# Mahlerian's Ultimate Definition of Tonality



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Quote Originally Posted by Mahlerian View Post
What kind of functions? Are we talking about tonal function as a product of the relationships between triads, or are we using some other definition? Woodduck likes to use one and then pretend it was the other the second it loses its usefulness.

Speaking of which, why "recognized" functions? What purpose does that word serve there? We haven't even established what kind of functions we're talking about (not conclusively, anyway, because it'll change the next time we stop talking about common practice). Would a piece of music in some new system begin life as non-tonal and then become tonal once the functions of its notes are recognized?

There's a reason why common practice tonality is referred to interchangeably as functional tonality, because it was only with the rise of common practice that a harmonic system based on the functional relationships we think of today developed. Before then, there was no such thing, though perhaps we might hear some of the voice leading as an analogue to functional tonality, and since the 20th century, tonal function is no longer employed as it was throughout the whole common practice era. That's why the term nonfunctional tonality was created to describe the diatonic music of Stravinsky that actively diminishes the sense of tonal function by contradicting it constantly.

Listeners do not have to recognize functions in order to listen to music. Many are unable to do so and still enjoy it all the same. People who cannot identify the tonic chord when they hear it are still listening to the music, are they not? Then it is not the listener's recognition that matters, but the musical construction.

Of course I don't need to be able to explain how a piece is tonal to identify that it is. Isn't tonality, according to you, a matter of perception? I could hear tonality in common practice music before I could read a score, much less analyze one. Why should music in a less familiar idiom be different?

I could get into what I think causes the perception of tonality apart from common practice, but the fact is that we can't even explain what causes the sensation of tonality in common practice music itself. It is something heard, not something to be balanced like a spreadsheet, by the use of formulas.

I have offered two consistent definitions for tonality:

Tonality (general): Any kind of perceptible relationship among harmonies or notes

Tonality (specific): A particular way of relating harmonies and notes through functional triadic relationships with a diatonic basis, also called Common Practice Tonality

I have asked others here to offer some kind of consistent and meaningful definition of tonality that includes all music except that called atonal, but truth be told, I don't think it's possible, because there's absolutely nothing atonal about atonality.


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