# in which I resolve the "tonality" debate



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

The problem with the debates about tonality, understood broadly, is that people want there to be some kind of bright line test to determine whether or not something "is tonal."

As with most other concepts that we describe with words, such as "run," "virtue" and "red," that is not how it works.

There are many characteristics a piece of music can have that would lead us to describe them as "tonal," in the broad sense. A piece may have all, none, or some of them to varying degrees, and there are many cases in which people may disagree.

Here are some of the characteristics:

-hierarchy of pitches with a central tone
-use of fixed scale of a limited number of notes arranged unequally (e.g. diatonic, pentatonic, octatonic)
-preference for triads
-preference for more consonant intervals (fifths, fourths, thirds, sixths)
-treatment of dissonant intervals as requiring resolution
-recurring cadential formulas

Beethoven's _Eroica_ has all of these qualities strongly throughout. Webern's _Variations for Piano_ has none of them. Ligeti's piano concerto has some to varying degrees at different points.

This is all OK.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

What kind of hierarchy? A common practice functional hierarchy, or some more general definition?

Does a central tone need to control a whole piece, or just parts of it?

The octatonic scale is not arranged unequally. It is perfectly symmetrical.

What treatment of dissonant intervals is required? Which need to be resolved for a piece to be tonal?


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Oh no ... it's not over! :lol:


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> What kind of hierarchy? A common practice functional hierarchy, or some more general definition?
> 
> Does a central tone need to control a whole piece, or just parts of it?
> 
> ...


Doesn't matter.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

When the history of western civilization from the 16th through to the end of the 21st century is written, the Hundred Years War will be but a blip compared to the Great Atonal/Serial Wars.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Becca said:


> When the history of Europe from the 16th through to the end of the 21st century is written, the Hundred Years War will be but a blip compared to the Great Atonal/Serial Wars.


They might have said that about the Wagner/Brahms divide too. Eventually everyone forgot what the fight was about, and no one left alive still cared.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> The problem with the debates about tonality, understood broadly, is that people want there to be some kind of bright line test to determine whether or not something "is tonal."
> 
> As with most other concepts that we describe with words, such as "run," "virtue" and "red," that is not how it works.
> 
> ...


I propose (see recent posts in the Mozart genius thread) that we stop using the term "tonal in a broad sense" and instead merely say music characterized by a systematic pitch hierarchy. This covers everything from Gregorian chant to Led Zeppelin.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

"The use of more than one set was excluded because in every following set one or more tones would have been repeated too soon. Again there would arise the danger of interpreting the repeated tone as a tonic."

-Arnold Schoenberg, "Composition With Twelve Tones", from "Style and Idea"

Sounds awfully lot like he is deliberately avoiding pitch centers, and not just in the traditional tonal sense, because mere repetition of any specific tone is to be avoided (generally speaking). That is indeed different from western art music before Schoenberg, different from different kinds of folk music traditions around the world, contemporary pop music, jazz etc.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Dim7 said:


> "The use of more than one set was excluded because in every following set one or more tones would have been repeated too soon. Again there would arise the danger of interpreting the repeated tone as a tonic."
> 
> -Arnold Schoenberg, "Composition With Twelve Tones", from "Style and Idea"
> 
> Sounds awfully lot like he is deliberately avoiding pitch centers, and not just in the traditional tonal sense, because mere repetition of any specific tone is to be avoided (generally speaking). That is indeed different from western art music before Schoenberg, different from different kinds of folk music traditions around the world, contemporary pop music, jazz etc.


You're taking it out of context. In context, it's clear that "tonic" means a common practice tonal center with all of the hierarchical relations that that entails.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Mahlerian said:


> You're taking it out of context. In context, it's clear that "tonic" means a common practice tonal center with all of the hierarchical relations that that entails.


I explained why it is clearly not that. His justification doesn't make any sense if he meant "a common practice tonal center with all of the hierarchical relations that that entails". He isn't talking about avoiding triads, diatonic scales or V-I cadences, he's clearly talking about avoiding the *repetition of tones*!


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Dim7 said:


> I explained why it is clearly not that. His justification doesn't make any sense if he meant "a common practice tonal center with all of the hierarchical relations that that entails". He isn't talking about avoiding triads, diatonic scales or V-I cadences, he's clearly talking about avoiding the *repetition of tones*!


But it clearly is.

"The idea that one basic tone, the root, dominated the construction of chords and regulated their succession - the concept of _tonality_ - had to develop first into the concept of _extended tonality._ Very soon it became doubtful whether such a root still remained the centre to which every harmony and harmonic succession must be referred....In this way, tonality was already dethroned in practice, if not in theory....To double is to emphasize, and an emphasized tone could be interpreted as a root, or even as a tonic; the consequences of such an interpretation must be avoided. Even a slight reminiscence of the former tonal harmony would be disturbing, *because it would create false expectations of consequences and continuations. The use of a tonic is deceiving is it is not based on all the relationships of tonality.*"

(Italics Schoenberg's, bolding mine)


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

So he is saying that if a single tone is emphasized over others, a CP-tonally trained ear will expect that treated like a tonic is treated in CP-tonal music. So it seems that his reason for avoiding repetition of a single pitch is to avoid CP-tonality - but in any case the result is the avoidance of any kind of pitch centricity, not just in a CP sense since repetition and emphasis of a pitch is to be avoided in general. That quote further affirms the point that he is avoiding pitch centers.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

No, avoiding pitch centricity in the sense you're talking about is not feasible, nor did Schoenberg take especial effort to attempt it. He was very careful in constructing his works to emphasize certain pitches, such as G and Df in the Suite, for example. If he really wanted to make the emphasis completely even, he could have gone much further in that direction, but clearly it wasn't something that interested him.

Furthermore, he said "I am confident that future generations will discover the tonality in this music today called atonal," so he didn't think that there was no definition of tonality which would cover it.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> No, avoiding pitch centricity in the sense you're talking about is not feasible, nor did Schoenberg take especial effort to attempt it. He was very careful in constructing his works to emphasize certain pitches, such as G and Df in the Suite, for example. If he really wanted to make the emphasis completely even, he could have gone much further in that direction, but clearly it wasn't something that interested him.
> 
> Furthermore, he said "I am confident that future generations will discover the tonality in this music today called atonal," so he didn't think that there was no definition of tonality which would cover it.


Emphasizing certain pitches more than others doesn't necessarily have anything to do with tonality in a specific sense or in the fanciful, probably metaphoric way Schoenberg was using it in your quotation. Pitch emphasis is not the same thing as having a systematic pitch hierarchy. The kind of emphasis you describe might, after all, be created by repetition alone. Rock, jazz, Grergorian chant, common-practice classical music, Indian classical, etc., are all characterized by systematic pitch hierarchy. Those knowledgeable in each of these styles can explain the system by which the hierarchy is established. To bring serial music into this fold, it is not enough to claim that some serial works exhibit a greater emphasis on one pitch rather than another, it is necessary to explain systematically how this is accomplished for the style in general. One needs to discuss general principles.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Oh yes. Depending on the piece, certain dyads, non-diatonic triads, and tetrachords were the _goal_. Palindromic/combinatoral presentations of rows allowed certain dyads or non-diatonic triads to be emphasized as "the" chord. Cadences end on chords with interval content that contains "the goal".

It is absolutely not an equality of pitches. Reading an analysis of any late Schoenberg piece and then listening for it will tell you this. Schoenberg is better understood as a shower of interval/motivic content, and a drive to cadence on chords with those intervals. It's highly unified music, and definitely not a "thermodynamic soup of high entropy".


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

If there is systematic pitch hierarchy in serialism, it would seem to me that this hierarchy is reinvented for each piece.....


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Dim7 said:


> If there is systematic pitch hierarchy in serialism, it would seem to me that this hierarchy is reinvented for each piece.....


Sure. Why would that matter, though? There is no 20th century common practice, and composers since Debussy at the earliest have all found their own ways to create tension and release dynamics apart from the shared language of the past.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> Sure. Why would that matter, though? There is no 20th century common practice, and composers since Debussy at the earliest have all found their own ways to create tension and release dynamics apart from the shared language of the past.


Exactly. The wind quintet's tone row very clearly emphasizes the contrast between fourths/fifths v.s. whole tone scales. The first 6 notes of the tone row are entirely in fourth/fifth relationship with the last 6 notes of the tone row. The first movement's sonata form even has a recapitulation of the second theme a fifth below, just like in Brahms, and all motivated from the tone row (and secondary tone rows') internal structure.

The op 25 suite emphasizes tritone dyads and their symmetrical presentations, three important tetrachords which relate to the tritone dyads, and the BACH motif inverted and retrograded (which are actually the same).

But of course, Beethoven's Waldstein has a development and structure and highly tense mediants as dominant substitutes with a tonal hierarchy. The 8th symphony (especially the charged finale) has a different treatment of mediants as dominant substitutes, and it has that highly freakish and loud C# several times that eventually provides a resolution to the grammar of the piece. Or take the A minor quartet with its unique double exposition. Or the ungodly awesome Hammerklavier with it's unbearable tension between B flat and B natural through the opposition between B flat major and G major. The long term harmonic hierarchy of Beethoven's best movements in his mid/late periods were unique. Granted, Beethoven's long term hierarchy was all triadic major/minor, but Schoenberg wanted to go beyond a triadic hierarchy. And he did a good job with it.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Might as well call everything that uses tones "tonal", so there would only be tonal and noise music. Is that an easier distinction?


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Schoenberg wanted to go beyond a triadic hierarchy. And he did a good job with it.


I strongly agree - but in this thread I am making only a much narrower point about how we use words.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> I propose (see recent posts in the Mozart genius thread) that we stop using the term "tonal in a broad sense" and instead merely say music characterized by a systematic pitch hierarchy. This covers everything from Gregorian chant to Led Zeppelin.


Some people might call a pentatonic folktune or pandiatonic music like some John Luther Adams "tonal" even though it doesn't have a real hierarchy. Other people probably wouldn't, though. That's OK.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> This is all OK.


:clap:

That's the crux of it, as far as I'm concerned.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> But it clearly is.
> 
> "The idea that one basic tone, the root, dominated the construction of chords and regulated their succession - the concept of _tonality_ - had to develop first into the concept of _extended tonality._ Very soon it became doubtful whether such a root still remained the centre to which every harmony and harmonic succession must be referred....In this way, tonality was already dethroned in practice, if not in theory....To double is to emphasize, and an emphasized tone could be interpreted as a root, or even as a tonic; the consequences of such an interpretation must be avoided. Even a slight reminiscence of the former tonal harmony would be disturbing, *because it would create false expectations of consequences and continuations. The use of a tonic is deceiving is it is not based on all the relationships of tonality.*"
> 
> (Italics Schoenberg's, bolding mine)


This quotation does not at all contradict isorhythm's reading, but in fact supports it. Strongly. Schoenberg is arguing that repetition and doubling should be avoided at all costs to forestall any further tonal implications.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> This quotation does not at all contradict isorhythm's reading, but in fact supports it. Strongly. Schoenberg is arguing that repetition and doubling should be avoided at all costs to forestall any further tonal implications.


Yes, but tonal in this context does not mean some kind of base pitch centricity, but rather the harmonic relationships of functional tonality. Note that his definition of tonality, in the essay cited, is "The idea that one basic tone, the root, dominated the construction of chords and regulated their succession."


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Oh yes. Depending on the piece, certain dyads, non-diatonic triads, and tetrachords were the _goal_. Palindromic/combinatoral presentations of rows allowed certain dyads or non-diatonic triads to be emphasized as "the" chord. *Cadences end on chords with interval content that contains "the goal".*
> 
> It is absolutely not an equality of pitches. Reading an analysis of any late Schoenberg piece and then listening for it will tell you this. Schoenberg is better understood as a shower of interval/motivic content, and a drive to cadence on chords with those intervals. It's highly unified music, and definitely not a "thermodynamic soup of high entropy".


"Cadence" as used here sounds like a metaphoric description as does "drive to cadence." Since cadence by definition entails the resolution of tension, making these constructions meaningful requires a discussion of how tension is created in the style and how tension is resolved. It requires showing what principles drive the "drive to cadence" You could start by defining cadence in a way that engages with the essential elements of the concept.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, but tonal in this context does not mean some kind of base pitch centricity, but rather the harmonic relationships of functional tonality. Note that his definition of tonality, in the essay cited, is "The idea that one basic tone, the root, dominated the construction of chords and regulated their succession."


It is perfectly clear Schoenberg is saying that creating any sense of pitch centricity, base or otherwise, is to be avoided. Apparently one of the reasons to avoid it is that if such emphasis is not "based on all of the relationships of tonality," it is deceptive. It inadvertently creates false expectations that are not going to be fulfilled. Therefore, bottom line: _avoid the kind of pitch repetition or doubling that might produce a sense of tone centricity_. This is exactly what isorhythm was saying! You presented this passage as if you thought it contradicted his point, when in fact it precisely and more strongly states it. I have no idea what you are trying to accomplish here.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> It is perfectly clear Schoenberg is saying that creating any sense of pitch centricity, base or otherwise, is to be avoided. Apparently one of the reasons to avoid it is that if such emphasis is not "based on all of the relationships of tonality," it is deceptive. It inadvertently creates false expectations that are not going to be fulfilled. Therefore, bottom line: _avoid the kind of pitch repetition or doubling that might produce a sense of tone centricity_. This is exactly what isorhythm was saying! You presented this passage as if you thought it contradicted his point, when in fact it precisely and more strongly states it. I have no idea what you are trying to accomplish here.


But it doesn't contradict my point. You are putting words and ideas in Schoenberg's mouth that don't correspond with his stated concepts, much less his music, which never was identical to these.

No concept of "pitch centricity" was presented in this essay or is mentioned in it. This was inserted by Dim7 and you have taken him up on it. He is only speaking about tonality, that same tonality that, in the works of his predecessors was "*already dethroned in practice*."

Your attempts to spin the passage into saying something it clearly does not say and in fact flat out contradicts are baffling.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

EdwardBast said:


> "Cadence" as used here sounds like a metaphoric description as does "drive to cadence." Since cadence by definition entails the resolution of tension, making these constructions meaningful requires a discussion of how tension is created in the style and how tension is resolved. It requires showing what principles drive the "drive to cadence" You could start by defining cadence in a way that engages with the essential elements of the concept.


I'd define it as: a phrase that starts with obfuscated interval content, but ends in interval content presented in a nice way.

Take a look at measures 68-69 in the wind quintet. Outside of the flute, the rest of the instruments present a complete whole tone chord. I'd say the cadence happens the first beat of measure 69. The conflict in this piece is defined by fourth/fifth intervals competing with whole tone intervals, and so an ending of the climbing stretto dialogue (which has whole tone melodies in dialogue with each other at the fourth/fifth) with a whole tone chord provides the cadence, because the clash between fourth/fifth-intervals with whole tone intervals gets resolved in favor of the whole tone intervals, and a chord with a complete whole tone scale below the flute, and a final cadence point at the first beat of measure 69.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> But it doesn't contradict my point. You are putting words and ideas in Schoenberg's mouth that don't correspond with his stated concepts, much less his music, which never was identical to these.
> 
> No concept of "pitch centricity" was presented in this essay or is mentioned in it. This was inserted by Dim7 and you have taken him up on it. He is only speaking about tonality, that same tonality that, in the works of his predecessors was "*already dethroned in practice*."
> 
> Your attempts to spin the passage into saying something it clearly does not say and in fact flat out contradicts are baffling.


It clearly says what Dim7 says it does.

If Schoenberg thought the concept of a "tonic" only applied to common practice harmony, then he would have no reason to be concerned about mere repetition of tones.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> It clearly says what Dim7 says it does.
> 
> If Schoenberg thought the concept of a "tonic" only applied to common practice harmony, then he would have no reason to be concerned about mere repetition of tones.


But he states that the reason not to repeat a tone in a series is *so that it is not perceived as a tonic*, and tonic is clearly defined as I showed.

You are making up your own ideas of what it means without reference to the original essay, seemingly because you and Dim7 can't believe he meant what he said (EdwardBast, too, in insisting X and Y were meant metaphorically).


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Too many octaves, especially octaves between some note and the bass note, would completely destroy the sort of tonal heirarchies of say whole tone v.s. fourths, and would make a cadence on a whole tone chord not satisfactory, because the octave sororities would, in one's ear, feel more desirable instead.

On a more milder note, romantics would go for long stretches without root position V7 -> I in the tonic key. Actually, from what I remember, even Schumann's Fantasie op 17 doesn't have it until the end. The practice of consciously avoiding certain "strong" tonal relationships in favor of more richer and subtle ones has been around for a long time.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Too many octaves, especially octaves between some note and the bass note, would completely destroy the sort of tonal heirarchies of say whole tone v.s. fourths, and would make a cadence on a whole tone chord not satisfactory, because the octave sororities would, in one's ear, feel more desirable instead.


Alternatively, in a passage rich with denser chords, a simple triad sounds bare (jazz players know this well), just as a fifth without a third does in tonal music.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

"The use of a tonic is deceiving if it is not based on all the relationship of tonality" suggests that it is possible to have a tonic without all the relationship of tonality, just that it would be deceiving for CP-tonally trained ears.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Dim7 said:


> "The use of a tonic is deceiving if it is not based on all the relationship of tonality" suggests that it is possible to have a tonic without all the relationship of tonality, just that it would be deceiving for CP-tonally trained ears.


Yes, he is speaking out against the pseudo-tonality he saw in the works of the Neoclassical composers, which use triads and such in contradiction to their functional roles and intentionally destroying what Schoenberg considered the natural laws of harmony.

Remember, the tonic is defined in the essay as the root from which the tonal relationships of a piece derive.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, he is speaking out against the pseudo-tonality he saw in the works of the Neoclassical composers, which use triads and such in contradiction to their functional roles and intentionally destroying what Schoenberg considered the natural laws of harmony.


I really have that problem with Stravinsky's Symphony in C. It sounds a bit like it's... well... leaning towards chromatic wrong notes and clusters on top of simple triads and simple basslines. I'm exaggerating, of course, but it feels like the chromatic crunch on top of the classical ground bass, triads, and simple progressions don't have much to do with each other syntactically.

What do you think?


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Dim7 said:


> "The use of a tonic is deceiving if it is not based on all the relationship of tonality" suggests that it is possible to have a tonic without all the relationship of tonality, just that it would be deceiving for CP-tonally trained ears.


I would also argue that independent of CP-tonally "trained" ears, that "open" or "octave" sounds, regardless of one's ear training, would distract from a piece based on whole-tone chord cadences because the open/octave sounds would be too boringly stabilizing. Schoenberg was just disposing of more mundane stabilities in favor of a more richer and varied harmony and language of stability/instability. Octaves between the soprano and bass belong to one kind of music, but not in Schoenberg's kind of music. It has nothing to do with "training".

Remember that Mozart in his sonata development sections would explicitly avoid a strong dominant->tonic cadence in the home key because it would be too boringly stabilizing. Again, avoiding "mundane/obvious" stabilizers (see my Schumann example or Mahlerian's jazz example) in favor of more subtle ones is an idea that has been around for a long time.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

SeptimalTritone said:


> I really have that problem with Stravinsky's Symphony in C. It sounds a bit like it's... well... leaning towards chromatic wrong notes and clusters on top of simple triads and simple basslines. I'm exaggerating, of course, but it feels like the chromatic crunch on top of the classical ground bass, triads, and simple progressions don't have much to do with each other syntactically.
> 
> What do you think?


I do enjoy the work, as well as many of Stravinsky's other neoclassical works, but the language does have an odd feel to it for sure. There was certainly one point where I felt that his music sounded more unnatural than Schoenberg's, but now I'm hesitant to throw such labels around.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

SeptimalTritone said:


> I'd define it as: a phrase that starts with obfuscated interval content, but ends in interval content presented in a nice way.
> 
> Take a look at measures 68-69 in the wind quintet. Outside of the flute, the rest of the instruments present a complete whole tone chord. I'd say the cadence happens the first beat of measure 69. The conflict in this piece is defined by fourth/fifth intervals competing with whole tone intervals, and so an ending of the climbing stretto dialogue (which has whole tone melodies in dialogue with each other at the fourth/fifth) with a whole tone chord provides the cadence, because the clash between fourth/fifth-intervals with whole tone intervals gets resolved in favor of the whole tone intervals, and a chord with a complete whole tone scale below the flute, and a final cadence point at the first beat of measure 69.


I don't hear it that way at all! To my ears, the resolution is clearly on the horn's E-flat in measure, 67, supported by the B-flat in the flute in the next measure. (The prior sequencing of the horn's resolving motive, ending previously on F and B-flat in other instruments, sets this up.) The whole tone stuff afterwards is an extension phrase before a reiteration of the resolution in m. 71 - the horn's E-flat once again. (The extension strikes me as analogous to the standard repetition of cadencial phrases in classical style.) The B-flat concluding the exposition has a quasi-dominant function. Frankly, I don't get the slightest sense of resolution where you place the cadence.


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## Guest (Feb 5, 2016)

Mahlerian said:


> [Citing Schoenberg] "To double is to emphasize, and an emphasized tone could be interpreted as a root, or even as a tonic; the consequences of such an interpretation must be avoided. Even a slight reminiscence of the former tonal harmony would be disturbing, because it would create false expectations of consequences and continuations. The use of a tonic is deceiving is [if?] it is not based on _all_ the relationships of tonality."


So, he is explicit here that he wanted to write music that didn't create the expectations that were his predecessors' stock-in-trade; he aimed to cleanse his compositions of anything that would create those expectations, even to the smallest degree?

Does he go on to say that he wanted to create something that had its own set of expectations, or that he wanted music that avoided such progressions altogether?


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

EdwardBast said:


> I don't hear it that way at all! To my ears, the resolution is clearly on the horn's E-flat in measure, 67, supported by the B-flat in the flute in the next measure. (The prior sequencing of the horn's resolving motive, ending previously on F and B-flat in other instruments, sets this up.) The whole tone stuff afterwards is an extension phrase before a reiteration of the resolution in m. 71 - the horn's E-flat once again. (The extension strikes me as analogous to the standard repetition of cadencial phrases in classical style.) The B-flat concluding the exposition has a quasi-dominant function. Frankly, I don't get the slightest sense of resolution where you place the cadence.


Oops! You're right. I had thought that the cadence ended when the sequencing ended. But in reality, there's still a bit of afterglow sequencing after the cadence. You're right.


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## Truckload (Feb 15, 2012)

This is all just an argument about semantics. A rose by any other name is still a rose. A turd by any other name is still a turd.


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## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

Truckload said:


> This is all just an argument about semantics. A rose by any other name is still a rose. A turd by any other name is still a turd.


Wow, tell us how you really feel..


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

No takers for my original point, I see.

Once again: there is no bright line test for whether a piece is tonal. That doesn't mean it's a useless concept.


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## Guest (Feb 5, 2016)

Mahlerian said:


> They might have said that about the Wagner/Brahms divide too. Eventually everyone forgot what the fight was about, and no one left alive still cared.


Or the comments of Lord Palmerston:

"Only three people have ever really understood the Tonality-Atonality business - Schönberg, who is dead-a German professor, who has gone mad-and I, who have forgotten all about it."


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

dogen said:


> Or the comments of Lord Palmerston:
> 
> "Only three people have ever really understood the Tonality-Atonality business - Schönberg, who is dead-a German professor, who has gone mad-and I, who have forgotten all about it."


To paraphrase a former British envoy to Cyprus, "Anyone who understands the Tonality-Atonality situation is misinformed".


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> So, he is explicit here that he wanted to write music that didn't create the expectations that were his predecessors' stock-in-trade; he aimed to cleanse his compositions of anything that would create those expectations, even to the smallest degree?
> 
> Does he go on to say that he wanted to create something that had its own set of expectations, or that he wanted music that avoided such progressions altogether?


(Good catch on the typo. That was my transcription mistake, not in the original.)

Obviously, the intent was to use the expectations naturally arising from the material he chose to use. This includes consistent use of harmony and motives within his method. Creating music that is devoid of any expectation and resolution was the furthest thing from Schoenberg's mind, and he stressed that one of the reasons for employing a series is that it was a flexible way to provide a subconsciously functioning order to a work.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> No takers for my original point, I see.
> 
> Once again: there is no bright line test for whether a piece is tonal. That doesn't mean it's a useless concept.


I agree that just because something is on a continuum, that does not mean the terms used for the endpoints are without meaning because the boundaries are hard to determine.

But the issue is not that there is an unclear demarcation between when something is tonal and when atonal, it's that atonal has no consistent definition at all, and in many uses here on this forum, neither does tonal.

So we can't even identify what an endpoint of atonal would be.


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## Truckload (Feb 15, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> No takers for my original point, I see.
> 
> Once again: there is no bright line test for whether a piece is tonal. That doesn't mean it's a useless concept.


Strongly agree, it IS a useful concept. Having a common vocabulary would facilitate discussion, even when parties disagree about outcomes. I thought your initial post had great merit, even if it may or may not need a few small changes.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Truckload said:


> Strongly agree, it IS a useful concept. Having a common vocabulary would facilitate discussion, even when parties disagree about outcomes. I thought your initial post had great merit, even if it may or may not need a few small changes.


A common vocabulary is impossible until people stop using undefined and useless terms such as atonal.


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## Truckload (Feb 15, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> A common vocabulary is impossible until people stop using undefined and useless terms such as atonal.


I do not agree.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Truckload said:


> I do not agree.


You think that you can have a common vocabulary without a common understanding, or you don't think that atonal is undefined and useless, which it probably is according to the entry on "atonality" in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians?


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

^I have disagreed about Truckload with many things in the past, but I think he's right here.

Many people - including many professional musicians, composers and theorists - have succeeded in having meaningful conversations including the word "atonal."

If you think the word is useless, don't use it.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> ^I have disagreed about Truckload with many things in the past, but I think he's right here.
> 
> Many people - including many professional musicians, composers and theorists - have succeeded in having meaningful conversations including the word "atonal."
> 
> If you think the word is useless, don't use it.


Yes, but to professionals, the term very often doesn't mean what it's used here to mean. In the field, one of the most frequently used definitions is "the *style* of Schoenberg and his school between roughly 1908 and 1923," with no further applications outside of that.

Atonal can't be a wide-ranging harmonic concept for the simple reason that there are no qualities whatsoever in common between all supposedly atonal works.


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## Truckload (Feb 15, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, but to professionals, the term very often doesn't mean what it's used here to mean. In the field, one of the most frequently used definitions is "the *style* of Schoenberg and his school between roughly 1908 and 1923," with no further applications outside of that.
> 
> Atonal can't be a wide-ranging harmonic concept for the simple reason that there are no qualities whatsoever in common between all supposedly atonal works.


If the definition as used in the OP is used, as seems reasonable, then atonal would be anything that did not fit the definition of tonal. Simple.

Trying to find a definition of tonal that includes serial music will never work because no matter how elegant an argument is made, serial music does not exhibit the qualities of tonal music as defined so well in the OP.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Truckload said:


> If the definition as used in the OP is used, as seems reasonable, then atonal would be anything that did not fit the definition of tonal. Simple.
> 
> Trying to find a definition of tonal that includes serial music will never work because no matter how elegant an argument is made, serial music does not exhibit the qualities of tonal music as defined so well in the OP.


But the OP does not constitute a definition of tonal music. It includes some things which are said to be characteristic of tonal music, many of which also appear in some serial music.

I say that tonality is a system that began in the 17th century and lasted until the early 20th, which is reducible to a few main qualities, *all of which* need to be present for the piece to be properly tonal.

- Shaped by functional harmonic progression.
- Taking a diatonic (major or minor) scale as a fundamental, with any deviations from this treated as coloration.
- Based on triadic harmony, wherein all progressions are assumed to be of triads to other triads. Non-triads such as seventh chords are permissible in certain circumstances and prescribed uses.

This is the only non-ad hoc definition of tonality I know that can actually make it separate from (nearly) all music called "atonal." Any definition that attempts to lump in Debussy, pre-Baroque music, and/or folk music with music described above as tonal will inevitably include much or all "atonal" music as well.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

I just about messed my pants laughing when I saw the name of this thread.


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## Truckload (Feb 15, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> But the OP does not constitute a definition of tonal music. It includes some things which are said to be characteristic of tonal music, many of which also appear in some serial music.
> 
> I say that tonality is a system that began in the 17th century and lasted until the early 20th, which is reducible to a few main qualities, *all of which* need to be present for the piece to be properly tonal.
> 
> ...


Well at least it is a start towards some kind of common vocabulary. Potential Problems with your definition:

1) the music of the late romantic sometimes includes harmonic progressions not usually considered in a functional harmonic text. For example mediant and submediant chromatic progressions and key relationships,
2) By the late romantic era any note or harmony included in either major or minor scale could be interchanged while still resulting in a aural perception of a functional relationship,
3) Harmonies of 9th and even 11ths were used, often disguised as NCT's (Dvorak String Quartet No. 12 comes immediately to mind),
4) Tonal music did not end with the early 19th century. First thing to come to mind, Bernstein "Candide",

Your definition, while a good start, seems more applicable to the High Classical era only.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Truckload said:


> Well at least it is a start towards some kind of common vocabulary. Potential Problems with your definition:
> 
> 1) the music of the late romantic sometimes includes harmonic progressions not usually considered in a functional harmonic text. For example mediant and submediant chromatic progressions and key relationships,


Yes, but used in a context where the primary relationship between dominant and tonic still holds.



Truckload said:


> 2) By the late romantic era any note or harmony included in either major or minor scale could be interchanged while still resulting in a aural perception of a functional relationship,


Again, while respecting the primacy of the diatonic scale and its concomitant harmonies.



Truckload said:


> 3) Harmonies of 9th and even 11ths were used, often disguised as NCT's (Dvorak String Quartet No. 12 comes immediately to mind),


Once more, triads are still felt as normal, and these harmonies as abnormal and in need of resolution.



Truckload said:


> 4) Tonal music did not end with the early 20th century. First thing to come to mind, Bernstein "Candide",


Which is inflected with many of the post-tonal styles that have come since.


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## Truckload (Feb 15, 2012)

Well I got embroiled in doing exactly what I did not want to do, argue about semantics. So I will desist.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Mahlerian said:


> Which is inflected with many of the post-tonal styles that have come since.


I am coming to think that the expression "post-tonal" is a far more functional way to describe the progression here as opposed to "atonal". It brings to mind the advent of postmodernism. What happens over time in all of the humanities and sciences is not a wholesale rejection, but a subtle evolution.

The triad still sets cadential expectations, and the tonic and dominant still hold the primacy, but it isn't going to be expressed the same from one set of musical idioms to the next. The existentialist becomes the postmodern humanist, but in several essential respects they're the same.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Truckload said:


> Well I got embroiled in doing exactly what I did not want to do, argue about semantics. So I will desist.


An argument about definitions is naturally going to get into semantics, because _that's what semantics means_.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Mahlerian said:


> An argument about definitions is naturally going to get into semantics, because _that's what semantics means_.


Given that fact, I think it's beneficial to ask in this context what is the aim and use of a definition, when more difficult abstract concepts are involved? I would cite two primary factors in reasonably defining terms: (a) *functionality* in expressing some of the substance of the ideas behind the term and also it's association with other relevant terms, and (b) *continuity* in order that the great developments and discussions of the past can be appraised well and kept in mind, benefiting modern dialogue.

Which is more functional? Which better expresses continuity of thought? Atonal, or post-tonal?


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## Truckload (Feb 15, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> An argument about definitions is naturally going to get into semantics, because _that's what semantics means_.


Obviously - that's why I wrote that I should not have become embroiled in the argument. Are you being intentionally insulting?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Truckload said:


> Obviously - that's why I wrote that I should not have become embroiled in the argument. Are you being intentionally insulting?


No, but I wasn't sure why you would start off by talking about definitions and arguing about definitions and then say you don't want to argue definitions.


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## Truckload (Feb 15, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> No, but I wasn't sure why you would start off by talking about definitions and arguing about definitions and then say you don't want to argue definitions.


Because I lacked sufficient willpower to avoid the discussion altogether. My lack of willpower being attributable to feeling very strongly about the subject matter. However, since nothing ever seems to get resolved in any discussion of semantics (and that is based on 50 years of experience) I should probably just get on with doing something more productive.

I just started a bar by bar analysis of the harmony, voice leading and orchestration of the Britten Young Persons Guide, and I should get back to it.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Lukecash12 said:


> Given that fact, I think it's beneficial to ask in this context what is the aim and use of a definition, when more difficult abstract concepts are involved? I would cite two primary factors in reasonably defining terms: (a) *functionality* in expressing some of the substance of the ideas behind the term and also it's association with other relevant terms, and (b) *continuity* in order that the great developments and discussions of the past can be appraised well and kept in mind, benefiting modern dialogue.
> 
> Which is more functional? Which better expresses continuity of thought? Atonal, or post-tonal?


In functionality, atonal falls flat, as it does not accurately describe the music it is applied to in any way. Even pragmatically, the term tells us nothing about what a piece is like, let alone how to listen to it. It gives a false sense of knowledge regarding the harmonic characteristics of those works it is applied to and in fact distracts people from perceiving what is present.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Mahlerian said:


> In functionality, atonal falls flat, as it does not accurately describe the music it is applied to in any way. Even pragmatically, the term tells us nothing about what a piece is like, let alone how to listen to it. It gives a false sense of knowledge regarding the harmonic characteristics of those works it is applied to and in fact distracts people from perceiving what is present.


And it goes without saying that it destroys any perception of the continuity of thought, right? Those two criteria alone make the term collapse on itself.


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## Guest (Feb 5, 2016)

Truckload said:


> However, since nothing ever seems to get resolved in any discussion of semantics (and that is based on 50 years of experience)


My 50 years of experience is somewhat different than yours. Some debates reach a resolution, some don't. Some involve semantics, some don't. Debates with people who claim that it's all _just _semantics are, of course, not debates at all, but cop-outs.

The OP's admirable and somewhat facetious claim that they have solved the tonality debate would, if it were true, then contribute to the conduct of other debates that we relish such as the relative value or appeal of different kinds of music.

With any luck, I might have another 50 years to debate semantics.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> I agree that just because something is on a continuum, that does not mean the terms used for the endpoints are without meaning because the boundaries are hard to determine.
> 
> But the issue is not that there is an unclear demarcation between when something is tonal and when atonal, it's that atonal has no consistent definition at all, and in many uses here on this forum, neither does tonal.
> 
> So we can't even identify what an endpoint of atonal would be.


I think it's perfectly simple: Systematic pitch hierarchy on one side and not on the other. This formulation works if one is using tonal in the so-called "broad sense." If using it in the narrow, common-practice sense, functional harmony and gravitation through a circle of fifths. There is nothing remotely difficult about this. The complications only come when one is trying to decide which works (if any) belong in each category. In that case, as Woodduck long insisted and as you now agree, "just because something is on a continuum, that does not mean the terms used for the endpoints are without meaning because the boundaries are hard to determine."


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Though no man can draw a stroke between the confines of day and night, 
yet light and darkness are upon the whole tolerably distinguishable.

Edmund Burke.

I always liked this expression of the estimable Burke.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> I think it's perfectly simple: Systematic pitch hierarchy on one side and not on the other. This formulation works if one is using tonal in the so-called "broad sense." If using it in the narrow, common-practice sense, functional harmony and gravitation through a circle of fifths. There is nothing remotely difficult about this. The complications only come when one is trying to decide which works (if any) belong in each category. In that case, as Woodduck long insisted and as you now agree, "just because something is on a continuum, that does not mean the terms used for the endpoints are without meaning because the boundaries are hard to determine."


I disagree that pre-tonal works used "systemic pitch hierarchy" in any way which is not also present in post-tonal music.

I've always agreed about the continuum fallacy, it's just that the continuum you and Woodduck propose is complete nonsense, and certainly doesn't correspond with my experience of music.

Let me put it this way:

It's a fallacy to say there is no such thing as a "heap" of grains of rice simply because we cannot clearly delineate how many grains are needed for something to be a heap. That's known as the continuum fallacy.

But I am not saying that.

I am saying that not only are we not able to identify a line at which tonality becomes atonality, but rather that, taking your and Woodduck's criteria for "broadly tonal," there are *no elements whatsoever* that are present in all tonal music which are not also present in all or almost all music called atonal. When you go on about "systematic pitch hierarchy," you are not speaking of a single system, but a collection of multiple kinds of hierarchies, at which point the argument begs the question, because you are excluding all the hierarchies used in "atonal" music.

In other words, I have no way of identifying something as atonal rather than not, and as I have never heard any atonal music, I don't see a reason to have a separate term for something that is not a separate phenomenon.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> I disagree that pre-tonal works used "systemic pitch hierarchy" in any way which is not also present in post-tonal music.


Of course there is! The hierarchies in Gregorian chant turn around the relation of each pitch of the relevant mode to the final of the mode and to the reciting tone. All skilled performers of chant in liturgical settings felt the tendency of tones around either of these important tones, which are loosely analogous to tonic and dominant, to move toward one tone or the other. Modern singers are capable of learning this system and of improvising chants with these tendencies. I've heard it done; One of my colleagues in a seminar on Gregorian chant learned how to improvise certain kinds of chant (e.g., Dorian mode offertories) on unfamiliar Latin texts. Where is a system like this used in post-tonal music? And, of course, one could assemble the rules and stylistic norms of any pre-tonal, folk, or rock idiom in a similar way, and I doubt any of them are relevant to post-tonal Western art music.



Mahlerian said:


> I am saying that not only are we not able to identify a line at which tonality becomes atonality, but rather that, taking your and Woodduck's criteria for "broadly tonal," there are *no elements whatsoever* that are present in all tonal music which are not also present in all or almost all music called atonal. *When you go on about "systematic pitch hierarchy," you are not speaking of a single system, but a collection of multiple kinds of hierarchies, at which point the argument begs the question, because you are excluding all the hierarchies used in "atonal" music*.


The fact that there are different systematic pitch hierarchies for different styles is not at all pertinent to the argument. The crucial fact is that there is some systematic pitch hierarchy of whatever kind. What systematic pitch hierarchies are used in serial music? If you think this music can be put under the same umbrella as all of the other styles united by the fact that they have systematic hierarchies, it is incumbent on you to demonstrate the systems and how they work. I can do this for Gregorian chant, common-practice tonal music, and a good deal of extended tonal and modal music of the 20thc. With a little thought I could probably do it for blues. Others can do it for Indian classical music and so on. When you can do it for serial music, you will have accomplished your goal. Until you or someone does this, then the distinction I have outlined stands. You have the burden of proof here.



Mahlerian said:


> In other words, I have no way of identifying something as atonal rather than not, and as I have never heard any atonal music, I don't see a reason to have a separate term for something that is not a separate phenomenon.


If you believe so-called atonal music is not a separate phenomenon from all of the other kinds of music distinguished by systematic pitch hierarchies, you need to demonstrate that the music you wish to include in this category possesses such a systematic hierarchy. Once again, the job is yours. It is not incumbent on me to prove a negative.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> If you believe so-called atonal music is not a separate phenomenon from all of the other kinds of music distinguished by systematic pitch hierarchies, you need to demonstrate that the music you wish to include in this category possesses such a systematic hierarchy. Once again, the job is yours. It is not incumbent on me to prove a negative.


I don't agree with you that earlier music does possess a systemic pitch hierarchy.

You are extrapolating cliches from some pertinent examples in order to mimic styles, not rules which obtain for all examples of that style. The church modes, especially as applied to polyphonic music, were a theoretical fiction more than a guide for composition. Composition was not based on scales of any kind, but rather voice leading rules reckoning consonances and dissonances from the bass. The mode of a piece was determined simply by the notes a piece began and ended on, not employed as a harmonic construct.

It is for this reason that the concept of a triad as a single harmonic unit didn't even exist until the 17th century.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> I don't agree with you that earlier music does possess a systemic pitch hierarchy.
> 
> You are extrapolating cliches from some pertinent examples in order to mimic styles, not rules which obtain for all examples of that style. The church modes, especially as applied to polyphonic music, were a theoretical fiction more than a guide for composition. Composition was not based on scales of any kind, but rather voice leading rules reckoning consonances and dissonances from the bass. The mode of a piece was determined simply by the notes a piece began and ended on, not employed as a harmonic construct.
> 
> It is for this reason that the concept of a triad as a single harmonic unit didn't even exist until the 17th century.


Of course it was based on scales. It was based on diatonic scales, always. The key signature had a B flat, or not. Most other accidentals were inferred from the rules of musica ficta.

By the late 16th century, composers including Lassus and Palestrina were deliberately writing pieces in the church modes, sometimes in collections that covered all the modes.

Theorists were classifying polyphonic works according to modes long before that. Though the question of which mode a piece "is in" was sometimes ambiguous, they were all based on a diatonic scale.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> Of course it was based on scales. It was based on diatonic scales, always. The key signature had a B flat, or not. Most other accidentals were inferred from the rules of musica ficta.
> 
> By the late 16th century, composers including Lassus and Palestrina were deliberately writing pieces in the church modes, sometimes in collections that covered all the modes.
> 
> Theorists were classifying polyphonic works according to modes long before that. Though the question of which mode a piece "is in" was sometimes ambiguous, they were all based on a diatonic scale.


And all post-tonal works are based on the chromatic scale, too (save for microtonal inflections).

Like with pre-tonal works, that scale does not in itself define a specific hierarchy, but the hierarchy is determined based on the characteristics of the materials used.

They may have used what we call the diatonic scale (with accidentals as needed), but this is more because the diatonic scale defined the collection of usable notes, not because it determined some specific way of using them.


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## Truckload (Feb 15, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> Of course it was based on scales. It was based on diatonic scales, always. The key signature had a B flat, or not. Most other accidentals were inferred from the rules of musica ficta.
> 
> By the late 16th century, composers including Lassus and Palestrina were deliberately writing pieces in the church modes, sometimes in collections that covered all the modes.
> 
> Theorists were classifying polyphonic works according to modes long before that. Though the question of which mode a piece "is in" was sometimes ambiguous, they were all based on a diatonic scale.


I am so glad you made these points. Major and Minor scales are, after all, just two of the previously well established modes, each with it's own diatonic scale.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> I don't agree with you that earlier music does possess a systemic pitch hierarchy.
> 
> You are extrapolating cliches from some pertinent examples in order to mimic styles, not rules which obtain for all examples of that style. The church modes, especially as applied to polyphonic music, were a theoretical fiction more than a guide for composition. Composition was not based on scales of any kind, but rather voice leading rules reckoning consonances and dissonances from the bass. The mode of a piece was determined simply by the notes a piece began and ended on, not employed as a harmonic construct.
> 
> It is for this reason that the concept of a triad as a single harmonic unit didn't even exist until the 17th century.


Composition of virtually all early music was based on scales, the modes! Gustave Reese, after winnowing out redundancies caused by the use of B-flat, identifies "five fundamental modes of Late Renaissance polyphony, the Dorian, Phrygian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Ionian." The latter two were gaining ever greater dominance. I have already talked about chant up thread.

You are incorrect about the identification of the triad. In Chapter 31 of his Istitutione Harmoniche, 1558, Gioseffo Zarlino describes the major and minor triads as the basis of harmony: "For, as I have said elsewhere, when the major third is below, the harmony is gay, and when it is above, the harmony is sad. So from these diverse positions of the third placed between the bounds of the fifth - or above the octave - comes harmonic variety … all the different sounds needed to make harmonies diverse." And, of course, theory tends to follow practice at a considerable remove. Zarlino was codifying the teaching of Adrian Willaert (his teacher), who was in turn channeling the practice of Lassus and Josquin.

That bit about reckoning intervals from the bass describes a medieval practice, Machaut and others of the Ars Nova. In the Renaissance, the triad was king.

But the overall point is getting lost in the shuffle. You have for a few years been papering over the very clear differences between all other non-tonal styles and common-practice music on one hand, and so-called atonal music and serial music on the other. Even if, after the above, you still don't think all of this music has systematic pitch hierarchies, all of it certainly has systematic grammar and syntax rooted in scales or modes. To defend your long-standing position, you need to show some meaningful analog of either systematic pitch hierarchy or systematic grammar and syntax in serial and other so-called atonal music. This music really is a radical departure from all earlier styles and other non-tonal musics. I attach no value judgments to these observations. The reason I bother is that when other TC contributors have voiced their intuitive perception of a radical departure, you have, in my opinion, been misleading them and arguing them out of what are, in fact, valid observations and manifestations of good judgement.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

EdwardBast said:


> To defend your long-standing position, you need to show some meaningful analog of either systematic pitch hierarchy or systematic grammar and syntax in serial and other so-called atonal music. This music really is a radical departure from all earlier styles and other non-tonal musics. I attach no value judgments to these observations.


Ahem... First, I have to cordially compliment you on composing a cogent post, but hasn't he already done exactly that on numerous occasions?


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## Guest (Feb 8, 2016)

Lukecash12 said:


> Ahem... First, I have to cordially compliment you on composing a cogent post, but hasn't he already done exactly that on numerous occasions?


He has. And his arguments have been swept under the rug each time, yes.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

No, EdwardBast, the triad, considered as a unit consisting of three notes, *irrespective of inversion*, was not conceptualized until the 17th century. The language of the except you cited, explaining the harmony in terms of intervallic content, is based on the same model of reckoning the harmony from the bass as in Medieval music. Yes, harmonic and contrapuntal practice in the Renaissance was significantly different from earlier times, but it was considerably different from that of the common practice as well, enough to justify calling it pre-tonal.

The ones who voice their ideas about the supposed departure the loudest are the ones who are least able to identify by ear any of the things that differentiate tonal and post-tonal music.

I'm not trying to paper over differences, I'm trying to elucidate exactly what the differences between tonal, pre-tonal, and post-tonal music are. Those conversations never get very far because people such as yourself want to paper over the differences between those first two categories and ignore all of the quite obvious similarities that are common to all three.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> No, EdwardBast, the triad, considered as a unit consisting of three notes, *irrespective of inversion*, was not conceptualized until the 17th century. The language of the except you cited, explaining the harmony in terms of intervallic content, is based on the same model of reckoning the harmony from the bass as in Medieval music. Yes, harmonic and contrapuntal practice in the Renaissance was significantly different from earlier times, but it was considerably different from that of the common practice as well, enough to justify calling it pre-tonal.


What you said and what I refuted was: "It is for this reason that the concept of a triad as a single harmonic unit didn't even exist until the 17th century." Zarlino indeed describes it as a single harmonic unit. Now you inform me that what you _*meant*_ is inversional equivalence. Of course inversional equivalence is a concomitant of functional harmony. (The converse, however, is not true; One can have functional harmony without inversional equivalence.) And everyone knows that modal music of the Renaissance didn't have functional harmony in the complete modern sense. What it has, and what all pre-tonal music has (and what atonal and serial music does not have) is systematic pitch hierarchy based on scales (modes). The facts that pieces change modes, sometimes several times, and that it is sometimes difficult for theorists to assign a mode to particular passages are irrelevant. It is not always easy to identify the key of an extended tonal passage in Prokofiev, but the music is nevertheless tonal. But even if you are not ready to buy any of this, all modal counterpoint, all common-practice music and all extended tonal music still has something that post-tonal music does not: Systematic grammar and syntax based in scalar voice-leading. You have demonstrated nothing comparable in post-tonal music.

When pressed to find some parallels between post tonal music and earlier music, you have resorted to statements like:

"This includes consistent use of harmony and motives within his method." #46

If harmony means any combination of pitches and motives are any discrete melodic unit, this statement is devoid of content. There is virtually nothing written in notes to which this does not apply. Likewise, when pressed to give some analog of scales or modes, you have stated that Schoenberg uses the chromatic scale, as if that was a meaningful answer. It isn't. There is no difference between "use of the chromatic scale" and use of all twelve tones equally. Once again, a statement devoid of content.



Mahlerian said:


> The ones who voice their ideas about the supposed departure the loudest are the ones who are least able to identify by ear any of the things that differentiate tonal and post-tonal music.


You aren't doing a good job of differentiating them either! In any case, this isn't a reason to offer them misleading information or statements with no discernible content.



Mahlerian said:


> I'm not trying to paper over differences, I'm trying to elucidate exactly what the differences between tonal, pre-tonal, and post-tonal music are. Those conversations never get very far because people such as yourself want to paper over the differences between those first two categories and ignore all of the quite obvious similarities that are common to all three.


Once again, what is the functional equivalent in post-tonal music of pitch hierarchy based on scales or modes, and/or systematic grammar and syntax based in scalar voice-leading? If the similarities are obvious, it should be easy to answer in a few words.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

I have not argued that post-tonal music has a single systemic pitch hierarchy. I have argued that there is no reason to define any element in pre-tonal music as being a systemic hierarchy. As I said before, the mode was a theoretical fiction before it became used by some to help guide their choices. You misunderstood what Isorhythm said earlier. It is not that assigning modes to certain passages is difficult or arbitrary, as it can be in much later Romantic music and often is in post-tonal music that uses tonal residue, but rather that assigning modes to *entire pieces* is difficult or arbitrary. Unlike a scale, a mode does not delineate the usage of its tones; all of the things you have mentioned are products of voice leading relating the parts to one another (cadences grew out of this), not of any kind of systematic pitch hierarchy related to a scale or mode.

I would also argue, additionally, that I don't think a systemic pitch hierarchy is important in this debate.

Firstly because, as I have said, this cannot be applied without violence to pre-tonal music.

Secondly because even if you could, you would be agreeing that multiple mutually exclusive hierarchies are permissible and thus leaving the door open to other kinds of hierarchical treatment and, in the absence of further comment, any other kind, even an entirely arbitrary or ad hoc one.

Thirdly because even such rules as a "systemic" pitch hierarchy are in fact no more than theoretical guidelines that do not prevent other kinds of usages. Even looking at only the things categorized as strictly tonal (ie not including Debussy or mid 20th century "tonal" music), we can find that any of the "rules" of voice leading and harmonic treatment are broken from time to time. It is only because these things are accepted as normative that they are accepted as "rules," but their infraction does not in itself imply another kind of style.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

The simplest systematic pitch hierarchy is that some pitches are in the scale and some of them are accidentals. This is not true of 12-tone music, by definition.

Again, I'm not trying to draw a sharp line between tonal and not-tonal and don't believe such a line is possible. I'm only saying that a lot of music going back to plainchant shares some characteristics, to greater or lesser degrees, that leads most listeners to hear it as tonal, while other, more recent music does not display enough of these characteristics, or display them strongly enough, for most listeners to hear it as tonal.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> The simplest systematic pitch hierarchy is that some pitches are in the scale and some of them are accidentals. This is not true of 12-tone music, by definition.


And in the multitude of cases where no pitches outside of a scale are used? This is the norm in folk and traditional music. It is not even clear what constitutes an accidental, given that earlier German theory had two separate names for B-flat and B natural, and that what we call the minor key incorporates a number of "accidentals" in its most basic form. In this case, the difference in usage is not based on what is outside of a scale, as the so-called "natural" minor is not always the perceived norm to begin with.



isorhythm said:


> Again, I'm not trying to draw a sharp line between tonal and not-tonal and don't believe such a line is possible. I'm only saying that a lot of music going back to plainchant shares some characteristics, to greater or lesser degrees, that leads most listeners to hear it as tonal, while other, more recent music does not display enough of these characteristics, or display them strongly enough, for most listeners to hear it as tonal.


Isn't it interesting, though, that that listening rubric does not, in certain cases, correspond to whether or not something is actually tonal?

You'd probably have more people saying the first part of this is tonal rather than this, which many would say sounds "atonal," while in fact the opposite is true: the Liegti piece is entirely non-tonal and without hierarchical use of its pitches in any way, while the Berg is entirely tonal and within common practice.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> And in the multitude of cases where no pitches outside of a scale are used? This is the norm in folk and traditional music. It is not even clear what constitutes an accidental, given that earlier German theory had two separate names for B-flat and B natural, and that what we call the minor key incorporates a number of "accidentals" in its most basic form. In this case, the difference in usage is not based on what is outside of a scale, as the so-called "natural" minor is not always the perceived norm to begin with.
> 
> Isn't it interesting, though, that that listening rubric does not, in certain cases, correspond to whether or not something is actually tonal?
> 
> You'd probably have more people saying the first part of this is tonal rather than this, which many would say sounds "atonal," while in fact the opposite is true.


It is interesting. But, for a lot of music, not that important. An all white-key piece by Ligeti is about as special a case as you could come up with. And I think most people familiar with late Romantic music or jazz will hear the Berg as tonal.

At the risk of generalizing..._most_ of the time we're dealing with comparisons more along the lines of this vs this.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> It is interesting. But, for a lot of music, not that important. An all white-key piece by Ligeti is about as special a case as you could come up with. And I think most people familiar with late Romantic music or jazz will hear the Berg as tonal.
> 
> At the risk of generalizing..._most_ of the time we're dealing with comparisons more along the lines of this vs this.


Of course, the salient differences between those two are hardly limited to harmony. They also include melodic contour (mostly disjunct vs mostly conjunct) and rhythm (lots of change in accent and implied meter vs only some slight changes). I think that these play a very clear role in whether or not people hear something as "sounding tonal," and account for much of why someone would choose the Ligeti over the Berg as well.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> Of course, the salient differences between those two are hardly limited to harmony. They also include melodic contour (mostly disjunct vs mostly conjunct) and rhythm (lots of change in accent and implied meter vs only some slight changes). I think that these play a very clear role in whether or not people hear something as "sounding tonal," and account for much of why someone would choose the Ligeti over the Berg as well.


I agree with this up to a point, though I think many classical listeners don't hear rhythm very well at all. Lots of leaps in the lines certainly weakens tonality, particularly when combined with chromaticism.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The reason why some people might (hypothetically) choose Ligeti's "White on White" as sounding "more tonal" than Berg's b-minor Sonata is that the melody in its top voice seems to stay in C-Major/a-minor the whole time despite the "spice" of dissonant harmonization, while the Berg sonata for most of its length is wandering far afield chromatically and is audibly in b-minor only a very small portion of the time. That harmonic difference is so obvious that melodic and rhythmic factors could be very different in both works without affecting those hypothetical people's perception that the Ligeti is more tonal than the Berg. Those people might even have a good point.

Three of the pieces cited in the above posts seem to me excellent choices representing very different styles showing different ways in which tonality can be used. The Ligeti, Berg, and Mozart, however different in the ways they do it, all reference tonal systems - i.e., systems characterized by recognizable hierarchical functions of the notes of their scales in relation to a tonic. 

The Schoenberg is unlike the other three pieces in this respect. In fact it consistently avoids tonal references.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> I agree with this up to a point, though I think many classical listeners don't hear rhythm very well at all. Lots of leaps in the lines certainly weakens tonality, particularly when combined with chromaticism.


Yes, but as I showed with the Ligeti example, a piece can *entirely lack systematic pitch hierarchy and tonal structure* and people may still hear it as "sounding tonal" because of mostly conjunct movement and the exclusive use of diatonic pitches.

The Schoenberg you linked to, unlike the Ligeti, has plenty of phrases and cadences and other elements associated with tonality and used in analogous ways, but as long as people fail to recognize them, they will not be able to hear the underlying connection with preceding music.

This should indicate, not that Schoenberg is "more atonal" than Ligeti because he uses the complete chromatic, much less that the B minor Berg piece is "more atonal" because some who don't know what tonality means may think it sounds atonal to them, but that when people say something "sounds atonal," they are not primarily responding to some underlying difference in harmonic structure.

Anyway, Gould clutters the texture somewhat. Here's a version with a lighter touch:


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

There can indeed be forms of "tonality" that basically have nothing to do with each other. For example, a diatonic piece that lacks tone centricity vs. non-diatonic piece that has obvious tone centricity. However that doesn't in and of itself make the word useless.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Dim7 said:


> There can indeed be forms of "tonality" that basically have nothing to do with each other. For example, a diatonic piece that lacks tone centricity vs. non-diatonic piece that has obvious tone centricity. However that doesn't in and of itself make the word useless.


I never meant to imply that tonal was useless; far from it.

It's just that if we want to be consistent about what we mean by "atonal," then that piece by Ligeti must be included and Berg's Sonata cannot be. In my experience, people who want to retain the term (despite its complete lack of descriptive ability) do not want certain things to be "atonal," even while insisting that the term is not in the least disparaging.

I dislike the term because in practice, it doesn't mean what it purports to: while it should be a neutral description of the *harmonic content* of all post-tonal music, it is used to indicate the *style* of some post-tonal music that many dislike and are uncomfortable with.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Mahlerian said:


> I never meant to imply that tonal was useless; far from it.
> 
> It's just that if we want to be consistent about what we mean by "atonal," then Ligeti must be included and Berg cannot be. People who want to retain the term do not want certain things to be "atonal," even while insisting that the term is not in the least disparaging.
> 
> I dislike the term because in practice, it doesn't mean what it purports to: while it should be a neutral description of the *harmonic content* of all post-tonal music, it is used to indicate the *style* of some post-tonal music that many dislike and are uncomfortable with.


I think the implication of your argument is that the broad concept of "tonal" (as used by Woodduck for example) would be useless (since all music with tones, including Schoenberg, Boulez etc. would be tonal then).


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Dim7 said:


> I think the implication of your argument is that the broad concept of "tonal" (as used by Woodduck for example) would be useless (since all music with tones, including Schoenberg, Boulez etc. would be tonal then).


Not useless in explaining how all music has common features, despite outward differences, but surely not useful as a categorical label, because as you say, it includes everything outside of music that doesn't use pitches.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

I do think it's problematic when people talk as if "atonality" was some easily identifiable single property of music. It would be silly for instance to have a serious debate whether the late Scriabin sonatas are REALLY "tonal" or "atonal". However, I also don't think it is a good idea to always object when someone either uses the term "atonal" or the loose definition of "tonal". We cannot expect people to always talk with such academic rigour about something as subjective as music. Despite the problematic aspects of the terms broadly "tonal" pieces do seem to have some family resemblance (and the same for "atonal" pieces), so I don't agree that they completely lack descriptive ability.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Dim7 said:


> I do think it's problematic when people talk as if "atonality" was some easily identifiable single property of music. It would be silly for instance to have a serious debate whether the late Scriabin sonatas are REALLY "tonal" or "atonal". However, I also don't think it is a good idea to always object when someone either uses the term "atonal" or the loose definition of "tonal". We cannot expect people to always talk with such academic rigour about something as subjective as music. Despite the problematic aspects of the terms broadly "tonal" pieces do seem to have some family resemblance (and the same for "atonal" pieces), so I don't agree that they completely lack descriptive ability.


How is "atonal" a functional word, though? It makes no etymological or historical sense. It fails at both important tests for a technical term. "Atonal" is a largely nondescript term that does damage to educated dialogue on music theory.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Lukecash12 said:


> How is "atonal" a functional word, though? It makes no etymological or historical sense. It fails at both important tests for a technical term. "Atonal" is a largely nondescript term that does damage to educated dialogue on music theory.


It's certainly not very precise, but do you claim that you have no idea whatsoever what kind of music people are talking about when they say "atonal"?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Dim7 said:


> I do think it's problematic when people talk as if "atonality" was some easily identifiable single property of music. It would be silly for instance to have a serious debate whether the late Scriabin sonatas are REALLY "tonal" or "atonal". However, I also don't think it is a good idea to always object when someone either uses the term "atonal" or the loose definition of "tonal". We cannot expect people to always talk with such academic rigour about something as subjective as music. Despite the problematic aspects of the terms broadly "tonal" pieces do seem to have some family resemblance (and the same for "atonal" pieces), so I don't agree that they completely lack descriptive ability.


What's problematic for me is that the term atonality does not describe an easily identifiable single property of music, but yet people still use it for the basis of arguments _as if it were_.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Mahlerian said:


> What's problematic for me is that the term atonality does not describe an easily identifiable single property of music, but yet people still use it for the basis of arguments _as if it were_.


On such occasions I would agree that it is appropriate to "deconstruct" the term.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Dim7 said:


> It's certainly not very precise, but do you claim that you have no idea whatsoever what kind of music people are talking about when they say "atonal"?


I am aware of the styles of music that people are referring to when they use the term. That mutual agreement does not mean that the word has any explanatory power, however, and it does not grant that when people use the term they are necessarily saying anything about the harmonic structure of music. Merely knowing what people happen to choose as their definitions, does not in any way make their definitions useful.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

At the risk of jumping into a pool full of crocodiles  , I would suggest that atonal can have a specific meaning as the set of all items that are not in the tonal set. Of course this runs into the problem of how to define tonal and at what point something ceases to be tonal, but at least it is a definition.


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## Autocrat (Nov 14, 2014)

Becca said:


> At the risk of jumping into a pool full of crocodiles  , I would suggest that atonal can have a specific meaning as the set of all items that are not in the tonal set. Of course this runs into the problem of how to define tonal and at what point something ceases to be tonal, but at least it is a definition.


It's really an undefinition.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Becca said:


> At the risk of jumping into a pool full of crocodiles  , I would suggest that atonal can have a specific meaning as the set of all items that are not in the tonal set. Of course this runs into the problem of how to define tonal and at what point something ceases to be tonal, but at least it is a definition.


What items aren't in the tonal set?


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## Guest (Feb 9, 2016)

Lukecash12 said:


> What items aren't in the tonal set?


Infinitely many, making the term meaningless in terms of referring to any specific sound.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

nathanb said:


> Infinitely many, making the term meaningless in terms of referring to any specific sound.


I know what you're saying, but in fact it's easy to define infinite sets whose members all have particular properties. That's what (mathematical) set theory is all about.


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## Guest (Feb 9, 2016)

isorhythm said:


> I know what you're saying, but in fact it's easy to define infinite sets whose members all have particular properties. That's what (mathematical) set theory is all about.


I understand mathematical set theory, but to me, a "Not X" with nothing else is about as ambiguous as it gets.

"Tell me, what does this new favorite composer of yours sound like?"
"He doesn't sound like Vivaldi!"
"...Thanks"

You are correct that it removes some possibilities...but it leaves far too many remaining possibilities to be of any use whatsoever.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

isorhythm said:


> I know what you're saying, but in fact it's easy to define infinite sets whose members all have particular properties. That's what (mathematical) set theory is all about.


It's easy to arbitrarily define anything. That something has been defined doesn't make it meaningful in the sense of not being self contradictory.

Here, I'll define a very simple infinite series, not just validating the idea in algebraic but geometrical thinking. Let's start all of them off in a finite interval, say [1,2). For the sake of the argument, let's take some specific length scale, for instance a meter, and just call it "1" in that length scale. To do this, start the particles off in the following positions (known as a geometric series):

_x1 = 1
x2 = 1 + 1/2 = 1.5
x3 = 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 = 1.75 
.
.
.
xn = xn-1 + (1/n)2 = 2[1 - (1/2)n ]

__It's easy to verify that all particles will be at a point greater than or equal to 1 but always less than 2 (i.e. no particle sits at point "2", just arbitrarily close to it, on the interval known as [1,2) by mathematicians). *However, each particle is also never lying on top of another; for each n, each particle is at a distinct point*. This is an infinite collection of points where each particle is located, but in a 1 unit distance interval.

_Math only demonstrates logical principles with which to assess given values, though. It doesn't establish the rationality of actual vs potential infinities, just the logical validity/form.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

nathanb said:


> "Tell me, what does this new favorite composer of yours sound like?"
> 
> "He doesn't sound like Vivaldi!"


That actually made me laugh. I'll have to use that line in my life.

"What's that alligator gumbo taste like?"

"Well, it doesn't taste like kimchi!"

By the way, to me, alligator tastes - _not_ like chicken, but like beef!


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Atonal is certainly not a useful word, unless further qualified (e.g., "Schoenberg's free atonal period").

But that's not what this thread is about anyway.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Autocrat said:


> It's really an undefinition.


I never intended it to be a _musically_ useful definition, I was just making the point that, despite comments that it doesn't describe anything, there can be a definition which does describe something. As musical theory is not my thing, I will leave it at that! :tiphat:


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I can easily believe that the term, atonality, is generally used improperly on TC. I suspect that most members don't have a good understanding of its meaning. I also imagine that most members can't properly identify atonal works. Further, it may certainly be the case that the term is often used in a pejorative fashion on TC.

I do not understand music theory well enough to know specifics about atonality, but I know there are many music journal articles with "atonality" in the title. My daughter has told me that at the 2 music schools she has attended professors use the term routinely, not so much in a general sense but rather a focused sense. The students undestand the use of the term, and there seems to be no confusion. 

So it's hard for me to imagine that atonality, as used by knowledgeable music theorists, does not refer to a well understood concept. Further, that concept obviously has no negative connotations among music theorists. Maybe the term has relatively little use on TC because most of us do not understand it well enough, but it seems to be useful in the right circles.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, but as I showed with the Ligeti example, a piece can *entirely lack systematic pitch hierarchy and tonal structure* and people may still hear it as "sounding tonal" because of mostly conjunct movement and the exclusive use of diatonic pitches.
> 
> The Schoenberg you linked to, unlike the Ligeti, has plenty of phrases and cadences and other elements associated with tonality and used in analogous ways, but as long as people fail to recognize them, they will not be able to hear the underlying connection with preceding music.
> 
> This should indicate, not that Schoenberg is "more atonal" than Ligeti because he uses the complete chromatic, much less that the B minor Berg piece is "more atonal" because some who don't know what tonality means may think it sounds atonal to them, but that when people say something "sounds atonal," they are not primarily responding to some underlying difference in harmonic structure.


The first movement of Ligeti's "White on White" is a lovely, long melody with perfectly clear phrase structures in C-Major, concluding on the tonic C. Anyone who approaches it with their ears rather than their theories can hear that, and frankly I'd love to know by what theory it is anything else. If it had modulated into the dominant or the subdominant or some other key area it would have been more tonally complex, but not more tonal.

Phrases and cadences in the Schoenberg "Gigue" which are somehow "analogous to" those of tonal music do not make the piece tonal. Neither do other features having an "underlying connection" with tonal music. This is stunningly obfuscatory language. How much nontonal music "resembles" earlier music in various ways has never been in question. What is in question is: are the work's harmonies organized with reference to a tonal center? Does the piece utilize - in whole or in part, strictly or freely - a scale or mode in which a particular note or harmonic area functions as a tonic and the other notes have certain conventional, systematic, hierarchical relationships to it and to each other?

I don't know who these anonymous "people" are who are "not primarily responding to some underlying difference in harmonic structure" when they say that the Ligeti sounds tonal and the Schoenberg doesn't. It's precisely the harmonic structure that supports their belief.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

As for "atonality" not referring to a specific style of music: how specific a style does _any_ term have to refer to to be useful?

"Atonality" may be used differently by different people. It's hardly unique in that respect. "Tonality" has more than one common and legitimate usage. It doesn't refer to any specific style of music either. Shall we abolish it too?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

The new political correctness on this forum will prohibit the use of the term "atonal." I look forward to the official pronouncement and prohibition, if it hasn't already been made.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Woodduck said:


> As for "atonality" not referring to a specific style of music: how specific a style does _any_ term have to refer to to be useful?


Are the delineations between the two terms truly descriptive of anything real, do they possess any explanatory power? Or are they an arbitrary matter of custom?



> "Atonality" may be used differently by different people. It's hardly unique in that respect. "Tonality" has more than one common and legitimate usage. It doesn't refer to any specific style of music either. Shall we abolish it too?


Not sure where anyone was forwarding abolition here, but sure, if that's what you'd prefer, go ahead. 



KenOC said:


> The new political correctness on this forum will prohibit the use of the term "atonal." I look forward to the official pronouncement and prohibition, if it hasn't already been made.


I hadn't realized I was part of a new political movement... Where's my snazzy t-shirt, belt buckle, or whatever?


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

nathanb said:


> I understand mathematical set theory, but to me, a "Not X" with nothing else is about as ambiguous as it gets.
> 
> "Tell me, what does this new favorite composer of yours sound like?"
> "He doesn't sound like Vivaldi!"
> ...


Well, how about not X, if X means "music with definite pitches"? Or "vocal music"? Instrumental music means just that. It doesn't mean "music with instruments", it means "music without human voice". It is actually one of those "not-X" words and it's a perfectly useful term. There are plenty of words in the English language that essentially mean "not something" and seemingly people find them useful....


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## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

KenOC said:


> The new political correctness on this forum will prohibit the use of the term "atonal." I look forward to the official pronouncement and prohibition, if it hasn't already been made.


PC leads to a world where "1984" is possible. Don't bring PC into it.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Becca said:


> At the risk of jumping into a pool full of crocodiles  , I would suggest that atonal can have a specific meaning as the set of all items that are not in the tonal set. Of course this runs into the problem of how to define tonal and at what point something ceases to be tonal, but at least it is a definition.


That's not the way it's usually defined, though. When Mmsbls talks about "atonal" being an accepted term in academic circles, he means that it is used in a more restricted way. To say that anything that is not tonal is atonal would lead to some really odd consequences, including that all music before 1600 or so is atonal, as well as that the vast majority of music around the world is atonal.

Of course, if you want to define tonality more broadly so that it encompasses those things, the result will be that the number of things that are atonal, if still defined as "not tonal," becomes next to zero. All of the music generally considered atonal is equally tonal to those other things that were excluded before.


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## Truckload (Feb 15, 2012)

mmsbls said:


> I can easily believe that the term, atonality, is generally used improperly on TC. I suspect that most members don't have a good understanding of its meaning. I also imagine that most members can't properly identify atonal works. Further, it may certainly be the case that the term is often used in a pejorative fashion on TC.
> 
> I do not understand music theory well enough to know specifics about atonality, but I know there are many music journal articles with "atonality" in the title. My daughter has told me that at the 2 music schools she has attended professors use the term routinely, not so much in a general sense but rather a focused sense. The students undestand the use of the term, and there seems to be no confusion.
> 
> So it's hard for me to imagine that atonality, as used by knowledgeable music theorists, does not refer to a well understood concept. Further, that concept obviously has no negative connotations among music theorists. Maybe the term has relatively little use on TC because most of us do not understand it well enough, but it seems to be useful in the right circles.


Thank you for this post. Whether one does or does not like "atonal" music, this argument over the very definition of the word seems so tortured as to obscure rather than clarify. We all have Wiki, we can all access dictionaries. Most of us have at least one printed musical dictionary. Many of us have formalized musical training, perhaps most of us. The word is in common usage. It seems there must be some kind of attempt going on to obscure the commonly used meaning of the term to further some kind of agenda.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Truckload said:


> Thank you for this post. Whether one does or does not like "atonal" music, this argument over the very definition of the word seems so tortured as to obscure rather than clarify. We all have Wiki, we can all access dictionaries. Most of us have at least one printed musical dictionary. Many of us have formalized musical training, perhaps most of us. The word is in common usage. It seems there must be some kind of attempt going on to obscure the commonly used meaning of the term to further some kind of agenda.


But the word doesn't have a clear definition. The Grove Dictionary's entry on it even says so directly, and comments that it may not be a very useful category.


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## Truckload (Feb 15, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> But the word doesn't have a clear definition. The Grove Dictionary's entry on it even says so directly, and comments that it may not be a very useful category.


I don't want to get into an argument with you. I am merely pointing out that becoming too technical can actually hinder understanding rather than improving it. I am aware of the recent changes in Groves entry for the term atonal. Other printed musical dictionaries however are not so ambiguous. I usually use the printed Oxford Dictionary of Music which I purchased approximately 40 years ago.

Anyway, I made the point I wanted to make, so I will focus on other threads.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Truckload said:


> I don't want to get into an argument with you. I am merely pointing out that becoming too technical can actually hinder understanding rather than improving it. I am aware of the recent changes in Groves entry for the term atonal. Other printed musical dictionaries however are not so ambiguous. I usually use the printed Oxford Dictionary of Music which I purchased approximately 40 years ago.
> 
> Anyway, I made the point I wanted to make, so I will focus on other threads.


And how does use of the word atonal improve understanding? (It doesn't)

What does it tell us about the music? (Nothing whatsoever)

Does it tell us how the music is constructed? (No)

Does it tell us how to listen to the music? (No)

Does it tell us how the music is different from other music? (No)


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Remember, this thread is not about the word "atonality." There are many other threads in which that has been discussed.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Just to take the other side of things, since this thread is about "tonality" rather than its negation, have we all agreed about what "tonality" means?


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

science said:


> Just to take the other side of things, since this thread is about "tonality" rather than its negation, have we all agreed about what "tonality" means?


I addressed this in my first post.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> That's not the way it's usually defined, though. When Mmsbls talks about "atonal" being an accepted term in academic circles, he means that it is used in a more restricted way. To say that anything that is not tonal is atonal would lead to some really odd consequences, including that all music before 1600 or so is atonal, as well as that the vast majority of music around the world is atonal.
> 
> Of course, if you want to define tonality more broadly so that it encompasses those things, the result will be that the number of things that are atonal, if still defined as "not tonal," becomes next to zero. * All of the music generally considered atonal is equally tonal to those other things that were excluded before.*


No, it isn't. No matter how often you repeat it, it still won't be true.

I'm still waiting for you to defend your statement that Ligeti's simple C-Major "White on White" is "entirely non-tonal":






That piece exhibits not only a clear tonic base, but harmonies of the dominant, subdominant, supertonic, mediant and submediant as well. These harmonies are brought into piquant conflicts and overlappings, but they are not difficult to perceive. If you can't identify the tonality in that piece, yet claim to find "tonal centers" in works generally called atonal, such as the Schoenberg "Gigue,"






you must have a very personal set of definitions.

Why should anyone give credence to those definitions when the audible evidence does not support them?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> No, it isn't. No matter how often you repeat it, it still won't be true.
> 
> I'm still waiting for you to defend your statement that Ligeti's simple C-Major "White on White" is "entirely non-tonal":
> 
> ...


Not only is the piece devoid of any real functional harmony or dissonance treatment (and as such has no systematic pitch hierarchy, which had become your new buzzword), it has no phrase boundaries demarcated by cadences. The entire first section is a canon at the octave between the left and right hands.

On top of which, weren't you suggesting, in an earlier conversation, that because the tonal implications of Schoenberg's music were covered over by conflicting notes, that I had no right to claim any sort of tonal basis for the piece? Yet here, where there are no triads and every chord a dissonance, you excuse it and say it's clearly tonal. You say it's even *in C major*, despite not having any functional harmony!

The composer himself said that his later music wasn't tonal.

You must have a _very_ personal set of definitions.



Woodduck said:


> If you can't identify the tonality in that piece, yet claim to find "tonal centers" in works generally called atonal, such as the Schoenberg "Gigue,"
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That was in a different context, where we were talking about your so-called "broad sense" of tonality. In that sense, both the Schoenberg and the Ligeti are tonal. In the sense that I was discussing above, neither of them is tonal (the Schoenberg has more evidence of functional tonality, though), though the Berg B minor Sonata is.

On another note, why choose such a sloppy performance? Surely the most accurate and precise performance would support your view if you're correct about the harmony of the piece?



Woodduck said:


> Why should anyone give credence to those definitions when the audible evidence does not support them?


I don't know. You tell me why you're making up definitions not supported by the audible evidence.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> Not only is the piece devoid of any real functional harmony or dissonance treatment (and as such has no systematic pitch hierarchy, which had become your new buzzword), it has no phrase boundaries demarcated by cadences. The entire first section is a canon between the left and right hands.
> 
> On top of which, weren't you suggesting, in an earlier conversation, that because the tonal implications of Schoenberg's music were covered over by conflicting notes, that I had no right to claim any sort of tonal basis for the piece? Yet here, where there are no triads and every chord a dissonance, you excuse it and say it's clearly tonal. You say it's even *in C major*, despite not having any functional harmony!
> 
> ...


The phrases of Ligeti's melody in "White on White" are very easy to hear. If you can count to four, you can hear them. Phrases can exist without being "demarcated by cadences," but in this case cadences are not absent: there is a cadence to the tonic, IV-I, on the last two notes of the first phrase (which I presume to be the end of the second bar in the score), and another one at the end of the first iteration of the melody (and then all this is repeated). It's very clear where the tonic is in this piece, and not just at the final cadence; the other harmonic functions are less obvious because the dissonance of crossing lines makes them so, and because they are touched upon and moved through without being dwelt on, but I have no difficulty hearing them. It's clear to me that Ligeti is "playing" with tonality in quite a charming way, by choosing the "white keys" and his corresponding suggestive title, by writing a simple yet subtle melody in C, and by setting it against itself, generating dissonances the whole way without obscuring the tonality of the whole. Really a delightful and strangely moving piece. Thanks for bringing it up!

Maybe we could say that tonal relations in the Ligeti are slightly obscured, or made ambiguous, by being "covered over by conflicting notes" (though I wouldn't put it that way; from having listened to the piece several times, I feel it's more to the point to say that the overlapping lines of the canon create ambi-valence - i.e., they suggest more than one tonal function simultaneously, which nevertheless doesn't obscure the principal relationships involved). But Schoenberg's "Gigue" (taking that as a good example of his non-tonal style) is a completely different kettle of fish: there is no question of tonal implications being "covered over." As he himself wrote, "Even a slight reminiscence of the former tonal harmony would be disturbing, because it would create false expectations of consequences and continuations." When listening to music of this kind, we can imagine "tonal implications" if we listen selectively and filter out the notes which don't support those implications; it's not easy to come up with music in which tonally-expectant ears will not find "tonal implications," and I view it as quite an achievement on Schoenberg's part to have found a method of composition which succeeds so brilliantly in doing so. There are no tonics, dominants, subdominants, or any other members of the society of tonal areas that talk to each other so delicately and poignantly in the Ligeti. Schoenberg doesn't want them there, and, by God, he keeps them out. Credit where credit is due.

My "broad sense" of tonality is "so called" not just by me but by people in several disciplines who study the structure and meaning of music as a phenomenon - people who ask fundamental questions about what music is, why it exists, how it functions in human life, and why it tends to be structured in the ways it is. A system of tones or harmonies, utilizing a scale or mode, exhibiting hierarchical relations in relation to a central tone and to each other - there exists no other generally accepted term for tonality in this basic sense, and until there is we will just have to live with it. Many terms have more than one definition, and require only a little care in saying what we mean by them.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

I think we need to get Dr. Phil involved in this.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Wow, Woodduck, you've managed to spend a lot of verbiage just restating your original argument without any evidence to counter what I said. What's more, there's not a word there about how you ignored the context of my original remarks in an attempt to make them seem contradictory, but rather a lot of words to help people forget about what was actually said.

I'm glad that you understand Ligeti's piece better than the composer, and have chosen to share this information with us. You've even managed to divine bar lines which do not exist in the score.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Ligeti referred to the music of his last period as "neither tonal nor atonal."

"White on White" is not really typical of that period, though.

Here is Alex Ross, not a music theorist but not a dummy either, saying it "touches on simple C major": http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/05/ligeti_2001.html

I suppose you would have to say Riley's "In C" is not in C, also.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> Ligeti referred to the music of his last period as "neither tonal nor atonal."
> 
> "White on White" is not really typical of that period, though.


It's still not tonal, though.

According to Woodduck's definition, atonal is defined by not being tonal. Ligeti elsewhere expressed his own definition of atonal as "total chromaticism," so clearly White on White does not fit.

Now is probably also a good time to note that though the composer places a dotted vertical line every eight half notes, he notes at the top of the first page that these are *not bar lines*, and there are no phrasing markings. The intent is that all of the notes be played absolutely evenly to achieve the "blank" affect.



isorhythm said:


> Here is Alex Ross, not a music theorist but not a dummy either, saying it "touches on simple C major": http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/05/ligeti_2001.html
> 
> I suppose you would have to say Riley's "In C" is not in C, also.


But as C major is traditionally defined, and has been defined in this thread, it isn't in C major. Riley's piece at least has emphasized C-ish tertian harmonies (albeit no functional harmony), whereas the Ligeti, which indeed has a weak center (in the same way Schoenberg's Gigue does) around C, has no triads at all, implied or otherwise.

Why have you and others suddenly given up your earlier contention that the one, single, most important aspect that separates tonal from atonal is a hierarchical treatment of pitch now that you're presented with an example of a diatonic piece that doesn't have any pitch hierarchy?


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> Why have you and others suddenly given up your earlier contention that the one, single, most important aspect that separates tonal from atonal is a hierarchical treatment of pitch now that you're presented with an example of a diatonic piece that doesn't have any pitch hierarchy?


My entire contention in this thread is that there is no "one, single, most important aspect" that makes something tonal, but rather that listeners hear music as tonal on the basis of multiple overlapping characteristics that may be present to varying degrees. This has been my contention from the beginning. It is the reason I started this thread. I'm not sure I could have been clearer.

"White on White" has an obvious pitch hierarchy: seven pitches are used, and the other five are not used at all. The ones that appear in the piece are more important to the piece than the ones that do not appear in the piece.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> "White on White" has an obvious pitch hierarchy: seven pitches are used, and the other five are not used at all. The ones that appear in the piece are more important to the piece than the ones that do not appear in the piece.


Huh?

By that same token, one could say that in all 12-tone works, there is an obvious pitch hierarchy: 12 pitches are used, all microtonal inflections are not used.

But you rightly didn't allow that because that's not the way a hierarchy works. It's an element defined musically within the context of a piece, not within the context of all music everywhere. The first part of White on White uses only seven notes, and moreover uses these with relatively even distribution, with care taken that they never form triads.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> Huh?
> 
> By that same token, one could say that in all 12-tone works, there is an obvious pitch hierarchy: 12 pitches are used, all microtonal inflections are not used.
> 
> But you rightly didn't allow that because that's not the way a hierarchy works. It's an element defined musically within the context of a piece, not within the context of all music everywhere. The first part of White on White uses only seven notes, and moreover uses these with relatively even distribution, with care taken that they never form triads.


You're right, that didn't make sense.

What I was getting at is that it uses a fixed scale of a limited number of notes arranged unequally, which is one of the characteristics associated with tonality I mentioned in my OP.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> You're right, that didn't make sense.
> 
> What I was getting at is that it uses a fixed scale of a limited number of notes arranged unequally, which is one of the characteristics associated with tonality I mentioned in my OP.


But one of the examples you gave (the octatonic scale) is not arranged unequally. Furthermore, the diatonic scale does in fact have a center point, D, around which the distribution of intervals is symmetrical. Therefore, it's a loaded interpretation of the piece to say that the notes are arranged unequally, one which is not supported by the score. The other two elements, fixed scale and limited number of notes, are of course covered in the above reply.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Mahlerian said:


> But one of the examples you gave (the octatonic scale) is not arranged unequally. Furthermore, the diatonic scale does in fact have a center point, D, around which the distribution of intervals is symmetrical. Therefore, it's a loaded interpretation of the piece to say that the notes are arranged unequally, one which is not supported by the score.


You're saying this again 100 posts later. Do you guys need a break or something?

For the record, I don't really see the reason why not to use "atonal." You might as well not use "tonal" either. No one has made a good enough argument against "atonal" yet. It's basically like someone arguing that "darkness" is a meaningless word. Light has a definition according to physics. Darkness is usually defined as the absence of light. Therefore, isn't it reasonable to believe there is such thing as atonal music? It's just our ears are more likely to interpret atonality as something that sounds tonal (and thus discredit its existence), like when the eyes adjust to a dark room and eventually can see the contours of furniture because a sliver of light might actually be illuminating the room after all. But that doesn't mean we can't call the room _dark!_ That doesn't mean absolute darkness doesn't exist. Who's to say "A piece must be 100% in line with our theoretical parameters or else it's a debunked adjective" when there can be a dimly lit room that is full of shadows and even some furniture is obscured, but there is obviously stuff that is illuminated? But we would still use terms such as "it's a dark room" if it's mostly dark, or "it's a lit room" if it's mostly lit. There's nothing _controversial _ nor inaccurate about using descriptive words like that. Tonality and Atonality are theory, and _exist _in theory, just in ways that perhaps humans can't possibly comprehend. What may be pure darkness to the human eye has enough light for a nocturnal creature. Therefore, it is safe to generally assume in _reality _that they will _always _be muddled by each others existence while also believing that they indeed are absolutely _existing _nevertheless. A piece that uses such "symmetrical" harmonies as augmented and diminished chords is using something atonal by theory, and a piece that uses "asymmetrical" harmonies such as unequal triads is using something tonal by theory. Theory is not our enemy! It's simply a way to help describe things that already are.

Does using the word "dark" give us an idea about the room? _Yes_. Does it tell us how it's different from a lit room? _Yes_. Does it help us gain an understanding of what "lit" also means? _Yes_. It's just as useful of a word as "lit." Or maybe it's equally _unuseful _as the word "lit." But either way, they are on equal ground.

If we're going to limit our descriptive vocabulary to only things that exist in a pure form in reality, you might as well take it to the farthest end, and cut out words like "dark" and "cold" or "soft" from your vocabulary because there will always be some other factor that will discredit those terms from being used correctly.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> But one of the examples you gave (the octatonic scale) is not arranged unequally. Furthermore, the diatonic scale does in fact have a center point, D, around which the distribution of intervals is symmetrical. Therefore, it's a loaded interpretation of the piece to say that the notes are arranged unequally, one which is not supported by the score. The other two elements, fixed scale and limited number of notes, are of course covered in the above reply.


Who cares if the scale is symmetrical?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> Who cares if the scale is symmetrical?


You said use of an unequally arranged scale was one of the defining features of tonality.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> You said use of an unequally arranged scale was one of the defining features of tonality.


Unequal isn't the same thing as asymmetrical. I meant the scale has steps of different sizes between notes, that's all.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> Wow, Woodduck, you've managed to spend a lot of verbiage just restating your original argument without any evidence to counter what I said. What's more, there's not a word there about how you ignored the context of my original remarks in an attempt to make them seem contradictory, but rather a lot of words to help people forget about what was actually said.
> 
> I'm glad that you understand Ligeti's piece better than the composer, and have chosen to share this information with us. You've even managed to divine bar lines which do not exist in the score.


Well, what is this purporting to say?. I pointed to aspects of "White on White" which make it tonal, and all you can do is accuse me of "ignoring the context of your original remarks in an attempt to make them seem contradictory," and using "a lot of words to help people forget about what was actually said"? Care to prove those accusations of bad faith?

Maybe I just think your conceptualizations are wrong and am saying so, because that's what discussion and debate are all about.

Ligeti did not include bar lines, in order to ensure even articulation? Fine. That doesn't mean the melody has no natural divisions, one of which is marked by that little cadence to the tonic C on the 7th and 8th melody notes. The next group of eight notes doesn't cadence like that - note sixteen marks a clear dominant ninth (root G) and doesn't resolve to the tonic but to the supertonic (root D, with the melody note G an appoggiatura) - and this, in contrast to the first phrase, gives the melody forward momentum: _tonal_ momentum. I'd have thought that anyone whose tonal sense is not thrown off by the dissonant notes could hear these things.

In your next post you say: "But as C major is traditionally defined, and has been defined in this thread, it isn't in C major." Well, how _has_ C-Major been defined traditionally, and in this thread? You also say that the piece "has no triads at all, implied or otherwise." Sorry, but there are implications of triadic harmony all over the place. Because of the canon, the triadic harmonies are contradicted in various ways and never (I think) sounded out full, but the "out of synch" harmonic crossings don't conceal them from my perception. In fact that harmonic "tease" is what makes the piece as good as it is, gives it poignancy - its emotion never quite explicit, like a gentle memory of emotions once felt and half-buried - and makes it more than an exercise in canonic technique.

Unfortunately I don't have a score at hand, so I can't easily point out to you all the tonal relationships in this piece. I guess you'll just have to go on not noticing them.


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## Autocrat (Nov 14, 2014)

Woodduck, the tonal aspects of Etude #15 are illusory. It is IMO expertly crafted to give the appearance of a common practice period composition without actually possessing any of the foundational characteristics. It isn't triadic, it's trichordal. Fiercely so. There are no triads as commonly understood, so there can be no triadic harmonies. 

IMO, categorising it as tonal or atonal completely misses the point.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

About the usefulness of the term atonal:



Lukecash12 said:


> How is "atonal" a functional word, though? It makes no etymological or historical sense. It fails at both important tests for a technical term. "Atonal" is a largely nondescript term that does damage to educated dialogue on music theory.





Mahlerian said:


> What's problematic for me is that the term atonality does not describe an easily identifiable single property of music, but yet people still use it for the basis of arguments _as if it were_.


I can settle this issue in a few sentences: Of course atonal is a "largely nondescript term" and of course "it does not describe an easily identifiable single property of music." Words with that prefix "a" don't pick out identifiable properties nor are they descriptive of them. That is their essence and nature. The word "atonal" tells one precisely as much about the organization of the music to which it is applied as the word "atheist" tells you about the beliefs of the person to whom it is applied, and as much as the word "amoral" tells you about an amoral person's guiding behavioral principles, and that is precisely NOTHING. The word atonal was never meant to tell anyone what a thing is, it is meant to tell us what a thing is not, just like atheist, just like amoral.

So the argument that the term atonal is useless because it doesn't "describe an easily identifiable single property of music" is bogus by definition. The function of the word atonal is to pick out any music lacking the defining features of tonal music. There could be many kinds of music lacking these defining properties, and these different kinds of music could conceivably have absolutely no shared feature or quality whatever. There is no reason they should! It is irrelevant. All that is necessary for the word atonal to be fully meaningful, to reach the very pinnacle of its semantic potential, is that one have a definition for the word tonal. To expect more of the word atonal is to suffer from a logical delusion.

Edit: I now see that Huilunsoittaja has presented more or less this same argument in other terms in #136.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Autocrat said:


> Woodduck, the tonal aspects of Etude #15 are illusory. It is IMO expertly crafted to give the appearance of a common practice period composition without actually possessing any of the foundational characteristics. It isn't triadic, it's trichordal. Fiercely so. There are no triads as commonly understood, so there can be no triadic harmonies.
> 
> IMO, categorising it as tonal or atonal completely misses the point.


What I'm understanding you to say is that because of the canonic construction of "White on White," in which the several voices proceed on their own paths without attempting as a primary goal to form common practice harmonic progressions, such confluences of notes as do result in or suggest those progressions are more incidental than essential to the structure of the piece. Therefore the work sounds, here and there, like common practice tonal music, but basically is not. It's apparent tonal content is "illusory."

I can't disagree that the piece uses the plain diatonic scale and elements of common practice harmony in an unusual context. I'm not sure, though, that this should disqualify the work from being considered tonal in a larger sense. "Tonality" may be thought of by composers as being a matter of techniques and methods. But music is fundamentally for the ear and mind of the listener (of whom the composer is of course one). In music, a thing is, fundamentally, what it sounds like it is, and tonality is fundamentally a set of felt relationships between tones, rooted not in technical procedures but in the experience of music within a context of convention and style. We might say, as musicians, that the tonality we hear in a piece is technically "illusory," but to the ear there is no such thing as "illusory tonality." If a melody sounds as if it's in C-major, it's in C-major; if harmony cadences IV-I, it's a IV-I cadence. And these are tonal phenomena, even if the technique by which the composer has arrived at them is rooted in structural considerations besides the achievement tonal progression.

You call the piece "trichordal." In my understanding, a "trichord" is a group of three notes which is not regarded as a functioning harmonic unit. That begs the question of what is functional, and how it functions. Bitonal harmony, for example, is apt to be full of chords which are not part of the common practice system. That does not make them "non-tonal," or for that matter non-functional in a larger sense. To be truly non-functional a chord would have to have no implications for tonal direction at all. In this piece, that doesn't seem to be the case; despite the harmonic contradictions created by the canonic imitation, there are tonal indicators all over the place, most prominently in the "C-Majorness" of the melody itself and in cadences and phrasings, which, having aroused tonal expectations, cause many clashing tones to be readable as functioning tonally. Once the melody is familiar, we can hear it pursuing its imitative course on several planes simultaneously, each plane containing the tonal qualities of the melody itself, with the resulting harmonic collisions setting up ambivalent and poignant tonal implications of their own which seem to hover over the texture and create a delicate mood. And since the top voice is most prominent, it's with reference to that melody line that those tonal implications - often contradictory ones, but present nonetheless - emerge.

We may not be able to surmise to what extent Ligeti intended for his piece to be heard as tonal. Really, we don't need to care. We can assume, though, that he contrived his piece to contain just those tonal implications that it does contain, and that he was aware that they would be perceived as such. You don't write a melody that describes C-Major, suggesting (or more than suggesting) harmonies of the dominant, subdominant, mediant, submediant, and supertonic; cadence your first phrase in C; create thereafter a feeling of increasing harmonic tension; and finally come to rest in C - you don't do those things unless you want your listener, presumably experienced in the perception of tonality, to experience it in your music.

I don't think any aspect of this piece is "illusory."


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

...............



EdwardBast said:


> The word atonal was never meant to tell anyone what a thing is, it is meant to tell us what a thing is not, just like atheist, just like amoral.
> 
> So the argument that the term atonal is useless because it doesn't "describe an easily identifiable single property of music" is bogus by definition. The function of the word atonal is to pick out any music lacking the defining features of tonal music. There could be many kinds of music lacking these defining properties, and these different kinds of music could conceivably have absolutely no shared feature or quality whatever. There is no reason they should! It is irrelevant. All that is necessary for the word atonal to be fully meaningful, to reach the very pinnacle of its semantic potential, is that one have a definition for the word tonal. To expect more of the word atonal is to suffer from a logical delusion.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

EdwardBast said:


> I can settle this issue in a few sentences: Of course atonal is a "largely nondescript term" and of course "it does not describe an easily identifiable single property of music." Words with that prefix "a" don't pick out identifiable properties nor are they descriptive of them. That is their essence and nature. The word "atonal" tells one precisely as much about the organization of the music to which it is applied as the word "atheist" tells you about the beliefs of the person to whom it is applied, and as much as the word "amoral" tells you about an amoral person's guiding behavioral principles, and that is precisely NOTHING. The word atonal was never meant to tell anyone what a thing is, it is meant to tell us what a thing is not, just like atheist, just like amoral.
> 
> So the argument that the term atonal is useless because it doesn't "describe an easily identifiable single property of music" is bogus by definition. The function of the word atonal is to pick out any music lacking the defining features of tonal music. There could be many kinds of music lacking these defining properties, and these different kinds of music could conceivably have absolutely no shared feature or quality whatever. There is no reason they should! It is irrelevant. All that is necessary for the word atonal to be fully meaningful, to reach the very pinnacle of its semantic potential, is that one have a definition for the word tonal. To expect more of the word atonal is to suffer from a logical delusion.


What does atonality lack, though? A systematic hierarchy of pitch? If you folks can't consistently and coherently explain what tonality is, for the life of you, then it appears that "atonal" has not reached it's semantic potential, because what it negates can't even be defined.

As an aside note, here, "a" as a prefix doesn't just have one standard meaning. It is mostly dependent on the language of origin for a term. Attic, Ionian, and Koine Greek all share several suffixes and prefixes with Latin, but they are not used exactly the same. In the case of this particular prefix, if one were to take the Greek understanding of the word, it could indicate "antipathetic towards or militating against".


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

The fact is that atonal never has been a simple negation of tonal. In practice, its usage is much more restricted and it does not describe pre-tonal or other kinds of post-tonal music.

I have said this a number of times already.

"If atonality merely means that a composition lacks a tonic, then the definition is so broad as to be useless. Many different kinds of compositions - from the twentieth century and before - lack an identifiable tonic. If compositions as diverse as Stravinsky's _Rite of Spring_, Lasso's _Prophetiae Sibyllarum_, and Schoenberg's _Erwartung_, Op. 17 are all "atonal", then this definition has little value; it offers no means of discriminating between dramatically different compositions whose pitch languages have almost nothing in common." - Ethan Haimo, Schoenberg's Transformation of Musical Language


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

^Right, but my original post explains, at least to my satisfaction, why most people are comfortable calling Stravinsky and Lasso "tonal" in a broad sense, and why this is OK.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> ^Right, but my original post explains, at least to my satisfaction, why most people are comfortable calling Stravinsky and Lasso "tonal" in a broad sense, and why this is OK.


But not to mine.

To my ear, Schoenberg's Erwartung sounds *more* tonal than the other two. Its syntax has far more in common with the music of the late Romantic era and with common practice tonal music. I don't even understand why you would say Webern's Variations lacks all of the qualities you mentioned, when it's clearly closer to tonal practice than Ligeti's Concerto.

Furthermore, we may be discussing a common-sense explanation of many people's gut instincts as regarding what does and doesn't sound tonal, but don't you agree that should be kept separate from the actual definitions of these terms? Just as people misunderstand evolution if they think that the term implies some kind of teleology, they also misunderstand atonal if they think of it as antithetical to or a negation of tonality (especially tonality in the broad sense you mention).


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> Furthermore, we may be discussing a common-sense explanation of many people's gut instincts as regarding what does and doesn't sound tonal, but don't you agree that should be kept separate from the actual definitions of these terms?


No. I think this is the root of our disagreement.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> No. I think this is the root of our disagreement.


Then why have all of the technical-sounding wording in the first post?

The common-sense definition of tonality is "music that makes sense to me" and of atonality "music that sounds random or bad." If you want to stick to those, then don't dress it up. If you want to have an actual discussion of what these terms mean, don't depend on the gut instincts of those who don't know what they're even discussing.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> Then why have all of the technical-sounding wording in the first post?


Because the post was not providing a definition of tonality. It was listing some characteristics that, when present to greater or lesser degrees in various combinations, cause listeners to perceive music as tonal.

I've run out of ways to say this, so I will stop now.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> Because the post was not providing a definition of tonality. It was listing some characteristics that, when present to greater or lesser degrees in various combinations, cause listeners to perceive music as tonal.
> 
> I've run out of ways to say this, so I will stop now.


How does it resolve any debate, then?

I perceive lots of things as more "tonal" than the Ligeti Piano Concerto, including but not limited to every single work by the Second Viennese School. But I chalk that up to familiarity with the language, mostly.

Of course, I've been told by you and others that _my_ experience of music is invalid, and that only those who hear atonality have perceptions that matter in saying whether or not something sounds tonal.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I promise: I don't think your or anyone's experience of music is invalid.

OK, now I'm really done.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Lukecash12 said:


> What does atonality lack, though? A systematic hierarchy of pitch? If you folks can't consistently and coherently explain what tonality is, for the life of you, then it appears that "atonal" has not reached it's semantic potential, because what it negates can't even be defined.


This is quite easy, in fact. For common-practice tonality it is a systematic pitch hierarchy with gravity toward the center defined by the circle of fifths. These forces apply centrally to our garden variety scales with the triad as the primary unit of harmony. These are the defining features of tonality in the narrow sense whose absence the term atonal was coined to express.

But in this thread, some of us were aiming higher, answering Mahlerian's challenge to find some features or qualities shared by all Western art music "tonal in a broader sense" that is not possessed by so-called atonal or serial music. He claims there are no such features. He is wrong. Here are the features uniting all Western art music from the pre-tonal (in the narrow sense, obviously) through circa 1910.*

1. All Western art music from 1450 through the common-practice era is united by a common grammar, expressed in patterns of voice-leading rooted in species counterpoint. Throughout this era the definition of consonance and dissonance was more or less stable (with gradual evolutionary trends), consonances comprising two categories, perfect and imperfect. All other intervals were considered dissonances with stable rules for resolving them holding for the entire era. With the advent of common-practice tonality, the grammatical laws of species counterpoint were preserved and incorporated wholesale with minimal adaptations.

2. From 1450 on the triad was the primary unit of harmony.

3. All pretonal and common-practice tonal music, from Gregorian chant up until the 20thc, was governed by systematic pitch hierarchy based on a collection of seven-note modal scales. Before the common-practice era the gravitation to a central pitch was more diffuse and worked on a more local level, that of sentences or small paragraph units. As the language evolved, greater and greater spans were subsumed under a stronger gravitational field.

So when musical amateurs on TC claim to hear (in whatever subjective or objective sense) in the music of Paelstrina, Josquin, and Dufay, essential aesthetic qualities and formal features shared with the music of Bach, Mozart and Brahms, features and qualities not present in so-called atonal music and serial music, there intuitions are supported by musical facts and traditions.

*Of course there is still a lot of music being composed today possessing these features.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

No. 1 is wrong. The definition of consonance and dissonance was in constant flux, and despite the prohibitions of each prior generation, more and more of the supposedly immutable grammatical rules became mere guidelines (until, as in the "tonal" music of the 20th century, just as much as the "atonal," they are all completely irrelevant). For example, you say that there are specific dissonances that must be resolved in specific ways that hold firm. Which are these? Is it acceptable to have parallel tritones (Bach did it)? Is it acceptable to leap to and away from dissonances (Strauss did it)? Is it acceptable to leave a dissonance permanently unresolved (Mahler did it)?

No. 2 is absolutely false. The triad was not the primary unit of harmony until such a thing as a triad came to exist as an independent harmonic entity. It would be like people looking at the music of the late romantic era and saying that seventh chords are the primary unit of harmony.

No. 3 is certainly false. The logic of pre-tonal music cannot be compared to common practice tonality in this way, except perhaps by analogy. The modal collections did not function as scales do in tonal music, and saying that the hierarchy was systematic is meaningless or at the least misleading without reference to how the system is completely incompatible with common practice harmonic theory.



EdwardBast said:


> So when musical amateurs on TC claim to hear (in whatever subjective or objective sense) in the music of Paelstrina, Josquin, and Dufay, essential aesthetic qualities and formal features shared with the music of Bach, Mozart and Brahms, features and qualities not present in so-called atonal music and serial music, there intuitions are supported by musical facts and traditions.


Many more musical amateurs on TC are uncomfortable with pre-tonal music and find it doesn't sound right to them. It sounds foreign to their sensibilities. Their instincts are completely right in that this music is entirely outside of our musical instincts, based on a diet of common practice tonality. The "atonal" music of the 20th century is built on an awareness of common practice and is an extension of it, but the earlier pre-tonal music is composed without any reference to common practice norms.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

isorhythm said:


> Because the post was not providing a definition of tonality. It was listing some characteristics that, when present to greater or lesser degrees in various combinations, cause listeners to perceive music as tonal.
> 
> I've run out of ways to say this, so I will stop now.


I'm sorry I didn't discover this thread sooner. It approaches the question of tonality empirically; instead of asking how tonality _ought_ to be defined based on some _a priori _set of premises, it proposes to show what characteristics of music have led people to call music "tonal" or "atonal." This empirical approach accepts only the broadest assumptions about tonality as a starting point, and if people had been willing to set aside their theoretical biases at the beginning, look at the characteristics proposed by isorhythm and think about why they would or would not correspond to common perceptions of tonality, and propose some of their own, we might have had more than the usual griping about how terms should and shouldn't be used, along with the expected putdowns of people who get it "wrong."

The wisdom of the empirical approach lies in the fact that tonality is _fundamentally about_ _ perception._ Tonal structures arise in music because they are _heard_ as tonal in the evolving experience of listeners belonging to a culture in which musical styles evolve. We have to begin with observation: we can only go on to define what we've first observed. If we come in armed with theoretical weapons and then attack reality with them - if we try to define tonality without first noting the widespread human desire for tonal organization and the different ways in which that desire manifests itself within our culture and across cultures, and try to debate the tonality of individual works of music without considering what kinds of musical structures have been _perceived by listeners_ as having tonal meaning within those works' stylistic traditions, we're likely to pull the conversation down to the level of purely personal subjectivity - or, thinking we're too smart for that, we may whip out our preferred academic definitions and musicological terms, argue about the acceptability or proper use of those, and be no better off (and probably worse off) than before.

Neither of those pitfalls may be entirely avoidable, but looking at reality before calling upon theory will always be our chief guide to what's important and our chief guard against jargonistic quibbling. This is why it's wrong to be dismissive of "common sense" uses (not _definitions,_ but _uses_) of the terms "tonal" and "atonal." Statements like _"the common-sense definition of tonality is 'music that makes sense to me' and of atonality 'music that sounds random or bad,'"_ besides sounding snobbish and condescending, simply err in assuming that "the masses" have nothing to teach us, that their ignorance only gets in the way of understanding, and that they can safely be ignored. The truth is that common uses of terms, however messy and inconsistent they may be, are the primary data in the formation of definitions in any area of inquiry where neither logical proof nor empirical ("scientific") evidence are decisive. Sitting in our ivory towers of theory with our stacks of scores and approved textbooks, selecting as definitive those technical features of music which support our preferred set of premises, may lead to conclusions which only the professor in the ivory tower next door will find useful (most likely in creating his own theories, not in creating music; most composers don't create according to theories, and listeners don't listen according to them).

If we want to understand what the words "tonality" or "atonality" mean, and to determine what definitions are most cogent and useful in what contexts, the one thing necessary is to try to discover and understand what musically sensitive and knowledgeable people (including professors), over time and across cultures, have been hearing and referring to when they use those words, or their equivalents. "Common sense" often contains quite a bit of good sense.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> No. 1 is wrong. The definition of consonance and dissonance was in constant flux, and despite the prohibitions of each prior generation, more and more of the supposedly immutable grammatical rules became mere guidelines (until, as in the "tonal" music of the 20th century, just as much as the "atonal," they are all completely irrelevant). For example, you say that there are specific dissonances that must be resolved in specific ways that hold firm. Which are these? Is it acceptable to have parallel tritones (Bach did it)? Is it acceptable to leap to and away from dissonances (Strauss did it)? Is it acceptable to leave a dissonance permanently unresolved (Mahler did it)?
> 
> No. 2 is absolutely false. The triad was not the primary unit of harmony until such a thing as a triad came to exist as an independent harmonic entity. It would be like people looking at the music of the late romantic era and saying that seventh chords are the primary unit of harmony.
> 
> ...


Mr. Bast can and no doubt will speak for himself here, but since I'm at my computer and reading the above, I can't but respond to it.

1. The harmonic sense and practices characterizing the common practice era, wherever you place its boundaries, are not "rules that must hold firm," but basic assumptions about where dissonance is perceived and how it is treated. Obviously, composers have always pushed the boundaries; that's how music evolves. The treatment of dissonance I hear in Josquin, for example, retained its status as the "norm" against which the innovations and harmonic expansions of composers were heard all the way into the 20th century, and it isn't dead yet. That doesn't mean that music _had_ to conform to that core conception of what's considered dissonant and of what dissonance does. Who expects it to?

2. The triad was the "primary unit of harmony" in that it was, from the 15th century, the preferred configuration defining tonal areas and the stable state to which dissonance resolved. In consequence, in the multi-voiced music of Josquin we hear a constant play of triadic harmony. To speak of the triad as an "independent harmonic entity" makes no sense to me. Of course it wasn't "independent"; it was part of a dynamic musical texture. If you're speaking of the way theorists talked about it, I can only say that what matters is how it was used. Practice precedes theory, no?

As to the analogy with seventh chords in Romantic harmony - well, where would those seventh chords be without the humble triad?

3. Bast says: "All pretonal and common-practice tonal music, from Gregorian chant up until the 20thc, was governed by systematic pitch hierarchy based on a collection of seven-note modal scales. Before the common-practice era the gravitation to a central pitch was more diffuse and worked on a more local level, that of sentences or small paragraph units. As the language evolved, greater and greater spans were subsumed under a stronger gravitational field."

This sounds exactly right as I hear the music in question. What provoked him to say it was Lukecash12's statement: "What does atonality lack, though? A systematic hierarchy of pitch? If you folks can't consistently and coherently explain what tonality is, for the life of you, then it appears that 'atonal' has not reached it's semantic potential, because what it negates can't even be defined." It appears that Lukecash12 hasn't caught on to the fact that "tonality" has more than one meaning, and so when he doesn't see a unitary definition reiterated over and over he doesn't think it's been defined at all. In fact, perfectly unambiguous definitions of tonality are all over this forum, and Bast's answer here acknowledged both its narrower, common-practice sense and it's broader sense. His assertion of the hierarchical relationships in modal harmony is perfectly correct. He doesn't say that modal music works exactly like common practice music. In fact he acknowledges that it doesn't. So in pointing out that it doesn't you aren't answering him.

I don't know whether I qualify as one of the "musical amateurs" on TC (I prefer to think that all my years spent singing, improvising at the piano for ballet schools and companies, occasionally composing, and studying and listening to music from medieval to modern, qualify me for semi-pro status!), but I can honestly say that I never found 15th-century music "entirely outside my musical instincts," despite its obvious differences (and neither, I can tell you, did a good friend who had little prior experience with classical music of any kind; we clearly need to be careful in speaking for the musical instincts of others). It's really of no consequence to any particular listener that a string trio of Schoenberg has more resemblances to, say, Mahler than does a mass by Ockeghem. At issue here is one particular kind of resemblance - tonal resemblance - and for many listeners its importance outweighs that of other factors in determining their sense of the music's meaning, attractiveness, or comprehensibility. The human mind's drive to perceive structure in reality is powerful and naturally shapes his creations, and the spontaneous, unselfconscious evolution of tonally-centered, hierarchical musical systems throughout the cultures of the world from Africa to Asia to the Americas to New Zealand - systems fascinatingly varied, but fundamentally similar in that they rest upon this peculiar ordering principle which embodies basic dynamic patterns of both mental and physical life - is no fluke of nature. Nature doesn't produce flukes of that magnitude.

To call post-tonal music an "extension" of common practice when it consciously seeks to avoid - and, according to its inventor, deliberately to replace the missing functions of - an underlying system of harmonic coherence which persisted through the most radical changes in style for over half a millennium, is surpassingly strange. Post-tonal music may "extend" earlier music in a multitude of ways, but the non-practice of common practice is not one of them.


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

EdwardBast said:


> So when musical amateurs on TC claim to hear (in whatever subjective or objective sense) in the music of Paelstrina, Josquin, and Dufay, essential aesthetic qualities and formal features shared with the music of Bach, Mozart and Brahms, features and qualities not present in so-called atonal music and serial music, there intuitions are supported by musical facts and traditions.


Amateurs and professionals alike. 
I remember making a similar point a long time ago in another thread that the presence of major and minor triads links the music of the Renaissance, to Pink Floyd, to Wagner to Miles Davies to Flamenco to Hi-life to Mozart to Taylor Swift. 
The absence of those triads is what separates the music above from Nono, Stockhausen, Ferneyhough and others who are often placed in the category of 'atonal' for want of a better word.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

While we're at it "Classical music" is a bit of a BS concept as well. Xenakis and J.C. Bach have practically nothing to do with each other....


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## Truckload (Feb 15, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> This is quite easy, in fact. For common-practice tonality it is a systematic pitch hierarchy with gravity toward the center defined by the circle of fifths. These forces apply centrally to our garden variety scales with the triad as the primary unit of harmony. These are the defining features of tonality in the narrow sense whose absence the term atonal was coined to express.


Great post. I admired the entire post but simply abbreviated the quote. I really appreciate the way you boiled down hundreds of pages of detailed music theory into a very concise, and definitive statement of the most salient points. Bravo!


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> No. 1 is wrong. The definition of consonance and dissonance was in constant flux, and despite the prohibitions of each prior generation, more and more of the supposedly immutable grammatical rules became mere guidelines (until, as in the "tonal" music of the 20th century, just as much as the "atonal," they are all completely irrelevant). For example, you say that there are specific dissonances that must be resolved in specific ways that hold firm. Which are these? Is it acceptable to have parallel tritones (Bach did it)? Is it acceptable to leap to and away from dissonances (Strauss did it)? Is it acceptable to leave a dissonance permanently unresolved (Mahler did it)?


The definition of consonance and dissonance was not in flux. Fifths and octaves were always perfect consonances. Sixths and thirds were always imperfect consonances. Seconds, sevenths and their compounds were always considered dissonances as was the tritone. Fourths were considered dissonant when they were the note directly above the bass. These rules were absolutely stable from 1450 to 1900 and beyond. Furthermore, there were figures by which one could leap away from a dissonance in Renaissance counterpoint, the most notable being the cambiata, characterized by a leap of a third descending from what otherwise would have been a dissonant passing tone. What on earth are you talking about?

The stable elements of the grammar include:
1. Parallel octaves and fifths are to be avoided. 
2. The same categories of non-harmonic tones, suspensions, neighbor tones and passing tones were in place throughout the era. To answer your remaining question, these are the dissonances that were resolved the same way for 450 years. Suspended 2nds, 4ths, 9ths, and 7ths resolved downward (almost always). Passing tones resolved by step, dissonant neighbor tones by returning to the initial pitch. Does this really need to be explained? 
3. An emphasis on contrary motion was recommended to preserve independence of line.

The changes that did occur could not be described as flux. They were steady and incremental, with dissonances originally occurring only as passing tones, becoming acceptable to be held for the full value of a beat. Changes like this are part of the gradual evolution of a common language in which all of the basic premises and definitions remained in place.



Mahlerian said:


> No. 2 is absolutely false. The triad was not the primary unit of harmony until such a thing as a triad came to exist as an independent harmonic entity. It would be like people looking at the music of the late romantic era and saying that seventh chords are the primary unit of harmony.


Incorrect, as I demonstrated with a quotation from one of the most important 16th century treatises on counterpoint. Zarlino picks out the triad as all that is necessary for the diversity of harmony. The fact that he didn't recognize the various inversions of the notes of a triad as the same entity does not in any way refute the claim. And, of course, the various inversions of triads were never considered completely interchangeable, even in the common-practice period(!) There have always been different rules for treating triads in different inversions. In first inversion chords, for example, the bass is almost always involved in linear motion rather than leaps, second inversion chords usually occur as passing chords or through suspensions, and so on. Moreover, if one breaks it down further, one finds that Renaissance composers treated what we call inversions in ways quite like they were treated in common-practice style. If the third of the "triad" was in the bass, it was a passing tone; if a sixth and fourth were heard above a bass, they were either a pair of passing tones or a double suspension. So, even if Renaissance composers hadn't formulated the concept of inversions, they nevertheless used them and did so in ways closely related to their treatment by later composers.

All of these commonalities of style and treatment are no doubt why most major composers from the Renaissance to the modern era (not to mention in most conservatories even today!) were trained using a species counterpoint approach governed by the common grammar of the pre-tonal and common-practice eras.



Mahlerian said:


> No. 3 is certainly false. The logic of pre-tonal music cannot be compared to common practice tonality in this way, except perhaps by analogy. The modal collections did not function as scales do in tonal music, and saying that the hierarchy was systematic is meaningless or at the least misleading without reference to how the system is completely incompatible with common practice harmonic theory.


From 1450 on, the standard way of closing syntactic units was, for all intents and purposes, the V-I cadence. (All the modes except the Phrygian executed this either naturally or through musica ficta.) Half cadences were standard as well within broader units. As in common-practice music, it was considered good practice to make internal cadences on different pitches for the sake of variety before concluding with cadences in the predominant mode. Nothing about this is incompatible with common-practice. In fact, it is quite clearly a proto form of the common practice. Once again, we see the gradual, incremental evolution of a common language in which none of the basic premises is overturned. They are simply expanded and adapted into a modern functional system.



Mahlerian said:


> Many more musical amateurs on TC are uncomfortable with pre-tonal music and find it doesn't sound right to them. It sounds foreign to their sensibilities. Their instincts are completely right in that this music is entirely outside of our musical instincts, based on a diet of common practice tonality. The "atonal" music of the 20th century is built on an awareness of common practice and is an extension of it, but the earlier pre-tonal music is composed without any reference to common practice norms.


Of course some elements of pre-tonal music can be disorienting to some who have grown up with common-practice music. But the shared elements, seven note scales, triadic textures, familiar treatment of passing tones, suspensions, and neighbor tones, and the familiar cadence formulas are there and audible.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

It's frustrating to argue with people who resort to personal abuse when presented with an argument. I'm bowing out of this conversation, because it's just going around in circles with EdwardBast.

I've read texts on Renaissance music, though, in addition to my listening, and I'd like to reiterate once again that viewing pre-tonal music as a sort of prototype common practice is misleading at best, because the features that they have in common were approached from a different perspective and have different implications, and it will only lead to frustration to try to hear the music as if it were functionally tonal.


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## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> It's frustrating to argue with people who resort to personal abuse when presented with an argument. I'm bowing out of this conversation, because it's just going around in circles with EdwardBast.
> 
> I've read texts on Renaissance music, though, in addition to my listening, and I'd like to reiterate once again that viewing pre-tonal music as a sort of prototype common practice is misleading at best, because the features that they have in common were approached from a different perspective and have different implications, and it will only lead to frustration to try to hear the music as if it were functionally tonal.


Since your last quote (Post #156) I must say I don't see that anyone is resorting to personal abuse. I really don't understand how you can claim that as being the case, not to mention ignoring some of the completely reasonable points EdwardBast has made. I believe you would have a better time (with the whole sect of people who can see that "atonal" is a word that does have some functionality in describing a great deal of music written post 1910), if you gave a little and weren't so uncompromising in your views (which I'm starting to see as skewed, yes some of the points you make are compelling but not enough nor offering substantial enough proof to definitively say "atonality" is a complete falsehood).

If I'm wrong and there is a definitive way of looking at the issue I have yet to see the proof and what qualifies you to make such judgements posting them here as if it's the end all, be all word on the matter? Even if you are a musicologist or someone who analyzes music for a living are there not others who do the same thing but don't subscribe to the same way of looking at the matter?

If there are more than one school of thought concerning the tonality/atonality debate why can you not admit there _is_ more than one way to look at it and maybe just maybe some people who are just as well versed as you are do not conform to the same way of categorizing as you do.

Again I'm not saying your wrong, but the way your going about it seems wrong to me.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Fugue Meister said:


> Since your last quote (Post #156) I must say I don't see that anyone is resorting to personal abuse.I really don't understand how you can claim that as being the case, not to mention ignoring some of the completely reasonable points EdwardBast has made.


I've tried to answer them. He has simply discarded my views and posted his original opinions again.



Fugue Meister said:


> I believe you would have a better time (with the whole sect of people who can see that "atonal" is a word that does have some functionality in describing a great deal of music written post 1910), if you gave a little and weren't so uncompromising in your views (which I'm starting to see as skewed, yes some of the points you make are compelling but not enough nor offering substantial enough proof to definitively say "atonality" is a complete falsehood).


Why can't we use the word "post-tonal" to describe all music that comes after common practice tonality? It doesn't deny anything about the former method, it expands it further. Atonal is a negative term for something based on a positive premise (a music based on non-triadic harmony and the chromatic scale).



Fugue Meister said:


> If I'm wrong and there is a definitive way of looking at the issue I have yet to see the proof and what qualifies you to make such judgements posting them here as if it's the end all, be all word on the matter? Even if you are a musicologist or someone who analyzes music for a living are there not others who do the same thing but don't subscribe to the same way of looking at the matter?


I'm not trying to shut others down. I'm trying to explain, as best I can, my own perceptions and understandings of how music works. Regardless of the ad hominem rant above, I have not come to any of my conclusions by starting with theory and then justifying my perceptions on that basis. My perception is that what is called atonality is not a separate kind of music at all, although of course it differs in some important ways from earlier music.



Fugue Meister said:


> If there are more than one school of thought concerning the tonality/atonality debate why can you not admit there _is_ more than one way to look at it and maybe just maybe some people who are just as well versed as you are do not conform to the same way of categorizing as you do.
> 
> Again I'm not saying your wrong, but the way your going about it seems wrong to me.


I don't feel there should *be* a debate. I feel that terms like atonality that separate the music off and emphasize some supposed difference (which, as people normally understand the term, isn't actually true of the music) prevent people from approaching it.

In regards to the most recent part of this discussion, here are some resources that explain the difference between tonal and modal music.

http://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1079&context=summer_research
http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/misc/modality.html
http://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2184&context=etd_hon_theses


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/misc/whatis.htm



> Baroque music has its origins in the rise of the recitative style among Monteverdi and others, the beginning of opera as a form, and the consequent adoption of basso continuo. In fact, the end of the Renaissance style around 1600 is among the clearest divisions in Western music, owing to the simultaneity of these changes, as well as to the self-conscious way in which Monteverdi and others advocated them. The beginning of the Renaissance is less clear. There are two major changes to be considered, *the use of the interval of a third as a **stable harmony* and the new humanistic orientation to text with music at its service.


http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/misc/modes.html



> For those readers unfamiliar with Western music and its notation, it should be mentioned that each of these notes is not the same distance apart. In particular, the pairs E & F and B & C are separated by only half of a full tone, or a semitone. This gives each of these modes a characteristic sequence of intervals, or whole- and half-steps. In addition, there is some inherited sense of absolute pitch in the definitions above based on modern scales. Medieval modes would have been based on the hexachord system of Guido d'Arezzo (d.c.1050), in which there is also a sense of absolute pitch, but a less specific one. Although the intricacies of linked hexachords are beyond the scope of the present article, the addition of modes IX-XII does show a definite shift from the hexachord system, as they are not obtainable by normal hexachord mutation. The primary point to this diversion is that one could indeed construct any of these modes on a different note of the modern scale by employing accidentals (as is so typically done with the Ionian=major & Aeolian=minor modes), *but the starting values above are historically significant.*


http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/harmony/directed.html#3


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> Why can't we use the word "post-tonal" to describe all music that comes after common practice tonality? It doesn't deny anything about the former method, it expands it further. Atonal is a negative term for something based on a positive premise (a music based on non-triadic harmony and the chromatic scale).


I too see problems with the term atonal and with defining styles by qualities they don't possess rather than those they do possess. But the term non-triadic is just another instance of the same problem, isn't it? It says what the harmonies are not, not what they are. And the term "chromatic scale," as you use it, means nothing more or different than saying "all available pitches." Neither of these terms provides anything by way of a positive (in the logical sense, not the evaluative one) description. Until someone comes up with an apt positive description for the style, the use of the negative term, atonal, is likely to continue.

I think you are on the right track going for something more neutral. "Post-tonal" strikes me as a little presumptuous, however, in that it seems to imply the (greatly exaggerated) demise of tonality. The best I can come up with at the moment would be something like "modern harmonic practice," or just "modern practice." Yeah, not very catchy.


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

EdwardBast said:


> I too see problems with the term atonal and with defining styles by qualities they don't possess rather than those they do possess. But the term non-triadic is just another instance of the same problem, isn't it? It says what the harmonies are not, not what they are. And the term "chromatic scale," as you use it, means nothing more or different than saying "all available pitches." Neither of these terms provides anything by way of a positive (in the logical sense, not the evaluative one) description. Until someone comes up with an apt positive description for the style, the use of the negative term, atonal, is likely to continue.
> 
> I think you are on the right track going for something more neutral. "Post-tonal" strikes me as a little presumptuous, however, in that it seems to imply the (greatly exaggerated) demise of tonality. The best I can come up with at the moment would be something like "modern harmonic practice," or just "modern practice." Yeah, not very catchy.


Atonal is a 'ball park' term and it will have to suffice. Just as you will understand why Perotin, Haydn, Scriabin and Ades will be located in the 'classical' section of the store. The term 'classical' tells us that we won't expect to find jazz, pop or rock there even though only one of those composers is classical.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Petwhac said:


> Atonal is a 'ball park' term and it will have to suffice. Just as you will understand why Perotin, Haydn, Scriabin and Ades will be located in the 'classical' section of the store. The term 'classical' tells us that we won't expect to find jazz, pop or rock there even though only one of those composers is classical.


I think it's more productive to have a firm conception of what tonality is. Tonality is based on a tonal center, and is harmonic in conception. It divides the octave at the fifth, which inverts and gives us the I-IV-V triads. This is a sensual, harmonic division which is based on consonance of the fifth; it is the most prominent harmonic to the ear, and the most consonant.

Modern conceptions are based on other 'unnatural' divisions of the octave, based on notions of symmetry, such as division at the triton, and other divisions, such as 1,2,3,and 4 semitones. This is a geometric way of seeing the octave, not based on preceptions of consonance by the ear, but mathematical/geometric.

Tonality went on for several centuries, so I think it's safe to say that it is "the norm," and can justify all other conceptions of the octave as being termed as "other than tonal" or "atonal."

I think the big "block" we see in these debates is that few wish to be precise in their terminology, and are basing their conceptions of the music in question on listening. This leads to ambiguity, since all music shares the phenomenon of being heard harmonically. While there may be instances of consonance and dissonance in all music, this is not the determining factor in what makes music "tonal" or not. Ultimately, this is based on structural factors, and how the octave is divided and approached and used.

Any kind of music can "sound" tonal or be heard as tonal if one has acute perception. This "seeming" sense of tonality or atonality is based on surface perception. To get to the real truth, a music's structural functions must be considered.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

millionrainbows said:


> Tonality went on for several centuries, so I think it's safe to say that it is "the norm," and can justify all other conceptions of the octave as being termed as "other than tonal" or "atonal."


So exactly how many years have to elapse since the last tonal masterpiece - which is, what? _The Song of the Earth_, maybe? - before it's not the norm any more?


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> I think it's more productive to have a firm conception of what tonality is. Tonality is based on a tonal center, and is harmonic in conception. It divides the octave at the fifth, which inverts and gives us the I-IV-V triads. This is a sensual, harmonic division which is based on consonance of the fifth; it is the most prominent harmonic to the ear, and the most consonant.
> 
> Modern conceptions are based on other 'unnatural' divisions of the octave, based on notions of symmetry, such as division at the triton, and other divisions, such as 1,2,3,and 4 semitones. This is a geometric way of seeing the octave, not based on preceptions of consonance by the ear, but mathematical/geometric.
> 
> ...


You can approach the topic this way, but this is not the only way. I suspect the lines you draw are just as subjective as the subjectivity you seek to escape.


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

Harold in Columbia said:


> So exactly how many years have to elapse since the last tonal masterpiece - which is, what? _The Song of the Earth_, maybe? - before it's not the norm any more?


Mmmm, I think there were a few tonal masterpieces since the Mahler! But perhaps that's a subject for another thread!


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

Petwhac said:


> Mmmm, I think there were a few tonal masterpieces since the Mahler! But perhaps that's a subject for another thread!


I think it's a subject for this thread, if it's a subject for anywhere. It will inevitably be accompanied by debate over whether Neoclassical Stravinsky, John Coltrane, the Beatles, Steve Reich, and whatever else counts as "tonal" or not (answer: not), in any case, so we might as well have it here.

What works are you thinking of?


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

Harold in Columbia said:


> I think it's a subject for this thread, if it's a subject for anywhere. It will inevitably be accompanied by debate over whether Neoclassical Stravinsky, John Coltrane, the Beatles, Steve Reich, and whatever else counts as "tonal" or not (answer: not), in any case, so we might as well have it here.
> 
> What works are you thinking of?


There are some works of Ravel, Britten and Strauss to name but three!

And I count The Beatles as tonal 100%. Coltrane mostly, at least some of the numbers. And a lot of neo-classical Stravinsky at least in many parts.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

Thank you for naming composers! (If I promise to make cookies, will you name works?)

If Coltrane and the Beatles are "tonal," then "tonal" just means consonant, and then you just need a different word for the thing that gives a sense of direction to long movements by Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

I'm loathe to get into a debate about definitions but 'tonal' cannot mean only consonant because dissonance is what makes tonal music work. The 'sense of direction' in a long movement is a structural matter for the benefit of the composer or for those listeners with absolute pitch perhaps! It's the _moment to moment_ interplay of pushing and pulling, harmonic progression, preparation and resolution etc., which is found in the composers I mentioned. 
Ravel: The concertos, the trio, the quartet, Introduction and Allegro. In fact most of his stuff although 'Gaspard' and one particular Valse Nobles are very hard to pin down!

Strauss: Metamorphosen

Britten: Serenade for Tenor Horn and Strings

Oh and I consider Rhapsody in Blue to be a masterpiece too!


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

Petwhac said:


> The 'sense of direction' in a long movement is a structural matter for the benefit of the composer or for those listeners with absolute pitch perhaps!


I don't think that's the case at all. Stop a first movement by Beethoven or Brahms at the opening chord of the recapitulation (hey, it is a resolution!), and watch the Man on the Street fidget.



Petwhac said:


> Ravel: The concertos, the trio, the quartet, Introduction and Allegro. In fact most of his stuff although 'Gaspard' and one particular Valse Nobles are very hard to pin down!
> 
> Strauss: Metamorphosen
> 
> ...


Thank you!


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Petwhac said:


> It's the _moment to moment_ interplay of pushing and pulling, harmonic progression, preparation and resolution etc., which is found in the composers I mentioned.


But this is found in "atonal" music too, so by your definition, it's also tonal.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Harold in Columbia said:


> So exactly how many years have to elapse since the last tonal masterpiece - which is, what? _The Song of the Earth_, maybe? - before it's not the norm any more?


Tonality, in the general sense, still continues in all popular music. It is definitely the norm. This may go even deeper, since all folk music is based on primal conceptions of tonality and tone-centered drones (you must accept "tonality" in its general definition; see Harvard Dictionary of Music).

What may be the exception is the 12-note octave. This is a totally arbitrary division, its only 'naturally redeeming' factor being that it favors the fifth (closely, the Pythagoran comma, ET, etc.)

Thus, "12" becomes the geometric division of the octave, and this way of thinking might be the most contrived, 'unnatural' musical way of thinking.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

millionrainbows said:


> Tonality, in the general sense, still continues in all popular music. It is definitely the norm. This may go even deeper, since all folk music is based on primal conceptions of tonality and tone-centered drones (you must accept "tonality" in its general definition; see Harvard Dictionary of Music).


Okay, but if you really just wanted what you call "tonality, in the general sense" - meaning, it seems to me, a fairly high rate of consonance - then there'd be no reason to insist on calling it "tonality.

I suspect that what's going on here is, people don't music to be as ugly as Schönberg, but if you just say that, it sounds kind of superficial, so they say "tonality," because it has the aura of Bachmozartbeethoven, while at the same time defining "tonality" so that it doesn't specifically refer to what makes Bachmozartbeethoven different from both Schönberg and the Beatles.

The problem with this, of course - besides that they're having their cake and eating it too - is that, for some mysterious reason, they probably don't think any composer today is writing "tonal" music as good as Bachmozartbeethoven.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Harold in Columbia said:


> Okay, but if you really just wanted what you call "tonality, in the general sense" - meaning, it seems to me, a fairly high rate of consonance - then there'd be no reason to insist on calling it "tonality.
> 
> I suspect that what's going on here is, people don't music to be as ugly as Schönberg, but if you just say that, it sounds kind of superficial, so they say "tonality," because it has the aura of Bachmozartbeethoven, while at the same time defining "tonality" so that it doesn't specifically refer to what makes Bachmozartbeethoven different from both Schönberg and the Beatles.
> 
> The problem with this, of course - besides that they're having their cake and eating it too - is that, for some mysterious reason, they probably don't think any composer today is writing "tonal" music as good as Bachmozartbeethoven.


 Tonality was originally conceived as a consonance-seeking music, but it always had the dissonance built in to its 7-note scale: the tritone of F and B. Music stayed in one key, using only 7 notes, so with the use of mean-tone tuning which yielded better thirds, music was capable of great consonance.

As music got more chromatic, and equal temperament emerged, this consonance was eroded. Schoenberg uses the same 12 notes as tonal music, so it becomes not a matter of consonance, but of procedure, and how the materials are used. The common element is the 12-note scale, and how it is divided and used.

Consonance, as tonality, is now more an idea of root movement and procedure, and less of actual sound.

Still, interval ratios are what consonance and tonality are based on:

~Most dissonant intervals to most consonant intervals, within one octave:

1. minor seventh (C-Bb) 9:16
2. major seventh (C-B) 8:15
3. major second (C-D) 8:9
4. minor sixth (C-Ab) 5:8
5. minor third (C-Eb) 5:6
6. major third (C-E) 4:5
7. major sixth (C-A) 3:5
8. perfect fourth (C-F) 3:4
9. perfect fifth (C-G) 2:3
10. octave (C-C') 1:2
11. unison (C-C) 1:1

A true fifth is 3:2, but in actuality, the ET fifth is 1024:675, which is close, but decidedly different. Still, these approximations still hold true: a fifth in ET is still more consonant than a minor seventh.

Schoenberg's 12-tone music uses these same ratios, just like tonality. The difference is in how they are used. Tonality seeks resolution based on the table above, which is 'scaled' gradually in relation to one key note.

Schoenberg's "resolutions" are not based on the same hierarchy or ordering as above; if his music sounds consonant or resolved, it is for different, unrelated reasons, based on row combinations, not a key note idea which is 'scaled' gradually from dissonance to consonance. In this sense, Schoenberg's 12-tone music is not tonal.

Since most folk, jazz, and pop music is based on scales, not ordered melodic rows, then it, too, is tonal, and its scales can be placed in order of consonance to dissonance, just like the chart above. These then become tonal "harmonic functions" when triads are built upon these scale degrees.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

It's not clear to me that your reply addresses what I wrote.


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

Harold in Columbia said:


> I don't think that's the case at all. Stop a first movement by Beethoven or Brahms at the opening chord of the recapitulation (hey, it is a resolution!), and watch the Man on the Street fidget.


I've no idea what you mean by that. The 'Man on the Street' care's more about flowing along with the contours of melody and harmony that he finds in BachChopinBeatles than he does about structure. At least judging by most of the Men on the Street that I've met.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

And yet somehow, Beethoven, infamous as the great composer who couldn't write melodies (unjustly, but not _entirely_ unjustly), remains the most popular symphonist.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Harold in Columbia said:


> It's not clear to me that your reply addresses what I wrote.


The problem is that people are relying on their ears alone to determine if music is tonal or not, and this method begins to break down when we are confronted with quasi-tonal or ambiguously tonal music as examples.

In the most simple and direct examples, such as Indian raga, the music SOUNDS tonal (has a tonal center) and IS tonal.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

Well, that just brings us back to what I was saying before. You're making literally no distinction between modality and tonality, so the word "tonality" should simply be redundant, except somehow it isn't; I suspect, because you want to attach to all fairly consonant music - or, I guess, just to a lot of it, since you rule out the "quasi-tonal" (Meaning, what, _Gurrelieder_? Stravinsky's octet for winds? Both?) - the prestige of the tonal composers, in the narrow sense of the word.


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

Harold in Columbia said:


> And yet somehow, Beethoven, infamous as the great composer who couldn't write melodies (unjustly, but not _entirely_ unjustly), remains the most popular symphonist.


If there's one composer in history you can surf it's Beethoven. The music is propelled harmonically, rhythmically and by melody or at least motif like no other.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Harold in Columbia said:


> And yet somehow, Beethoven, infamous as the great composer who couldn't write melodies (unjustly, but not _entirely_ unjustly), remains the most popular symphonist.


'Infamous' definition: 'well known for' 'notorious for'

Please provide a reference that justifies a statement that it is well known that Beethoven couldn't write melodies. Also, if it was 'unjust' as you initially say, then your point is specious. If it's your opinion that it's not 'entirely unjust', then that would require more explanation before making your point.


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

DaveM said:


> 'Infamous' definition: 'well known for' 'notorious for'
> 
> Please provide a reference that justifies a statement that it is well known that Beethoven couldn't write melodies. Also, if it was 'unjust' as you initially say, then your point is specious. If it's your opinion that it's not 'entirely unjust', then that would require more explanation before making your point.


I think the view that he was not the greatest of melodists stems from two sources.
1. His sketchbooks show many revisions and reworkings suggesting that he had to sweat over his material.
2. There are perhaps fewer instances of lyricism in his melodic writing (which is more based on motives and development) than in for e.g. Mozart (?)

However, to suggest (if anyone actually does) that he 'couldn't write melodies' is somewhat silly!

Anyway, this whole tonal/atonal debate is a waste of time as there will never be agreement. Fact is, it doesn't matter. Pedants and academics might get their knickers in a twist trying to insist that X is tonal but Y is modal and Z is post-tonal/atonal but there is no BLACK AND WHITE only GREY! Music is art not taxonomy.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

There's also a rather silly Bernstein video where he claims Beethoven couldn't write a decent tune. It's on YouTube somewhere. Lenny took a lot of static over that.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Petwhac said:


> I think the view that he was not the greatest of melodists stems from two sources.
> 1. His sketchbooks show many revisions and reworkings suggesting that he had to sweat over his material.
> 2. There are perhaps fewer instances of lyricism in his melodic writing (which is more based on motives and development) than in for e.g. Mozart (?)
> 
> However, to suggest (if anyone actually does) that he 'couldn't write melodies' is somewhat silly!


Good points. My issue was with the inference that everyone knows that he couldn't write good melodies when the real issue is that, in the end, there has been considerable disagreement as to what a melody is and/or when does a motif or theme become a melody. For instance, take Beethoven's sonata #32 Arietta. Is the opening a motif or a melody? The first c-g-g, d-g-g acts as a motif, but the first 9 bars is a melody in my book.

So, musicologists can argue all they want about whether Beethoven was writing more motifs or melodies, but the common man probably doesn't distinguish all that much between the two, because it's all simply beautiful. Fwiw, the way I see it, Beethoven used a lot of the motif with development in the opening movements of his symphonies and to some extent, the concertos, but melodies are rampant in the adagio/andante movements and the piano sonatas and piano trios are full of melody throughout.

Btw, my understanding of the reason for the revisions had more to do with issues of structural perfectionism than sweating over the creation of a melody. A major example of his revisions (as opposed to those that are less accessible unless we have his sketches) is in the 3 Leonore overtures. The main melodic elements are already fleshed out, but there are noticeable changes in the structure and development.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Petwhac said:


> Mmmm, I think there were a few tonal masterpieces since the Mahler! But perhaps that's a subject for another thread!


How about the Nielsen symphonies? I would be loathe to describe his progressive tonality as anything but 'tonal' even though he is stretching how it is used.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Becca said:


> How about the Nielsen symphonies? I would be loathe to describe his progressive tonality as anything but 'tonal' even though he is stretching how it is used.


"Progressive tonality" means that you end up in a different key than the one you started in. I don't know why Nielsen gets so much notice for this, since I think it was done by composers much earlier. I guess it was unusual in symphonies.


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