere to tonality, or who have returned to it. There are true and genuine talents among them, and they have a very important task. The leap from a method of composition that emphasizes key to mine was very swift and sudden. For a long time to come, the listener's ear must still be prepared before he finds dissonant sounds a matter of course and can comprehend the process based on them. It seems to me that such composer's activity is very much the thing to ameliorate this. The idea is timeless, so it can perfectly well wait; but the language must make haste!"* Schoenberg, Style and Idea, pg.263 University of California Press 1984

Here Schoenberg speaks of tonal composers as bridging the gap between tonality and atonality. But wait, there is something more, he recognizes an inability to "comprehend" a music that makes use of dissonance. Could it be that not liking Post-Romantic music is literally a matter of not being able to "comprehend" it? And is it the high purpose of tonality to lead to the "amelioration" of a more sophisticated tonality which incorporates dissonance?


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

Klassic said:


> Could it be that not liking Post-Romantic music is literally a matter of not being able to "comprehend" it?


No.



Klassic said:


> And is it the high purpose of tonality to lead to the "amelioration" of a more sophisticated tonality which incorporates dissonance?


The high purpose of tonality was _The Marriage of Figaro_.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Klassic said:


> *"...I have great esteem and respect for many who still adhere to tonality, or who have returned to it. There are true and genuine talents among them, and they have a very important task. The leap from a method of composition that emphasizes key to mine was very swift and sudden. For a long time to come, the listener's ear must still be prepared before he finds dissonant sounds a matter of course and can comprehend the process based on them. It seems to me that such composer's activity is very much the thing to ameliorate this. The idea is timeless, so it can perfectly well wait; but the language must make haste!"* Schoenberg, Style and Idea, pg.263 University of California Press 1984
> 
> Here Schoenberg speaks of tonal composers as bridging the gap between tonality and atonality. But wait, there is something more, he recognizes an inability to "comprehend" a music that makes use of dissonance. Could it be that not liking Post-Romantic music is literally a matter of not being able to "comprehend" it? And is it the high purpose of tonality to lead to the "amelioration" of a more sophisticated tonality which incorporates dissonance?


Schoenberg's statement ought to be very interesting to those (including some on this forum) who so often and emphatically point to the continuity of his atonal work with the tonal music (his own and that of others) which preceded it. The composer himself, by describing his departure from tonality as a "leap," as "swift" and "sudden," and by speaking of the unpreparedness of listeners to comprehend it, is clearly emphasizing the striking differentness of the musical "language" he created. This will be no surprise to a lot of listeners who hear that difference as highly significant in their own response to the music.

Schoenberg's other point, which appears to be that the most worthwhile thing tonal composers can do, now that he has shown the world music's future, is to write so as to pave the way _retroactively_ for his stuff to catch on, thus helping uncomprehending listeners get over their ignorance, and that furthermore they need to hurry up about it, is startling.

That is what he's saying, isn't it? Or does it mean something different in German?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Well it is now at least ninety-years since Schoenberg started to develop twelve-tone technique. I must say while influential for several decades, I don't quite see the "leap" that he was describing certainly as far as many listeners are concerned when it comes to "....the listener's ear must still be prepared before he finds dissonant sounds a matter of course and can comprehend the process based on them". 

A very good quote and thank you for posting.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

ArtMusic said:


> ...I don't quite see the "leap" that he was describing certainly as far as many listeners are concerned when it comes to "....the listener's ear must still be prepared before he finds dissonant sounds a matter of course and can comprehend the process based on them".


At the time things would have been very different. Today many of us can simply take Schoenberg for granted... maybe someone can rustle up some of the early reviews of his work.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Klassic said:


> At the time things would have been very different. Today many of us can simply take Schoenberg for granted... maybe someone can rustle up some of the early reviews of his work.


"After this interpretation and after an exact working-through of the score there can remain no doubt about the seriousness of the work, in which each measure the defiant unyielding, fanatic, logical personality of its composer is expressed, and which is joined with a strict logic that goes, indeed, so far that it never eliminates or simplifies harmonic crashes of the sharpest type" - Richard Sprecht on the second performance of Schoenberg's String Quartet in F# minor, op. 10

"The much-debated quartet in F-sharp with voice has forfeited much of its terrors. One gets accustomed to nothing so quickly as to dissonances; and the motivic and atmospheric content is so intense and rich and so strongly dictated by the form that one wistfully greets this work like the last cape before one approaches the view, far from home, of the strange sea of an unknown future." - R.S. Hoffmann, on a 1912 performance of the same piece


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Harold in Columbia said:


> No.
> 
> The high purpose of tonality was _The Marriage of Figaro_.


Amen to this :tiphat:


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## Bruckner Anton (Mar 10, 2016)

I once asked one of my friend majored in music composition about 20th centry music that apply other theories/languages. These modern works usually follow their own compositional rules that are even more systematic or mathematic than traditional one, and even more easy for professional students to understand. So I do not think that any sophisticated composers are not able to comprehend a clearly-designed new theory like the 12-tone. They probably know it very well, but they may still not apply it as a method to convey their ideas.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

The point as Schoenberg understands it is that music was meant to progress not remain stagnant (the ability of the ear must advance). Good for him! The only unfortunate thing is that he was deluded by Platonism, contrary to Schoenberg's assertion: the idea is not eternal. This is a nice fairy-tale of comfort, but it is not the actual nature of the thing. Ideas die all the time. I suspect this means his task, was in all reality, even more urgent.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

Two observations:

1. The reason people still hate atonality is because it really was the music of the future - Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler, and Shostakovich's future. It really was the organic product of Romanticism. (_Parsifal_ to _Salome_ to _Erwartung_.) Thus it exposes millions of bovine philistines who like to think of themselves as heroic rebels and pretend that that's why they like the Romantics.

2. It's the minimalists' world now, and minimalism is a reaction against atonality. Thus atonality was also the music of the future in the sense that it made our music today sound the way it does.


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## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

Harold in Columbia said:


> Two observations:
> 
> 1. The reason people still hate atonality is because it really was the music of the future - Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler, and Shostakovich's future. It really was the organic product of Romanticism. (_Parsifal_ to _Salome_ to _Erwartung_.) Thus it exposes millions of bovine philistines who like to think of themselves as heroic rebels and pretend that that's why they like the Romantics.
> 
> 2. It's the minimalists' world now, and minimalism is a reaction against atonality. Thus atonality was also the music of the future in the sense that it made our music today sound the way it does.


So now it's time for the obvious observation portion of the thread...

What are you driving at?


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

Well, what was this thread driving at in the first place?


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## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

Harold in Columbia said:


> Well, what was this thread driving at in the first place?


I think it's to incite resentment from pro-atonalists by posting a quote that is interpreted here as proof Schoenberg himself really thought tonal music as crucial to making atonal music work or some nonsense of the like.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Klassic said:


> *"...I have great esteem and respect for many who still adhere to tonality, or who have returned to it. There are true and genuine talents among them, and they have a very important task. The leap from a method of composition that emphasizes key to mine was very swift and sudden. For a long time to come, the listener's ear must still be prepared before he finds dissonant sounds a matter of course and can comprehend the process based on them. It seems to me that such composer's activity is very much the thing to ameliorate this. The idea is timeless, so it can perfectly well wait; but the language must make haste!"* Schoenberg, Style and Idea, pg.263 University of California Press 1984
> 
> Here Schoenberg speaks of tonal composers as bridging the gap between tonality and atonality. But wait, there is something more, he recognizes an inability to "comprehend" a music that makes use of dissonance. Could it be that not liking Post-Romantic music is literally a matter of not being able to "comprehend" it? And is it the high purpose of tonality to lead to the "amelioration" of a more sophisticated tonality which incorporates dissonance?


Read the quote carefully: "The listener's ear must still be prepared...before he finds dissonant sounds a matter of course...and can comprehend the process based on them."

The ear comes first; an intuitive acceptance. Then comes comprehension.

I agree with Woodduck, that these tonal composers will fill in the gap between tonal music with key areas to tonality with more and more dissonance, until "the ear will be prepared" for his music. He admits that the shift was swift and sudden, and people's ears were not prepared for it. At least that's his rationalization for the widespread failure of 12-tone music to unprepared listeners.

BTW, as a pro-atonalist, I resent the implication that tonality is necessary to an eventual acceptance of 12-tone music.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Fugue Meister said:


> I think it's to incite resentment from pro-atonalists by posting a quote that is interpreted here as proof Schoenberg himself really thought tonal music as crucial to making atonal music work or some nonsense of the like.


Schoenberg, as is clear from the actual essay quoted, did not believe in any contradiction between "atonal" and tonal music. He always stressed that his own methods arose out of tonality and tonal thinking.

With others of that era, this was not necessarily true.

"Many modern composers believe they are writing tonally if they occasionally introduce a major or minor triad, or a cadence-like turn of phrase, into a series of harmonies which lack, and must lack, any terms of reference. Others hope the use of ostinati and pedal-points will do the same thing for them. Both are acting like believers who buy an indulgence."

The exact same thing applies today, as much as, or more than, it did then. Tonality has become a slogan wherein a composer signals that his or her music uses some of the most conspicuous elements of older harmony, without implying what tonality itself meant: the musical logic involved.


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## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> Schoenberg, as is clear from the actual essay quoted, did not believe in any contradiction between "atonal" and tonal music.
> 
> "Many modern composers believe they are writing tonally if they occasionally introduce a major or minor triad, or a cadence-like turn of phrase, into a series of harmonies which lack, and must lack, any terms of reference. Others hope the use of ostinati and pedal-points will do the same thing for them. Both are acting like believers who buy an indulgence."
> 
> The exact same thing applies today, as much as, or more than, it did then. Tonality has become a slogan wherein a composer signals that his or her music uses some of the most conspicuous elements of older harmony, without implying what tonality itself meant: the musical logic involved.


I understand all this however, I don't believe that is how the original poster is choosing to interpret essay.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

Fugue Meister said:


> I think it's to incite resentment from pro-atonalists by posting a quote that is interpreted here as proof Schoenberg himself really thought tonal music as crucial to making atonal music work or some nonsense of the like.


Not at all my friend, I largely uphold Schoenberg's claims.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> Schoenberg's statement ought to be very interesting to those (including some on this forum) who so often and emphatically point to the continuity of his atonal work with the tonal music (his own and that of others) which preceded it. The composer himself, by describing his departure from tonality as a "leap," as "swift" and "sudden," and by speaking of the unpreparedness of listeners to comprehend it, is clearly emphasizing the striking differentness of the musical "language" he created. This will be no surprise to a lot of listeners who hear that difference as highly significant in their own response to the music.


Schoenberg's departure from tonality seems "sudden" because it attacks the problem head-on in a very complete way, and does the job swiftly and directly.

The 'problem' is that key-area tonality was always in danger of being dismantled by the chromatic scale itself, which is the projected result of the Pythagoran idea of cycling of the fifth, which gave us a 12-note octave.

If we wanted pure tonality, we should have stayed with the 7-note diatonic scale.

Schoenberg saw the inevitable outcome and simply made a system which expedited the process. He realized that most listeners would (and had made progress with Wagner, Strauss, etc.) accept a gradual, organic weakening of tonality, but were not ready to make the leap to the logical result along with him.


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## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

Klassic said:


> Not at all my friend, I largely uphold Schoenberg's claims.


Which claims do you uphold?, the one misinterpreted at the heading of the thread? What of the other writings made by Schoenberg you most likely disagree with based on previous posts you've made on other threads?... or were you just playing it up to amuse yourself again by creating confusion and posting things you don't really believe just to see what people will say?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> Schoenberg, as is clear from the actual essay quoted, did not believe in any contradiction between "atonal" and tonal music.


Yet he does see a difference, as a 'leap:' "*The leap from a method of composition that emphasizes key to mine was very swift and sudden. "

*


> He always stressed that his own methods arose out of tonality and tonal thinking.


But he says that he does not emphasize key. So he must be talking about other elements such as rhythmic phrasing; but not the emphasis of key.



> With others of that era, this was not necessarily true.
> 
> "Many modern composers believe they are writing tonally if they occasionally introduce a major or minor triad, or a cadence-like turn of phrase, into* a series of harmonies which lack, and must lack, any terms of reference.* Others hope the use of ostinati and pedal-points will do the same thing for them. Both are acting like believers who buy an indulgence."


So he is saying again that 'reference' is not the goal. This is tantamount to saying that a key center is no longer the goal. In fact, he says the harmonies* "lack, and must lack, any terms of reference."
*


> The exact same thing applies today, as much as, or more than, it did then. Tonality has become a slogan wherein a composer signals that his or her music uses some of the most conspicuous elements of older harmony, without implying what tonality itself meant: the musical logic involved.


So what does 'tonality itself' mean? What is the 'musical logic' of tonality you speak of? Can you identify it specifically?


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

Fugue Meister said:


> Which claims do you uphold?, the one misinterpreted at the heading of the thread? What of the other writings made by Schoenberg you most likely disagree with based on previous posts you've made on other threads?... or were you just playing it up to amuse yourself again by creating confusion and posting things you don't really believe just to see what people will say?


FM- there is no joke here. Schoenberg is correct about bridging the gap, though I do not believe this is the only purpose (for what Schoenberg here calls a tonal composer). I believe he is also correct about people not being able to "comprehend" music which has a stronger utilization of dissonance.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> Yet he does see a difference, as a 'leap:' "*The leap from a method of composition that emphasizes key to mine was very swift and sudden. "*


I didn't say there wasn't a difference, nor have I ever said this. People think I do only because they aren't reading what I'm actually writing.



millionrainbows said:


> But he says that he does not emphasize key. So he must be talking about other elements such as rhythmic phrasing; but not the emphasis of key.


As he says elsewhere in the same essay, tonality is defined as music in which every single harmony and harmonic relationship is related to and bound by *a single center*. His later music is not composed in this way, but it is composed with the full knowledge and experience of the methods of tonality, and the relationships of tonality still affect it, even to the last works.



millionrainbows said:


> So he is saying again that 'reference' is not the goal. This is tantamount to saying that a key center is no longer the goal. In fact, he says the harmonies* "lack, and must lack, any terms of reference."
> *


You realize that he's not talking about his own music here, but that of his contemporaries who considered themselves "tonal" composers.



millionrainbows said:


> So what does 'tonality itself' mean? What is the 'musical logic' of tonality you speak of? Can you identify it specifically?


Tonality is a specific system of hierarchical pitch relations through triadic harmony which arose around the 17th century in Europe, and nowhere else in the world.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> So what does 'tonality itself' mean? What is the 'musical logic' of tonality you speak of? Can you identify it specifically?


To me this is confused. One can even call it a trick: can you sustain a formal definition of the word truth? The answer is no. The only thing that can be done is a general, formal definition, but what is even better is simply a contrast of examples. If you are not content with this then you are ignorant as to the breakdown of formalism.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

millionrainbows said:


> Schoenberg saw the inevitable outcome and simply made a system which expedited the process. He realized that most listeners would (and had made progress with Wagner, Strauss, etc.) accept a gradual, organic weakening of tonality, but were not ready to make the leap to the logical result along with him.


I really don't think there was anything left to do that could be called a "leap" after the execution of John the Baptist in _Salome_ in 1905 - 



 - (much less when Schönberg developed his "system" circa 1923, more than a decade after his groundbreaking atonal works of 1908-9).


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

*To all, pay attention:* there is an argument that says the human ear can only handle (X) amount of dissonance.* So what if we did this same experiment on Neanderthals, would their ears be able to handle the same measure as that of humans? I think not. The point is that the ear has evolved, and continues to evolve. The reactionaries that speak against modern music don't seem to understand this.... so this is what they say.... "my ear can't decipher (X) amount of dissonance," which can be properly translated (if you are here understanding what I'm saying) into "I have a neanderthal ear." It is one thing to be able to hear the music and not like it, it is quite another to dislike it because you cannot hear it!!!

Schoenberg was one of the rare people in his time that understood this.

* I finally found one of the blockheads who makes this argument (though I will warn you, this lecture is a waste of time):


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Klassic said:


> *To all, pay attention:* there is an argument that says the human ear can only handle (X) amount of dissonance. So what if we did this same experiment on Neanderthals, would their ears be able to handle the same measure as that of humans? I think not. The point is that the ear has evolved, and continues to evolve. The reactionaries that speak against modern music don't seem to understand this.... so this is what they say.... "my ear can't decipher (X) amount of dissonance," which can be properly translated (if you are here understanding what I'm saying) into "I have a neanderthal ear." It is one thing to be able to hear the music and not like it, it is quite another to dislike it because you cannot hear it!!!


The problem people have with Schoenberg is less the amount of dissonance than the lack of repetition and the sheer density of his music. This makes it difficult to get to know in the first place.


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## Bayreuth (Jan 20, 2015)

Klassic said:


> *To all, pay attention:* there is an argument that says the human ear can only handle (X) amount of dissonance. So what if we did this same experiment on Neanderthals, would their ears be able to handle the same measure as that of humans? I think not. The point is that the ear has evolved, and continues to evolve. The reactionaries that speak against modern music don't seem to understand this.... so this is what they say.... "my ear can't decipher (X) amount of dissonance," which can be properly translated (if you are here understanding what I'm saying) into "I have a neanderthal ear." It is one thing to be able to hear the music and not like it, it is quite another to dislike it because you cannot hear it!!!
> 
> Schoenberg was one of the rare people in his time that understood this.


Dude, seriously, you make absolutely impossible for anyone to find out where do you stand on pretty much anything


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

Bayreuth said:


> Dude, seriously, you make absolutely impossible for anyone to find out where do you stand on pretty much anything


I stand with Schoenberg and his revolution. I think several people have actually understood this, I can cite Strange Magic (though I have not consulted him on this) as understanding my lack of seriousness regarding outlandish statements I have made. At the end of the day, all jest aside, I crush all modern music haters.


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## Bayreuth (Jan 20, 2015)

Klassic said:


> I stand with Schoenberg and his revolution. I think several people have actually understood this, I can cite Strange Magic (though I have not consulted him on this) as understanding my lack of seriousness regarding outlandish statements I have made. At the end of the day, all jest aside, I crush all modern music haters.


And yet again there is no way of knowing whether you believe this or the exact opposite


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

Bayreuth said:


> And yet again there is no way of knowing whether you believe this or the exact opposite


Either way, who cares?


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

Bayreuth said:


> And yet again there is no way of knowing whether you believe this or the exact opposite


Such is true of all "knowing" regarding another person's belief.


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## Bayreuth (Jan 20, 2015)

Harold in Columbia said:


> Either way, who cares?


Well, given than this fellow is single-handedly creating half of the threads in the forum these last few days at least if would be nice to know which ones are serious debates and which are just a circus


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

I can "tell" you what I believe, and then you can decide if this is good enough for warranting knowledge, or I can "show" you with my actions..... there is of course a third way, you could just ask *Strange Magic* if this post is serious. I am indeed a revolutionary in Schoenberg's revolution [Gould and I both had this in common.]


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## Bayreuth (Jan 20, 2015)

Klassic said:


> I can "tell" you what I believe, and then you can decide if this is good enough for warranting knowledge, or I can "show" you with my actions..... there is of course a third way, you could just ask *Strange Magic* if this post is serious. I am indeed a revolutionary in Schoenberg's revolution [Gould and I both had this in common.]


Why the hell would I be part of a forum where I have to be asking around if posts are serious or not?


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

Bayreuth said:


> Why the hell would I be part of a forum where I have to be asking around if posts are serious or not?


Wrong question, the question is why would you care about the sincerity or lack of sincerity in other people? Surely this is their problem not yours. I am only one insignificant gal, this Forum has been in existence for years, ignore me into extinction. Lots of other people on here to interact with.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

Klassic said:


> I am indeed a revolutionary in Schoenberg's revolution [Gould and I both had this in common.]


If Gould were in Schönberg's revolution, he'd play Schönberg like Steuermann.

Gould is a revolutionary in Boulez's revolution against Stravinsky's revolution against Schönberg.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Mahlerian said:


> The problem people have with Schoenberg is less the amount of dissonance than the lack of repetition and the sheer density of his music. This makes it difficult to get to know in the first place.


I agree that dissonance is probably not the issue for newcomers to the 2nd Viennese school. I disliked almost all their music at first, but I never felt there was significant dissonance. You may be correct about the lack of repetition and the sheer density of his music, but I don't think that was my problem. I liked Verklärte Nacht the first time I heard it. I also liked Strauss's Metamorphosen (once suggested here along with Verklärte Nacht as a path to becoming comfortable with later Schoenberg). Do you think those works also exhibit lack of repetition and the sheer density of music? If they do, I would suggest that there is something else preventing those unfamiliar with the language from enjoying the music.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

mmsbls said:


> I agree that dissonance is probably not the issue for newcomers to the 2nd Viennese school. I disliked almost all their music at first, but I never felt there was significant dissonance. You may be correct about the lack of repetition and the sheer density of his music, but I don't think that was my problem. I liked Verklärte Nacht the first time I heard it. I also liked Strauss's Metamorphosen (once suggested here along with Verklärte Nacht as a path to becoming comfortable with later Schoenberg). Do you think those works also exhibit lack of repetition and the sheer density of music? If they do, I would suggest that there is something else preventing those unfamiliar with the language from enjoying the music.


Verklarte Nacht is significantly more repetitive and less dense than pretty much any of Schoenberg's later works. It contains a number of passages based on literal or sequential repetitions, and exhibits a slower rate of development overall. I'm not as familiar with Strauss's Metamorphosen.

Many who dislike Schoenberg's later works still enjoy Verklarte Nacht, but this is far less true of the later tonal works, the String Quartet No. 1 and the Chamber Symphony in E in particular. Many people perceive these works as "atonal" because of their discomfort with the harmonic/melodic language.

There was a study done in which bits of modernist music (Carter, Berio, or some such) were played, but with extra repetitions added, and listeners ratings of those compared to the original bits of music they derived from, and most listeners rated the versions with repetition more highly in terms of beauty and musicality.

I imagine that one would find the same if one asked people to rate how "tonal" something sounds.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Klassic said:


> At the time things would have been very different. Today many of us can simply take Schoenberg for granted... maybe someone can rustle up some of the early reviews of his work.


That is an outcome of the passing of time. Although I am not convinced many classical listeners in general take Schoenberg's music for granted.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Mahlerian said:


> Verklarte Nacht is significantly more repetitive and less dense than pretty much any of Schoenberg's later works. It contains a number of passages based on literal or sequential repetitions, and exhibits a slower rate of development overall. I'm not as familiar with Strauss's Metamorphosen.
> 
> Many who dislike Schoenberg's later works still enjoy Verklarte Nacht, but this is far less true of the later tonal works, the String Quartet No. 1 and the Chamber Symphony in E in particular. Many people perceive these works as "atonal" because of their discomfort with the harmonic/melodic language.


I didn't hear the String Quartet No. 1 and the Chamber Symphony in E until I had started liking other Schoenberg works so I can't say whether I would have liked them before becoming more familiar with Schoenberg's music. To me they do not have a similar quality to the Piano Concerto or late string quartets, and my best guess is that I would have liked them as well. But who knows?

Anyway that's interesting about repetition. Certainly repetition in other studies often allows people to better appreciate or at least become less uncomfortable with music passages.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Both String Quartet 1 and 2 caused stronger negative initial reactions than the serial quartets 3 and 4.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

Schoenberg was not an idiot; he did not use the word dissonance carelessly. Dissonance is a major problem for the listener. However, I think dissonance covers a very large field of musical actions both harmony and melody included. When we ask the question as to what repels the listener the answer is a combination of vibrations that seem to produce, give off the _impression_ of something unpleasant [in relation to familiar tones], disharmony, collision, this demands more from the ear by way of comprehension.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

I cringe with embarrassment for the writer whenever I read naive pronouncements like those in the Schoenberg quote. Fortunately, his music holds up better than lame ideas like the linear evolution of musical language and musical style. There was a lot of that kind of silliness going around at that time and we should probably treat it indulgently, accepting those who spouted it as children of a strange and stressful age. But I can't accept that what Schoenberg meant was dissonance in the simple sense, as it is being interpreted by several upthread. Surely he meant emancipated dissonance? After all, one can easily get a higher level of dissonance than is common in Schoenberg's music just by using chain suspensions and the other standard nonharmonic tones of traditional tonality. Listen to m. 22 in the slow movement of Beethoven's Sonata Op. 2, no. 1, for example. Now that is some grating, crunchy dissonance!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Klassic said:


> Schoenberg was not an idiot; he did not use the word dissonance carelessly. Dissonance is a major problem for the listener. However, I think dissonance covers a very large field of musical actions both harmony and melody included. When we ask the question as to what repels the listener the answer is a combination of vibrations that seem to produce, give off the _impression_ of something unpleasant [in relation to familiar tones], disharmony, collision, this demands more from the ear by way of comprehension.


Disharmony and collision of vibrations may repel some listeners - it may even discourage your African violets from blooming - but most listeners like it very much. It's just that they like it to sound as if it has some special meaning in a larger context, generally a context in which it resolves into harmony and concord. What actually repels listeners is the sense of constant dissonance without perceptible relief, resolution, or function. What individual listeners perceive, in particular contexts, as lacking relief, resolution, or function will be relative to their musical experience and temperament (as will what they perceive as profound, which we've been discussing on another thread), but although degree of dissonance is acoustical, the perception of dissonance is largely contextual. Schoenberg certainly understood that his "emancipated dissonance" would be problematic for listeners for this very reason.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> Fortunately, his music holds up better than lame ideas like the linear evolution of musical language and musical style.


EdwardBast, EdwardBast, EdwardBast, do tell, do you think evolution is merely a false idea as opposed to an empirical fact? [if your answer here is affirmative please avoid all future interaction with me.]

"lame idea...." : (of an explanation or excuse) unconvincingly feeble.

Has there been no evolution to the ear? Does the ear not evolve? Why did Schoenberg not take place in 1700?


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Klassic said:


> EdwardBast, EdwardBast, EdwardBast, do tell, do you think evolution is merely a false idea as opposed to an empirical fact? [if your answer here is affirmative please avoid all future interaction with me.]
> 
> "lame idea...." : (of an explanation or excuse) unconvincingly feeble.
> 
> Has there been no evolution to the ear? Does the ear not evolve? Why did Schoenberg not take place in 1700?


What?...

Biological evolution is not the same thing as the idea of the linear musical evolution EB is talking about.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

Klassic said:


> Has there been no evolution to the ear? Does the ear not evolve? Why did Schoenberg not take place in 1700?


Same reason Philip Glass didn't.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> Verklarte Nacht is significantly more repetitive and less dense than pretty much any of Schoenberg's later works. It contains a number of passages based on literal or sequential repetitions, and exhibits a slower rate of development overall. I'm not as familiar with Strauss's Metamorphosen.
> 
> Many who dislike Schoenberg's later works still enjoy Verklarte Nacht, but this is far less true of the later tonal works, the String Quartet No. 1 and the Chamber Symphony in E in particular. Many people perceive these works as "atonal" because of their discomfort with the harmonic/melodic language.
> 
> ...


This is not surprising. Repetition - along with its related principles of unity, symmetry and balance - is one of the most basic devices for achieving coherence in art. If no element in a work ever repeats, you have chaos. If a listener can't grasp the harmonic idiom of a work, repetition can give him a hook, a feeling that something is stable, that perhaps there's meaning even if he has no clue what that meaning is. That of course is the basic function of tonality as well, in which return to a known place of stability bestows order and meaning, and so repetition even of non-tonal ideas in a non-tonal context might conceivably create a momentary sensation of tonality.


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## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

Klassic said:


> Could it be that not liking Post-Romantic music is literally a matter of not being able to "comprehend" it?


Possibly, possibly not. We're deep in the realm of speculation, here. I suppose that probably in some cases, yes, and in some cases, no.



> And is it the high purpose of tonality to lead to the "amelioration" of a more sophisticated tonality which incorporates dissonance?


No. I really doubt it.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

violadude said:


> What?...
> 
> Biological evolution is not the same thing as the idea of the linear musical evolution EB is talking about.


What?...

Did I not cover all possible uses: 'has there been no evolution to the ear?'

I wait for Eddy to make himself clear.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Klassic said:


> What?...
> 
> Did I not cover all possible uses: 'has there been no evolution to the ear?'
> 
> I wait for Eddy to make himself clear.


Are you referring to Mr. Bast, bub?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Klassic said:


> I can "tell" you what I believe, and then you can decide if this is good enough for warranting knowledge, or I can "show" you with my actions..... there is of course a third way, you could just ask *Strange Magic* if this post is serious. I am indeed a revolutionary in Schoenberg's revolution [Gould and I both had this in common.]


Please, PLEASE! Don't ask me......


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Klassic said:


> What?...
> 
> Did I not cover all possible uses: 'has there been no evolution to the ear?'
> 
> I wait for Eddy to make himself clear.


No you didn't. By linear evolution I meant Schoenberg's myopic idea that aspects of the language of his predecessors made his treatment of harmony and dissonance not only inevitable, but the singular endpoint toward which music must progress. A nonlinear view would recognize that there are many directions in which one might, and in which many did, extend, for example, Wagner's harmonic thought.

By the way, you are misusing the term Post-Romantic, which refers to the tonal music of the decades around the turn of the 20th century - Strauss, Mahler, Rachmaninoff, early Schoenberg, etc.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> This is not surprising. Repetition - along with its related principles of unity, symmetry and balance - is one of the most basic devices for achieving coherence in art. If no element in a work ever repeats, you have chaos. If a listener can't grasp the harmonic idiom of a work, repetition can give him a hook, *a feeling that something is stable, that perhaps there's meaning even if he has no clue what that meaning is*. That of course is the basic function of tonality as well, in which return to a known place of stability bestows order and meaning, and so repetition even of non-tonal ideas in a non-tonal context might conceivably create a momentary sensation of tonality.


It works that way with some of Donald Trump's babbling. At first one assumes it is gibberish, but after several repetitions one must assume he attaches some meaning to what he is saying. Seriously though, I would want to know details of the experimental design. For example, were the repetitions random or were they carefully designed to create symmetrical phrases or a sense of harmonic stability? In any case, this sounds like one of those cases where it would be extremely difficult to control for unanticipated variables.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> No you didn't. By linear evolution I meant Schoenberg's myopic idea that aspects of the language of his predecessors made his treatment of harmony and dissonance not only inevitable, but the singular endpoint toward which music must progress. *A nonlinear view would recognize that there are many directions in which one might, and in which many did, extend, for example, Wagner's harmonic thought.*


You seem to be unaware that the sentence in bold, not the preceding one, represents Schoenberg's views. In later years, especially, but _even in the 1920s_, he did not believe his own language to be an endpoint at all, merely part of a continuing process of change over time (not teleological change, necessarily). And it was certainly not true that he believed his way to be the only one.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> By linear evolution I meant Schoenberg's myopic idea that aspects of the language of his predecessors made his treatment of harmony and dissonance not only inevitable, but the singular endpoint toward which music must progress.


Sorry Mr. Bast but I know nothing about "inevitability" and "singular endpoints." These are your straw-men not mine. My position is quite simple, the music of Schoenberg, does in fact, represent a progress in music, just like Beethoven and Mahler represent a progress in music, just like Picasso and Pollock represent a progress in painting. The world has always been full of reactionaries, and always will be.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> You seem to be unaware that the sentence in bold, not the preceding one, represents Schoenberg's views. In later years, especially, but _even in the 1920s_, he did not believe his own language to be an endpoint at all, merely part of a continuing process of change over time (not teleological change, necessarily). And it was certainly not true that he believed his way to be the only one.


Substitute waypoint for endpoint then.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Klassic said:


> Sorry Mr. Bast but I know nothing about "inevitability" and "singular endpoints." These are your straw-men not mine. My position is quite simple, the music of Schoenberg, does in fact, represent a progress in music, just like Beethoven and Mahler represent a progress in music, just like Picasso and Pollock represent a progress in painting. The world has always been full of reactionaries, and always will be, they are properly defined as the idiots of the future.


No, these are Schoenberg's straw men. And those of all who believe that stylistic change in art should be described as progress, with the accompanying connotations of improvement that word carries, rather than change understood in neutral terms without value judgments.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> No, these are Schoenberg's straw men. And those of all who believe that stylistic change in art should be described as progress, with the accompanying connotations of improvement that word carries, rather than change understood in neutral terms without value judgments.


They're your own straw men, attributed to Schoenberg.

You seem unclear about the meaning he attached to the term "idea." For him, the true substance of the composition mattered more than the style, and this includes the chronological style, that it was clothed in. Like Schenker, for Schoenberg the most substantial works were the ones of the Germanic tradition, but unlike Schenker, he considered all of the facets of the composition, not merely the harmonic groundwork, part of its substance.

When he says that an idea is eternal, therefore, he cannot mean that his style of composition is superior to the older, because the style is not the part that matters most.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> No, these are Schoenberg's straw men. And those of all who believe that stylistic change in art should be described as progress, with the accompanying connotations of improvement that word carries, rather than change understood in neutral terms without value judgments.


Oh bother. I have already quoted one genius, I will now quote another, but remember, 3rd strike and you're out:

"...what about this man Schoenberg? What sort of influence has he wielded upon our world? I think we must admit that a fundamental change has come over the world of music and that Schoenberg's works and ideas have been responsible for a good deal of that change." Glenn Gould, The Glenn Gould Reader, pg.119 Lester & Orpen Dennys Publisher 1984

Do tell then Mr. Bast, was Schoenberg a musical regress? I reject your assertion that Schoenberg's order of change was merely "stylistic."



EdwardBast said:


> ...change understood in neutral terms without value judgments.


Do explain?


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

I didn't know that Schoenberg was such a Platonist - I already idolize him, now I'm going to do so even more (I'm a huge Plato sympathizer). I'll have to get some of his writings and do some reading.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> I didn't say there wasn't a difference, nor have I ever said this. People think I do only because they aren't reading what I'm actually writing.


Good, I hope this clarifies that you do see a difference, although you never seem to say exactly what that difference is.



> As he says elsewhere in the same essay, tonality is defined as music in which every single harmony and harmonic relationship is related to and bound by *a single center*. His later music is not composed in this way, but it is composed with the full knowledge and experience of the methods of tonality, and the relationships of tonality still affect it, even to the last works.


Again, you seem to be excluding the tonal center, and keep referring to some nebulous aspects of tonality which you don't seem to be able to articulate.



> You realize that he's not talking about his own music here, but that of his contemporaries who considered themselves "tonal" composers.


 Oh, I thought he was referring to the way you hear everything tonally, including Schoenberg's hardest-core 12-tone works like the String Trio.



> Tonality is a specific system of hierarchical pitch relations through triadic harmony which arose around the 17th century in Europe, and nowhere else in the world.


You didn't identify exactly what makes tonality 'tonal,' and I'm not holding my breath.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Klassic said:


> *To all, pay attention:* there is an argument that says the human ear can only handle (X) amount of dissonance.* So what if we did this same experiment on Neanderthals, would their ears be able to handle the same measure as that of humans? I think not. The point is that the ear has evolved, and continues to evolve. The reactionaries that speak against modern music don't seem to understand this.... so this is what they say.... "my ear can't decipher (X) amount of dissonance," which can be properly translated (if you are here understanding what I'm saying) into "I have a neanderthal ear." It is one thing to be able to hear the music and not like it, it is quite another to dislike it because you cannot hear it!!!
> 
> Schoenberg was one of the rare people in his time that understood this.


Dissonance is a real, quantifiable phenomenon of physics. The simpler the wave-pattern on the eardrum, the more consonant. More coincidence of waves means more reinforcement. More dissonance means waves crash into each other, like a stormy sea. This all takes place on your eardrum.

I don't think the ear has changed as much as the human mind. We can now develop a tolerance for dissonance, and this has its analogies in liking habanero peppers, straight shots of whiskey, and sado-masochism.
Especially now in the 20th century, which is an 'air-conditioned nightmare.' Man's propensity for self-destruction has only increased.
I'm a modernist sympathizer; I say "Bring on the Pain!" I love dissonance.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> Verklarte Nacht is significantly more repetitive and less dense than pretty much any of Schoenberg's later works. It contains a number of passages based on literal or sequential repetitions, and exhibits a slower rate of development overall. I'm not as familiar with Strauss's Metamorphosen.
> 
> Many who dislike Schoenberg's later works still enjoy Verklarte Nacht, but this is far less true of the later tonal works, the String Quartet No. 1 and the Chamber Symphony in E in particular. Many people perceive these works as "atonal" because of their discomfort with the harmonic/melodic language.
> 
> ...


I don't think so. If some sequence of sounds is perceived as meaningless, then no amount of repetition can give it meaning.

I think tonality is liked because it makes sense to the ear physically, and mentally, because of the perception of a tonal center. All the logical trappings and mechanisms of tonality serve one purpose: to reinforce or refer to the center of tonality, which can ultimately be reduced to the perception of a single note and its harmonics, or the model thereof. This is virtually hard-wired into our ear-brain and being.

If music has a tonal center, this is immediately perceived on a very visceral level, as a no-brainer. That's why many listeners are immediately repelled by atonal music, with no need to articulate the 'why.'

12-tone and serial music are not visceral musics in this way; they require a more pronounced degree of cerebral orientation, more willingness to forego visceral pleasure, much more so than tonal music. Tonal music can seduce sensually, then the rest of the brain will follow; not so with serialism, where a cerebral 'commitment' must be learned. Perhaps there will be sensual pleasures to follow after this fact, but not as immediately or as naturally as tonality.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> Disharmony and collision of vibrations may repel some listeners - it may even discourage your African violets from blooming - but most listeners like it very much. It's just that they like it to sound as if it has some special meaning in a larger context, generally a context in which it resolves into harmony and concord. What actually repels listeners is the sense of constant dissonance without perceptible relief, resolution, or function. What individual listeners perceive, in particular contexts, as lacking relief, resolution, or function will be relative to their musical experience and temperament (as will what they perceive as profound, which we've been discussing on another thread), but although degree of dissonance is acoustical, the perception of dissonance is largely contextual. Schoenberg certainly understood that his "emancipated dissonance" would be problematic for listeners for this very reason.


I don't think it is a matter of simply dissonance; the ear has a logic of its own, and this is based on a fundamental note and its harmonics, or a suitable model thereof. Thus, the ear, with its own visceral, simple way of hearing, and the brain, which is more plastic and flexible, work together to perceive a tonal center. This is the simplest, most basic form of music making: ask any aborigine with a didgeridoo, or any Aftrican with a mouth bow, or La Monte Young or Terry Riley, or Ravi Shankar, or Skip James and Robert Johnson, or any rapper or electro-pop DJ. They all know and share in the same thing: the joy of a tonal center. Yes, Woodduck is right, that in itself, harmony is a sense of repose and peace.

To gain a true love of dissonance, such as that found in Charles Ives, who adored dissonance, the listener who is immediately attracted will probably admit that this is because it is so gnarly and un-centered. It demands acceptance, and a willingness to go for a "short ride in a fast machine." The ear/brain is not seduced by smooth sounds and concordance, as it is in tonality. Liking dissonance, or being able to tolerate the lack of a tonal center, or repose, is a choice one makes, perhaps out of desperation, perhaps out of boredom, perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps to test one's tolerance. Perhaps in the pursuit of a new, different kind of beauty.

Likewise, the listener who is repelled has no desire to accept this music, once it has failed the simple 'ear test.' I attribute this to a lack of desire. They simply don't want this music; they do not desire the pain of a habanero pepper, or the pungent kick of a shot of whiskey, or the startling slap of a lover during erotic play; only by putting forth some effort can this bridge be crossed.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> I don't think so. If some sequence of sounds is perceived as meaningless, then no amount of repetition can give it meaning.


Yes, but the problem was never meaninglessness, but rather the comprehensibility of the music. People have a harder time understanding even that which is meaningfully put together if it lacks literal repetition.

Anyway, if you repeat something, its tonal characteristics (in the sense of the way pitches relate to each other) become more easily audible. Bringing this back to Schoenberg before, this is why so many ostinati and pedal points were used to anchor the senses to a perceived center, regardless of how the relationships would be perceived otherwise.



millionrainbows said:


> I think tonality is liked because it makes sense to the ear physically, and mentally, because of the perception of a tonal center. All the logical trappings and mechanisms of tonality serve one purpose: to reinforce or refer to the center of tonality, which can ultimately be reduced to the perception of a single note and its harmonics, or the model thereof. This is virtually hard-wired into our ear-brain and being.
> 
> If music has a tonal center, this is immediately perceived on a very visceral level, as a no-brainer. That's why many listeners are immediately repelled by atonal music, with no need to articulate the 'why.'


Except that there's no such thing as atonal music, so the why must be articulated so that listeners have some reason for why they are in actuality repelled by the music they call atonal.



millionrainbows said:


> 12-tone and serial music are not visceral musics in this way; they require a more pronounced degree of cerebral orientation, more willingness to forego visceral pleasure, much more so than tonal music. Tonal music can seduce sensually, then the rest of the brain will follow; not so with serialism, where a cerebral 'commitment' must be learned. Perhaps there will be sensual pleasures to follow after this fact, but not as immediately or as naturally as tonality.


Nope, this is all nonsense.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Klassic said:


> EdwardBast, EdwardBast, EdwardBast, do tell, do you think evolution is merely a false idea as opposed to an empirical fact? [if your answer here is affirmative please avoid all future interaction with me.]
> 
> "lame idea...." : (of an explanation or excuse) unconvincingly feeble.
> 
> Has there been no evolution to the ear? Does the ear not evolve? Why did Schoenberg not take place in 1700?


To me, it's simple mathematics. 7+1=8, 7+2=9, 7+3=10, 7+4=11, and finally 7+5=12. This is not evolution, but simply a sequence of inevitability.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> Good, I hope this clarifies that you do see a difference, although you never seem to say exactly what that difference is.


I said it in that exact same post. Tonality is a particular way of relating harmonies to each other. Schoenberg's music, while it still is based on relating harmonies to each other, doesn't do it in that particular way.



millionrainbows said:


> Again, you seem to be excluding the tonal center, and keep referring to some nebulous aspects of tonality which you don't seem to be able to articulate.


The aspects of tonality which Schoenberg retained are harmonic emphasis around central chords, a syntax based on interaction of melody and harmony whereby one is related to the other, and a melodic language that emphasizes leading tones for resolution.



millionrainbows said:


> Oh, I thought he was referring to the way you hear everything tonally, including Schoenberg's hardest-core 12-tone works like the String Trio.


Well, given that the String Trio features passages that are clearly in D, I don't see why anyone who listens to it couldn't hear at least parts of it tonally.



millionrainbows said:


> You didn't identify exactly what makes tonality 'tonal,' and I'm not holding my breath.


Because the harmonic relations are bound to a central triad and are perceived as related to it. I don't know how many times I have to explain.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> Likewise, the listener who is repelled has no desire to accept this music, once it has failed the simple 'ear test.' I attribute this to a lack of desire. They simply don't want this music; they do not desire the pain of a habanero pepper, or the pungent kick of a shot of whiskey, or the startling slap of a lover during erotic play; only by putting forth some effort can this bridge be crossed.


This is rather wonderful prose! But, you know, you're starting to sound a bit like Marquis de Sade! Does the artistic desire have to run this rampant? To know true art, must we become such omnisexuals? Does art, in its final sense, mean killing the super-ego... a psychosis?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> This is not surprising. Repetition - along with its related principles of unity, symmetry and balance - is one of the most basic devices for achieving coherence in art. If no element in a work ever repeats, you have chaos. If a listener can't grasp the harmonic idiom of a work, repetition can give him a hook, a feeling that something is stable, that perhaps there's meaning even if he has no clue what that meaning is. That of course is the basic function of tonality as well, in which return to a known place of stability bestows order and meaning, and so repetition even of non-tonal ideas in a non-tonal context might conceivably create a momentary sensation of tonality.


I disagree. I think the perception of a tonal center is the most important element in creating meaning to the ear/brain. Even if we played completely random notes from a C major scale, with no repetition, we would still eventually hear a tonal center, because that's what the ear is supposed to do. It hears things from the bottom up, and wants to hear a fundamental and its subservient partials. Soon, it will develop its own solution, using its own logic.

I think repetition is more significant in vision than in hearing. Repetition implies passage of time, and no passage of time is needed for the ear; it hears instantly, vertically, from the bottom up. This is its goal, to hear the 'root' of all sounds.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

You could have repetition and tonal center, creating music for the ear/brain to recognize. But this is what atonal music by definition avoids.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Klassic said:


> Do tell then Mr. Bast, was Schoenberg a musical regress? I reject your assertion that Schoenberg's order of change was merely "stylistic."
> 
> Do explain?


The choice is not between progress or regress. This is a false dichotomy. It is indulged only by those who take a teleological view on the development of art, like those who believe their formulations assure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years. It would be silly, for example, to assert that Brahms represents progress over Beethoven. Or regress. It is just the wrong lens through which to examine change in music.

"Merely stylistic?" Have no idea what that is supposed to mean, nor am I interested in an explanation.



Klassic said:


> Oh bother. I have already quoted one genius, I will now quote another, but remember, 3rd strike and you're out:


Out of what? This dialogue? And that would be a bad thing how? Don't worry, I have no interest in continuing this dialogue.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

ArtMusic said:


> You could have repetition and tonal center, creating music for the ear/brain to recognize. But this is what atonal music by definition avoids.


Which is why there's no such thing as atonal music, as the word is usually defined.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> If music has a tonal center, this is immediately perceived on a very visceral level, as a no-brainer. That's why many listeners are immediately repelled by atonal music, with no need to articulate the 'why.'
> 
> 12-tone and serial music are not visceral musics in this way; they require a more pronounced degree of cerebral orientation, more willingness to forego visceral pleasure, much more so than tonal music. Tonal music can seduce sensually, then the rest of the brain will follow; not so with serialism, where a cerebral 'commitment' must be learned. Perhaps there will be sensual pleasures to follow after this fact, but not as immediately or as naturally as tonality.


The only issue I take with this is your assumption of normativity, what about the anomaly? I think it would be safe to say that Gould had a pretty damn advanced ear, and what did he hear over and over again: the genius of Schoenberg. I wonder... it seems we agree on the premise of 12-tone/serial music being more advanced forms of tonality? But if we think in evolutionary terms... if we say a certain kind of tonality must be "learned" in that it does not come natural according to the present state of our evolved sensory equipment... then surely this gives us grounds to speak of progress? Are we not here dealing with the integration of a more complicated audio pattern (among other things)? I think we need to tell the truth, some people, as Schoenberg understood, cannot "comprehend" this sophistication.

So what happens; what kind of objection do we get from the non-comprehenders... they are not aware of the fact that they are speaking from the assumption of a primitive ear. _Read me carefully here_: I can understand someone not liking the music of Schoenberg (once they understand it) but this is usually not what we get, the non-comprehenders raise their non-comprehension to the status of understanding. How can one dislike something they don't comprehend? An honest answer would be, "I don't understand Schoenberg enough to know if I like him." But this is not what we get. We get the same old, tired reactionary narrative: this music does not correspond to an eternal set of rules which are required for the creation of palatable music. Nonsense! What about the anomaly? What about the ear which hears this music's beauty and genius [thus enter Gould.]

I suppose this all hinges on one thing: whether or not the music which is being rejected does in fact constitute a progression? Interesting that very few people start out with the likes of Schoenberg or Webern (not saying this is impossible, but generally speaking, it would be uncommon).

The point that fundamentalists cannot deal with is the reality that there is a progression to music: no one can sanely deny this. The problem this creates for fundamentalists is that they are then forced to explain the essence of progress (without devaluing their preciously loved center), essentially they end up denying progress, or defining it in such a way that it has no meaning.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> I think repetition is more significant in vision than in hearing. Repetition implies passage of time, and no passage of time is needed for the ear; it hears instantly, vertically, from the bottom up. This is its goal, to hear the 'root' of all sounds.


I think the reverse is true. The eye is used to seeing a vast multiplicity of things in its gaze, while focusing upon a smaller yet significantly visual rich field, and it can hold its view. The eye has "gaze". The ear hears instantaneously, it is true, but is then very quickly subjected to the next, following notes, whether music, bird calls, whatever--it has no equivalent of "gaze".


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> No you didn't. By linear evolution I meant Schoenberg's myopic idea that aspects of the language of his predecessors made his treatment of harmony and dissonance not only inevitable, but the singular endpoint toward which music must progress. A nonlinear view would recognize that there are many directions in which one might, and in which many did, extend, for example, Wagner's harmonic thought.


Well, it is rather inevitable that there are only twelve notes. I suppose the non-linear view would divide the octave further and go into microtones.

Wagner was going away from "progression towards a goal" and in much of his music there is a stasis, or an ambiguity, which dismantles or questions much of the cerebral, horizontal, goal-directed aspects of tonality. But harmonically, he did not do much to 'mess' with the basic premises of tonality; the music was still harmonic (adjective) and triadic, still seduced the ear, etc.

So Wagner just halted the train, slowed it down a bit...but what Schoenberg did was harmonically alter the music itself, and took away the tonal center.

So the 'nonlinear' view is simply describing one aspect, the horizontal progression, which Wagner took advantage of, and is ultimately an incomplete picture. I think R. Strauss went further...

On the other hand, this might all be just "incoherent nonsense" to you.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> They're your own straw men, attributed to Schoenberg.
> 
> You seem unclear about the meaning he attached to the term "idea." For him, the true substance of the composition mattered more than the style, and this includes the chronological style, that it was clothed in. Like Schenker, for Schoenberg the most substantial works were the ones of the Germanic tradition, but unlike Schenker, he considered all of the facets of the composition, not merely the harmonic groundwork, part of its substance.
> 
> When he says that an idea is eternal, therefore, he cannot mean that his style of composition is superior to the older, because the style is not the part that matters most.


But the 12-tone system itself is what changed the music, not any idea. When he changed the "mere" harmonic groundwork, he removed the sense of tonality, so these other facets could not overcome this. This is exactly why Boulez criticized Schoenberg and praised Webern; because Schoenberg just 'dressed up' 12-tone music in period costumes, except in his more transcendent, more honestly unapologetic modernist works.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> But the 12-tone system itself is what changed the music, not any idea. When he changed the "mere" harmonic groundwork, he removed the sense of tonality, so these other facets could not overcome this. This is exactly why Boulez criticized Schoenberg and praised Webern; because Schoenberg just 'dressed up' 12-tone music in period costumes, except in his more transcendent, more honestly unapologetic modernist works.


He didn't remove the sense of tonality, he got away from common practice tonality, which, as has been explained, was already attenuated before Schoenberg wrote any "atonal" works.

Boulez eventually got over his criticisms enough to record the majority of Schoenberg's late works, some multiple times, like the concertos and Ode to Napoleon (which ends with a triad!).


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> I disagree. I think the perception of a tonal center is the most important element in creating meaning to the ear/brain. Even if we played completely random notes from a C major scale, with no repetition, we would still eventually hear a tonal center, because that's what the ear is supposed to do. It hears things from the bottom up, and wants to hear a fundamental and its subservient partials. Soon, it will develop its own solution, using its own logic.
> 
> I think repetition is more significant in vision than in hearing. Repetition implies passage of time, and no passage of time is needed for the ear; it hears instantly, vertically, from the bottom up. This is its goal, to hear the 'root' of all sounds.


Sorry, but I can't tell what it is you disagree with. What is it you think I said?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Xaltotun said:


> This is rather wonderful prose! But, you know, you're starting to sound a bit like Marquis de Sade! Does the artistic desire have to run this rampant? To know true art, must we become such omnisexuals? Does art, in its final sense, mean killing the super-ego... a psychosis?


No, but in those terms, the sense of tonality is rather like our "id" in that it desires one thing: the tonal center, as one note and its harmonics. The ear 'urges' our brain to follow it. We do it naturally.

Music perception of music which does not possess this sense of tonality, or which is structured in some other way, is music of 'the ego' or conscious mind. It got there by choice, and by effort of some sort. It did not materialize as easily.

The super-ego? This is for the future, when all music has to be guaranteed not to harm animals, and be equally appealing to all genders, orientations, races and ethnicities.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> Which is why there's no such thing as atonal music, as the word is usually defined.


But by equal cycling of all 12 notes, which 12-tone music guarantees, it becomes 'atonal' in that is no longer reinforces or suggests a tonal center.

If repetition is one of the characteristics that makes tonal music tonal, then Schoenberg gave us two strikes: no tonal center, and no repetition. What's next?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> But by equal cycling of all 12 notes, which 12-tone music guarantees, it becomes 'atonal' in that is no longer reinforces or suggests a tonal center.


False. Although the use of all 12 notes maintains total chromaticism, this is also possible in common practice tonality, and it certainly does nothing to undermine centricity in the more general sense you intend.



millionrainbows said:


> If repetition is one of the characteristics that makes tonal music tonal, then Schoenberg gave us two strikes: no tonal center, and no repetition. What's next?


Repetition is not one of the characteristics that makes tonal music tonal. I said that it makes the tonal content in a passage of music more apparent to the ear.

Schoenberg's music both has tonal centers (in the broad sense you're defining the term) and repetition, just not literal repetition.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Klassic said:


> The only issue I take with this is your assumption of normativity, what about the anomaly? I think it would be safe to say that Gould had a pretty damn advanced ear, and what did he hear over and over again: the genius of Schoenberg. I wonder... it seems we agree on the premise of 12-tone/serial music being more advanced forms of tonality? But if we think in evolutionary terms... if we say a certain kind of tonality must be "learned" in that it does not come natural according to the present state of our evolved sensory equipment... then surely this gives us grounds to speak of progress? Are we not here dealing with the integration of a more complicated audio pattern (among other things)? I think we need to tell the truth, some people, as Schoenberg understood, cannot "comprehend" this sophistication.
> 
> So what happens; what kind of objection do we get from the non-comprehenders... they are not aware of the fact that they are speaking from the assumption of a primitive ear. _Read me carefully here_: I can understand someone not liking the music of Schoenberg (once they understand it) but this is usually not what we get, the non-comprehenders raise their non-comprehension to the status of understanding. How can one dislike something they don't comprehend? An honest answer would be, "I don't understand Schoenberg enough to know if I like him." But this is not what we get. We get the same old, tired reactionary narrative: this music does not correspond to an eternal set of rules which are required for the creation of palatable music. Nonsense! What about the anomaly? What about the ear which hears this music's beauty and genius [thus enter Gould.]
> 
> ...


I don't care if it's evolution or a progression or what; the simple fact is accumulative. The more notes you add, the more chromatic it gets, and the less a tonality is sensed by the ear/brain. There's a good reason tonality started with 7-note diatonic scales. Tonality is determined not only by what is there, but what is not there. By the time you reach 12 notes, you have a sort of redundancy set in, which makes a hazy picture, tonally.

The 'comprehension' you speak of is not a deficiency. We all have the same basic ear/brain set. Thus, to "like" atonal music involves a different set of criteria, and perception. If the music is based on division of 12 notes, and not on the tonal relation of all notes to one note, which is the way the ear hears, then we can not use the natural logic of the ear to coax our brains into agreement.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> We all have the same basic ear/brain set.


This seems like a false premise to me. Example: we know for a fact that this was not the case with Einstein.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

There is more to say here regarding evolution. We all know that evolution is 1) real and 2) is taking place right now. So here's my question; what would we expect an evolved ear to look like in relation to our present ear? Would we expect there to be _limitations_ between the new ear and the old ear? My point is that not only has this already happened but it will continue to happen. What do we expect the _steps_ from old to new to look like? How would they be perceived from our level? Would we just say, "oh that's ridiculous, we all have the same ears?" Seriously, I believe this deserves some serious thought. And okay, fine, maybe modern music will have nothing to do with it, maybe it has nothing to do with it, but the point is that this thing that so many people seem to kick against is an actual, factual reality, eventually a distinction will take place, even as it has already taken place many many times. What type of perception would we expect an evolved ear to have? Seriously?


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Xaltotun said:


> This is rather wonderful prose! But, you know, you're starting to sound a bit like Marquis de Sade! Does the artistic desire have to run this rampant? To know true art, must we become such omnisexuals? *Does art, in its final sense, mean killing the super-ego*... a psychosis?


I may not know about the technical side of music, Xaltotun, but I do know about Freudian theory so I'll suggest an amendment - that the death of the super-ego would result in disinhibition and psychopathy rather than psychosis, which might be seen rather as resulting from a loss of ego function. (This is also my chance to say - ego =/= self-centred-ness!)



Klassic said:


> This seems like a false premise to me. Example: we know for a fact that this was not the case with Einstein.


I don't think we do know that, Klassic, or at least it's highly disputed. To all intents and purposes, the vast majority of humans do have the same basic ear / brain set, and evolution is a ve-e-e-e-e-ery slow process


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

TurnaboutVox said:


> I don't think we do know that, Klassic, or at least it's highly disputed. To all intents and purposes, the vast majority of humans do have the same basic ear / brain set, and evolution is a ve-e-e-e-e-ery slow process


1) I am not merely claiming that Einstein had a different brain, I'm telling you it's literally an empirical fact. If you want proof let me know and I will provide a link.

2) I agree that we "basically" have the same same brain and ear, this is why I spoke of the "anomaly." This is also why I cited Gould.

Of course evolution is very slow; my question is what this process would look like, feel like from our present state of evolution.


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

Even if it's assumed that the human ear/brain has evolved over the last 100 years with and for the advent of modern music it would only be among a select group of individuals. That the descendants of this theoretical evolutionary trait populate Talk-Classical.com and music academies in the western world presumes both a uniform self-selective trait and that that trait is a winner evolutionarily. I am not sure that smugness is an evolutionary winner, but it almost certainly is subject to self-selection. I would bet Bodybuilding.com has us beat.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

> Originally posted by *Klassic
> *
> I am not merely claiming that Einstein had a different brain, I'm telling you it's literally an empirical fact. If you want proof let me know and I will provide a link.


Ah. I didn't realise that you were in possession of proof of this. I would be interested in seeing that, yes.

I was under the impression that his brain varied in the way brains normally do between individuals, and that there has been a dispute ever since about the significance of those variations, especially in the absence of evidence from modern functional scanning images (which require live subjects).


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Klassic said:


> Of course evolution is very slow; my question is what this process would look like, feel like from our present state of evolution.


The timescale of evolution is so slow and the changes so incremental that the answer is obvious: we would not perceive it at all.

All this is beside the point, and I think you're confusing the biological process of evolution with the cultural process of change which Schoenberg was discussing.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> All this is beside the point, and I think you're confusing the biological process of evolution with the cultural process of change which Schoenberg was discussing.


My argument is not contingent on biological evolution (although in one sense all things are biology). If one admits to evolution in any sense then one has provided the premise needed to drive the point home. Here then the argument runs in two contrary ways: either Schoenberg is a regress or a progress? EdwardBast, for example, has already made his choice, he simply made it on the basis of his emotional preference. There is a conversation to be had here.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Klassic said:


> My argument is not contingent on biological evolution (although in one sense all things are biology). If one admits to evolution in any sense then one has provided the premise needed to drive the point home. Here then the argument runs in two contrary ways: either Schoenberg is a regress or a progress? EdwardBast, for example, has already made his choice, he simply made it on the basis of his emotional preference. There is a conversation to be had here.


But evolution does not have to imply progression or regression. As with biological evolution, it can simply mean a form of change over time.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

TurnaboutVox said:


> Ah. I didn't realise that you were in possession of proof of this. I would be interested in seeing that, yes. I was under the impression that his brain varied in the way brains normally do between individuals, and that there has been a dispute ever since about the significance of those variations, especially in the absence of evidence from modern functional scanning images (which require live subjects).


Here you go: 




They not only discuss his brain but they show pictures marking out the empirical difference.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> But evolution does not have to imply progression or regression. As with biological evolution, it can simply mean a form of change over time.


Mahlerian you are correct, but information regarding the nature of the change is what we must ultimately use to determine the nature of the change. As already mentioned there is an argument that certain people cannot handle (X) amount of dissonance, but this was not the case with Gould, and here I very easily hold to the strong possibility that Gould did possess a more advanced ear.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

TurnaboutVox said:


> Ah. I didn't realise that you were in possession of proof of this. I would be interested in seeing that, yes.
> 
> I was under the impression that his brain varied in the way brains normally do between individuals, and that there has been a dispute ever since about the significance of those variations, especially in the absence of evidence from modern functional scanning images (which require live subjects).


Post sent out for repair.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Strange Magic said:


> I think the reverse is true. The eye is used to seeing a vast multiplicity of things in its gaze, while focusing upon a smaller yet significantly visual rich field, and it can hold its view. The eye has "gaze". The ear hears instantaneously, it is true, but is then very quickly subjected to the next, following notes, whether music, bird calls, whatever--it has no equivalent of "gaze".


We are a visually biased culture according to McLuhan, so visual metaphors are often mistakenly applied to matters of hearing. Most people see HDTV resolution, but are clueless when faced with discerning higher resolution audio.

The eye can see patterns of repetition all at once, like a series of trees across a great field. The eye takes it all in, and a meaningful pattern is grasped.

The ear, on the other hand, cannot do this; it is trapped in a timeline. Things occur one by one, unexpectedly. It is therefore more time-consuming for the ear to perceive linear patterns and hear linear repetition; time is involved, it is not instantaneous or grasped all at once like the eye. Once the sound occurs, it is gone; so memory is involved. Comprehending music linearly therefore involves memory, and the brain, more so than the eye.

Tonal centers are perceived instantly, since they are vertical relationships of simultaneous harmonic (adj.) sound.

Therefore, the eye's strength is linear; the ear's strength is vertical.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> He didn't remove the sense of tonality, he got away from common practice tonality, which, as has been explained, was already attenuated before Schoenberg wrote any "atonal" works.


He removed reference of all notes to a single center, and by constantly cycling the 12 notes, removed all the repetition. It amounts to removing the center of tonality.



> Boulez eventually got over his criticisms enough to record the majority of Schoenberg's late works, some multiple times, like the concertos and Ode to Napoleon (which ends with a triad!).


Yes, and I'm sure he saw them for what they were; a new language dressed in the drag of late Romanticism. 
Triads? Triads don't create tonality unless they are in the proper context: relating to a center.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

millionrainbows said:


> He removed reference of all notes to a single center, and by constantly cycling the 12 notes, removed all the repetition. It amounts to removing the center of tonality.


But he was already writing atonal (or "atonal") music for 15 years - including what are probably by consensus his greatest works - before he started doing that.



millionrainbows said:


> Yes, and I'm sure he saw them for what they were; a new language dressed in the drag of late Romanticism.


More like very late Romanticism dressed in the drag of Neoclassicism.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> Sorry, but I can't tell what it is you disagree with. What is it you think I said?


Well, I quoted you. That makes it obvious. I'll highlight some of it for you.



> This is not surprising. Repetition - along with its related principles of unity, symmetry and balance - is one of the most basic devices for achieving coherence in art. If no element in a work ever repeats, you have chaos. *If a listener can't grasp the harmonic idiom of a work, repetition can give him a hook, a feeling that something is stable, that perhaps there's meaning even if he has no clue what that meaning is.*


I disagree with that insofar as it is misleading. A sense of tonality is established by much more visceral means. The meaning is in the sound itself.

*



That of course is the basic function of tonality as well, in which return to a known place of stability bestows order and meaning, and so repetition even of non-tonal ideas in a non-tonal context might conceivably create a momentary sensation of tonality.

Click to expand...

*"Return to a place of stability" is a narrative, visual term. The ear establishes tonality by instantly referencing or "sampling' moments, and seeks to hear reference to a center. This is not a linear or narrative process. Instead of a line, which most visually biased thinkers seem to use as their metaphoric model, think of tonality as a circle, in which the references to center are done on various stations on the circle. The various stations reference to center, not to each other. They are not linearly or narratively connected; each one references only to center.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> But by equal cycling of all 12 notes, which 12-tone music guarantees, it becomes 'atonal' in that is no longer reinforces or suggests a tonal center.





Mahlerian said:


> False. Although the use of all 12 notes maintains total chromaticism, this is also possible in common practice tonality, and it certainly does nothing to undermine centricity in the more general sense you intend.


You can't compare chromaticism with the constant cycling of 12-note sets.

What establishes tonality in chromaticism is a reference to a tonal center. The number of notes is irrelevant.

Schoenberg did not reference his 12 notes to a single note; he referenced them only to each other. That's what his definition of 12-tone said: "...notes related only to each other."



> Repetition is not one of the characteristics that makes tonal music tonal. I said that it makes the tonal content in a passage of music more apparent to the ear.


I disagree with that. Either the ear establishes tonality, or it doesn't. An 'after the fact' repetition might help the brain deduce a tonality, but for me, that would constitute a failure of the music, if it was intended to establish tonality.



> Schoenberg's music both has tonal centers (in the broad sense you're defining the term) and repetition, just not literal repetition.


There may be moments of local tonal centricity, but I do not call this 'a tonal center.'

Any harmonic (adj.) construct may be construed to have a 'center' of tonality, because that's what the ear seeks. This is "harmonic (adj.) hearing" and has nothing to do with whether or not music is tonal or not. Now you're in a subjective la-la land, in which any cloud formation in the sky can be said to look like a Wagnerian opera.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> We all have the same basic ear/brain set.





Klassic said:


> This seems like a false premise to me. Example: we know for a fact that this was not the case with Einstein.


Note that I said "same BASIC ear/brain set."


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Harold in Columbia said:


> But he was already writing atonal (or "atonal") music for 15 years - including what are probably by consensus his greatest works - before he started doing that.


If i'm correct, I think you are confusing chromaticism with 12-tone, and there is a difference. A leap was made, in the formulation of the 12-tone method itself. The music might sound similar, but there it ends.



> More like very late Romanticism dressed in the drag of Neoclassicism.


Yes, you're probably right. In the case of "Serenade," we could say neo-Baroque.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

I really do not know the answer to the OP.

I really do not understand most of the posts I have tried to read.

Maybe someone has already mentioned this. Atonal music started about 100 years ago, I think? Maybe went it first started one could say it is music of the future. Musical styles come and go. I think give or take the classical period was only fifty or sixty years. By today's standards I do not think atonal can be considered music of the future.

That is my best SWAG.


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## Dedalus (Jun 27, 2014)

Klassic said:


> My argument is not contingent on biological evolution (although in one sense all things are biology). If one admits to evolution in any sense then one has provided the premise needed to drive the point home. Here then the argument runs in two contrary ways: either Schoenberg is a regress or a progress? EdwardBast, for example, has already made his choice, he simply made it on the basis of his emotional preference. There is a conversation to be had here.


All subjective things may perhaps all come back to biology... But if there's anything that everything is reducible to it is physics, as even biology is subject to physical laws. You seem to be extremely confused on the subject of evolution. As Mahlerian pointed out, evolution in no way implies progression or regression or any kind of dichotomy between those.

Evolution works based on differential rates of reproduction. When a certain subset of a species survives to bear children, and lots of them, than the rest of that species, then the species is going to become more like that one subset that has a higher rate of reproduction. In order for our ears to evolve in anything but a completely random way based on sexual selection (pretty much the only thing going on with humans as far as evolution is concerned) there would have to be a sexual benefit for having a "good" or "bad" or some particular kind of ear. If there was a huge sexual benefit for people who only enjoy jazz, then the human ear would conceivably move in the direction of having that particular ear. I'm just saying ear here, but what I really mean is the whole path from ear to brain to understanding to enjoying.

Anyway, I don't know about you but I think being tall, muscled, having big boobs, a sense of humor, ability to make money, or any number of things are much more important to sexual selection than what your whole aural system acts like. And if there was some cataclysmic event that created a post-apocalyptic scenario when survival selection becomes as or more important than sexual selection, even then the aural system would probably evolve for survival reasons which would be like hearing a predator of some kind before it eats or shoots you. Certainly not any kind of evolution that would have anything to do with music listening.

Essentially I think it's an accident of our evolutionary history that we enjoy music today. Our ears and brains were evolved for completely different reasons millions of years ago, and we've coopted some of these systems for things they were never meant for, like music. Well, I've also heard that we evolved the capacity for music before language, that the two are closely related, and that the ability to understand music was very important in the eventual evolution of our language centers. So perhaps we've had music in our brains for like.. 1 or 2 millions years tops. Even in that case our brains and ears have a history going back to the dinosaurs and before (albeit as a shrew-like mammal) and music was definitely not a thing at that point.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> We are a visually biased culture according to McLuhan, so visual metaphors are often mistakenly applied to matters of hearing. Most people see HDTV resolution, but are clueless when faced with discerning higher resolution audio.
> 
> The eye can see patterns of repetition all at once, like a series of trees across a great field. The eye takes it all in, and a meaningful pattern is grasped.
> 
> ...


Why do I think that you are actually agreeing with my statement? My thought was that repetition is more necessary in establishing and recognizing patterns via hearing than via seeing, in that the eye has gaze, can hold a view, whereas the ear must deal with notes sequentially and must remember as best it can what it has heard previously. Are we now saying the same thing; yes?


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

millionrainbows said:


> If i'm correct, I think you are confusing chromaticism with 12-tone, and there is a difference. A leap was made, in the formulation of the 12-tone method itself. The music might sound similar, but there it ends.


I'm not confusing anything with anything. Atonality precedes the 12 tone method. That's just a fact. Everybody who agrees to use the term "atonal" at all applies it to _Pierrot lunaire_.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Harold in Columbia said:


> Everybody who agrees to use the term "atonal" at all applies it to _Pierrot lunaire_.


Rather than use "atonal," which Schoenberg himself disapproved of, I favor the term "loony."

Well, upon reflection I guess I'd better not hold my breath waiting for the likes for that one.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Harold in Columbia said:


> Two observations:
> 
> 1. The reason people still hate atonality is because it really was the music of the future - Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler, and Shostakovich's future. It really was the organic product of Romanticism. (_Parsifal_ to _Salome_ to _Erwartung_.) Thus it exposes millions of bovine philistines who like to think of themselves as heroic rebels and pretend that that's why they like the Romantics.
> 
> 2. It's the minimalists' world now, and minimalism is a reaction against atonality. Thus atonality was also the music of the future in the sense that it made our music today sound the way it does.


Then the music of our future would be a tonal maximal music, perhaps done with the aid of computers.

I hope the point of atonalism was only to stress the need for more tonality. That sounds wonderful, but then the Impressionists were pushing the boundaries of tonalism in wonderful way, that some composers like William Schumann still continued to do.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

regenmusic said:


> I hope the point of atonalism was only to stress the need for more tonality.


On the contrary, I would say atonality was the last ditch attempt to make tonality still mean something. The "Impressionists" had already ditched it.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Strange Magic said:


> Why do I think that you are actually agreeing with my statement? My thought was that repetition is more necessary in establishing and recognizing patterns via hearing than via seeing, in that the eye has gaze, can hold a view, whereas the ear must deal with notes sequentially and must remember as best it can what it has heard previously. Are we now saying the same thing; yes?


I don't think so, especially regarding the ear hearing sequentially.

The ear establishes our sense of tonality, and it does this vertically (instantaneously) rather than horizontally (sequentially or narratively).

Time passes, always, so there is really no escape from sequences of events occurring one after the other in time.

The difference can be more clearly understood by comparing listening to the time-line cursor preference settings in a music program such as Pro Tools or Logic. You can set the passage of time by having the time-line cursor move across the screen so that events are seen as a visual sequence; when the cursor reaches the extreme right of the screen, the background changes to the next segment, and the cursor is again on the left, moving to the right. If you have a very wide screen, and the measures are not too spread out, this works. In this way, a large segment of time, say 20 measures, can be seen at once, as the eye sees a wide landscape.

The other setting is where the cursor stays still, in the middle of the screen, and the background of measures scrolls by. This is more like the ear hears, as a constant stream of instantaneous events in time, but with no need for the spatial sequence. Of course, this is just an analogy.

There is a difference between seeing repetition as a series of events in space, spread out linearly, like the eye sees, and experiencing repetition as a series of instantaneous _events-in-time;_ and there is the difference. Music, and the ear, is essentially a series of events-in-time, not space.

With the Western practice of scoring and notation, there began to be a visual element introduced into music which previously had not existed; music could be seen linearly, as a narrative, on paper, as a spatial experience. This is the realm of the eye.

Thus, with our visual bias, music began to take on narrative qualities, and many listeners still use visual analogies when discussing the whys and wherefores of music.

The fact is that tonality is established aurally, not by literal or spatial repetition. The ear hears sound like the eye sees color; the recognition of "red" is instant, and does not require 'memory,' but only 'knowledge' that 'red is red.' It's really not a cognitive experience so much as a sensual experience.

There is some degree of memory involved, but remember that this is a memory based on sensual impressions of dissonance and consonance. The listener begins to form a 'mental template' of the tonality, and this is referred to in this 'harmonic template' in memory, and depends on _cumulative_ occurrences of certain pitches; but this is unlike remembering a sequence of events or a string of numbers, and does not depend on linear repetition or long sequences of narrative events, as in reading. This is a more instant, sensual, experiential memory function.

In this way, the ear will always be trying to hear music in terms of its harmonic (adj) orientation, and this is how a sense of tonality is created. Even if the music is constantly changing from moment to moment, the ear will still be trying to orient and make sense of the sounds in terms of vertical content and comparisons. It will always try to ear a tonality.

This is why Mahlerian says that he hears Schoenberg, and all music, as 'tonal.' His ears, like all ears, hear harmonically (adj.),

This is all well and good, but there comes a point where it becomes misleading to call constantly-changing music 'tonal' if no substantial time-area of a single tonality exists. Tonality can be said to be a matter of degree.

To me, Schoenberg's 12-tone works do not sound tonal, regardless of how much repetition or phasing is present; these are just vestigial trappings of earlier practice, and while they may be compelling, do not ultimately satisfy my ear's criterion for true tonality.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Tonality can't possibly be something that is apprehended instantaneously, as it takes more than a single harmonic event to establish a tonality. Tonality established over time by the relationships between harmonies, and thus requires a horizontal component.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Harold in Columbia said:


> I'm not confusing anything with anything. Atonality precedes the 12 tone method. That's just a fact. Everybody who agrees to use the term "atonal" at all applies it to _Pierrot lunaire_.


Here is the original context of what I commented on:



millions said:


> He removed reference of all notes to a single center, and by constantly cycling the 12 notes, removed all the repetition. It amounts to removing the center of tonality.





Harold said:


> But he was already writing atonal (or "atonal") music for 15 years - including what are probably by consensus his greatest works - before he started doing that.


That is correct, the 'free atonal' period preceded the 12-tone system. All I'm saying is that this 'free atonality', which can also be heard in Webern and Berg, was not completely devoid of tonality, and was by comparison with true 12-tone music, still presenting vestiges of tonal, or harmonic (adj.) thinking. By this I mean the use of whole-tone scales, such as in Berg's songs, the division of the octave at the triton, diminished and half-diminished sonorities, and 'projection' of intervals.

These 'atonal' methods are still harmonically based, in that they use scales which cover octaves, and imply harmonic (adj.) areas, using mechanisms of tonal/harmonic (adj.) thinking.

On the other hand, true 12-tone music uses rows which are not harmonically (adj.) conceived in relation to 'octaves,' or scales, but only in relation to each other linearly.

While rows can be stacked to create harmonic effects, they are essentially linear entities, not harmonic (adj.) ones. this harmonic aspect is also the most vague and open-ended aspect of 12-tone thinking, which is an incomplete system. By this I mean that there are no axiomatic or completely defined ways of creating "harmony" in 12-tone music. This did not happen until Milton Babbitt and George Perle formulated some harmonic principles using certain kinds of tone-rows which could produce predictable harmonic results.

Otherwise, 'harmonic effects' in Schoenberg's later 12-tone music are matters of coincidence. There is no harmonic (adj.) reasoning which comprehensively can be applied; this was apparently left up to artistic whim. In Schoenberg, or Webern's hands, this produced good results.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

Okay. But is there anybody who actually, on the one hand, complains about atonality, and on the other, likes _Erwartung_ and _Pierrot lunaire_ just fine?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> Tonality can't possibly be something that is apprehended instantaneously, as it takes more than a single harmonic event to establish a tonality. Tonality established over time by the relationships between harmonies, and thus requires a horizontal component.


That is explained in my post. It is misleading to say tonality is created horizontally, as if it could also be created by other horizontal, narrative means. The difference is the sensual component.



millions said:


> ~The fact is that tonality is established aurally, not by literal or spatial repetition. The ear hears sound like the eye sees color; the recognition of "red" is instant, and does not require 'memory,' but only 'knowledge' that 'red is red.' It's really not a cognitive experience so much as a sensual experience.
> 
> There is _some degree _of memory involved, but remember that _this is a memory based on sensual impressions of dissonance and consonance._ The listener begins to form a 'mental template' of the tonality, and this is referred to in this 'harmonic template' in memory, and depends on _cumulative_ occurrences of certain pitches; but _this is unlike remembering a sequence of events or a string of numbers, and does not depend on linear repetition or long sequences of narrative events, as in reading. This is a more instant, sensual, experiential memory function._


Apparently, the subtleties I speak of in these ear vs. eye modes of perception seem to elude you. This sense of tonality could be said to be a 'constant reference' in all music making. This sense of tonality is based more on sensual input than on linear memory; we could call it a 'sense-memory," and we all have this; it's natural as hearing.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> Well, it is rather inevitable that there are only twelve notes. I suppose the non-linear view would divide the octave further and go into microtones.
> 
> Wagner was going away from "progression towards a goal" and in much of his music there is a stasis, or an ambiguity, which dismantles or questions much of the cerebral, horizontal, goal-directed aspects of tonality. But harmonically, he did not do much to 'mess' with the basic premises of tonality; the music was still harmonic (adjective) and triadic, still seduced the ear, etc.
> 
> ...


I've been away from this thread so late response to your post: No, this all makes good sense. But sometimes Wagner hasn't removed a goal, only refused to get there, as with the famous "Tristan chord" and its subsequent unresolved dominant.

Strauss definitely went further. Elektra! Some wonderful and strange harmonic thinking there.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Harold in Columbia said:


> Okay. But is there anybody who actually, on the one hand, complains about atonality, and on the other, likes _Erwartung_ and _Pierrot lunaire_ just fine?


No. In fact, I think Pierrot is likely to be cited if you ask many for an example of a 12-tone work.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

In 12-tone and 'atonal' music, and music which has very little sense of tonality by comparison to earlier music (in which there was no question of tonality), the listener is forced to listen to smaller and smaller time-lapses of music, as his ear searches for harmonic correspondences. In this sense, modern music without much tonality is more demanding to the ear, and brain, because the brain tends to follow the ear's input and clues as to tonality or harmonic sense.

Debussy, although he may not always create a definite sense of tonality, is easier to most people because he gives the ear what it wants: harmonic (adj.) meaning. He accomplishes this by using harmonic (adj.) methods, like triads, scales, and other harmonic elements of tonality which make sense to the ear.

On the other hand, music which is continually dissonant, and does not exhibit much harmonic consistency or friendliness to the ear, is much more difficult. I'm not just picking on serialists, either; some of Charles Ives' more dissonant music, like the Concord Sonata, is rough going.

In this sense, liking modern music can be largely a matter of choice, and of how much 'pain' you are willing to subject your ears to, much like eating habanero peppers, or liking erotic spankings.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> That is explained in my post. It is misleading to say tonality is created horizontally, as if it could also be created by other horizontal, narrative means. The difference is the sensual component.
> 
> Apparently, the subtleties I speak of in these ear vs. eye modes of perception seem to elude you.


The fact remains that in the sense that you speak of tonality, there's not a single 12-tone work that doesn't sound tonal to me. It's perceived without my trying to perceive it; it's just a fact of the harmonies used and the way they are arranged.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> Apparently, the subtleties I speak of in these ear vs. eye modes of perception seem to elude you.


Yes............ (15 character minimum met)


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> The fact remains that in the sense that you speak of tonality, there's not a single 12-tone work that doesn't sound tonal to me. It's perceived without my trying to perceive it; it's just a fact of the harmonies used and the way they are arranged.


It's your ears, and the way they seek to hear tonality, regardless. Which is perfectly natural. I hear much of the same music exactly the way you do, only I don't call it 'tonality.' I call it 'harmonic,' if it makes even momentary sense to my ears.

Some of it, though, like the String Trio, I have to accept with more brain than ear. There comes a point where it becomes obvious that there is no sense in hearing tonality, so I accept the dissonances or consonances for what they are, where they stand, as simply isolated pitches which produce no overriding sense of tonality. The sounds have to create a relation to a center, and relations require more than one element.
My brain becomes more skeptical as well, no longer being coaxed-into agreement by my ears. I come to the conclusion that it is rather absurd to be seeking any larger area of tonality (based on the sensual input of my ears), and begin to simply hear the music for what is: not tonality.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Strange Magic said:


> Yes............ (15 character minimum met)


Well, a sense of tonality is one of the most simple, basic facts of all music-making. The early blues players based their music on African ideas of tonality and hearing, and this comes from the harmonic series, and the use of the mouth-bow. The blues players had a mental imprint of this harmonic template, which could be said to be a 'constant reference' in their music making. This template was based more on sensual input than on linear memory; we could call it a 'sense-memory." and we all have this; it's natural as hearing.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

That is explained in my post. It is misleading to say tonality is created horizontally, as if it could also be created by other horizontal, narrative means. The difference is the sensual component.

Apparently, the subtleties I speak of in these ear vs. eye modes of perception seem to elude you.

This sense of tonality could be said to be a 'constant reference' in all music making. This sense of tonality is based more on sensual input than on linear memory; we could call it a 'sense-memory," and we all have this; it's natural as hearing.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> It's your ears, and the way they seek to hear tonality, regardless. Which is perfectly natural. I hear much of the same music exactly the way you do, only I don't call it 'tonality.' I call it 'harmonic,' if it makes even momentary sense to my ears.
> 
> Some of it, though, like the String Trio, I have to accept with more brain than ear. There comes a point where it becomes obvious that there is no sense in hearing tonality, so I accept the dissonances for what they are, where they stand, as simply isolated pitches which produce no overriding sense of tonality. My brain becomes more skeptical as well, no longer being coaxed-into agreement by my ears. I come to the conclusion that it is rather absurd to be seeking any larger area of tonality, and begin to simply hear the music for what is: not tonality.


So you don't hear the music the way I do. If you did, dissonance and tonality would not be opposing forces. If you did, you would forget about a brain-ear dichotomy and just realize that everything in the music is ear, and the brain is only secondary.

If you did, you wouldn't come to the conclusion that non-tonality is even a category that could be meaningful, except perhaps in relation to a very exclusive sense of tonality as common practice.

Atonality is a meaningless and arbitrary term unless tonality is defined in a narrow manner.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> I've been away from this thread so late response to your post: No, this all makes good sense. But sometimes Wagner hasn't removed a goal, only refused to get there, as with the famous "Tristan chord" and its subsequent unresolved dominant.
> 
> Strauss definitely went further. Elektra! Some wonderful and strange harmonic thinking there.


Yes, Elektra was definitely more forward-looking than Der Rosenkavalier. I like them both, though. Strauss became more Mozartian and conservative in his later works. I wonder if he was just "playing it safe," knowing how the Third Reich viewed modernism?

I'm open to any recommendations for a good Elektra. That's one I don't have yet.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> So you don't hear the music the way I do. If you did, dissonance and tonality *(sic)* would not be opposing forces.


I didn't say that; you are trying to put words in my mouth.

Dissonance and consonance are both necessary for the establishment of tonality. If these two are not used in a way that suggests to the ear a tonality, then they are just harmonic (adj.) occurrences, because my ear will always hear harmonically (adj.).



Mahlerian said:


> If you did, you would forget about a brain-ear dichotomy and just realize that everything in the music is ear, and the brain is only secondary.


I did not say anything about an 'brain-ear dichotomy.' Yes, I agree that the ear is primary, and it tends to pull the brain along. The way the ear hears harmonically (adj.) is physical and sensual. It will seek tonality naturally, without thought, purely sensually.



> If you did, you wouldn't come to the conclusion that non-tonality is even a category that could be meaningful, except perhaps in relation to a very exclusive sense of tonality as common practice.


Not just CP exclusive, but generally. A general sense of tonality is present in most folk and ethnic music; it's universal. You seem to be confusing what the ear hears harmonically (which is just about all musical sounds) and what I call a general sense of tonality.



> Atonality is a meaningless and arbitrary term unless tonality is defined in a narrow manner.


For me, the term "tonality" implies an sustained sense (in time) of tonality, and it can be large or small, in which the ear hears references to a central, overriding pitch. The use of the pitches and harmony usually imply this in a way which is more or less obvious to the ear.

However, I exclude momentary or fragmentary instances of music from the term 'tonality', even if it makes harmonic sense to my ear; the ear hears it, but there are not enough similar or supportive elements occurring in the music to create any longer or sustained sense of relation to a center.

In cases like this, I am not perturbed; this is the way I listen to most of Messiaen. His music is not tonal but consists of "moments" of harmonic beauty.

I don't use the term 'atonal' except in reference to 'free atonal' period of 2Vienna, or to denote music in which creating a sense of tonality is not the main goal. In this case, to me, it means 'not tonal' because it does not create a sustained enough sense of tonality to call it tonal, and usually this is the intent anyway.

Your main glitch is that you consistently confound "tonality" with instances of harmonic sounds. I differentiate between those two, but both make sense to my ear.


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