# Did Wagner's music lead to atonality?



## millionrainbows

Did Wagner's music lead to atonality? There are those who think it did, and those who think it didn't. Which side are you on, and why?


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## Caryatid

The question is ambiguous. _Tristan _definitely inspired many composers and emboldened them to write in new ways. Does that mean it "led to" atonality? I guess.


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## hammeredklavier

http://www.cmpcp.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/PSN2011_Chueke.pdf#page=8
"... Yes, the missing tonality was in fact C minor; "atonality" is of course not justified, but it was certainly hinted…Adorno's « hegemony of tonality» remains and Mozart's acquisitions anticipate those of Wagner, transforming musical language « only indirectly, by means of the amplification of the tonal space and not through its abolition»."


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## millionrainbows

Caryatid said:


> The question is ambiguous. _Tristan _definitely inspired many composers and emboldened them to write in new ways. Does that mean it "led to" atonality? I guess.


I see what you mean; when you place Tristan up next to Schoenberg's Erwartung, it's hard to see a transition; it's like two different worlds, and two different ways of thinking.

Hammeredklavier's quote is interesting: "...transforming musical language only indirectly, by means of the amplification of the tonal space and not through its abolition."

I wonder what the possible meanings of "amplification of tonal space" might be? The quote certainly maintains that Wagner was still a tonalist. But what was the nature of it?


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## Woodduck

This is a perennial topic, but attempts to discuss are subject to misunderstandings. The word "leads" is ambiguous and is likely to turn what looks like a reasonable discussion into a squabble over semantics, filled with unspoken assumptions. So, at the risk of stating the obvious - and believing that the obvious is almost never obvious enough - I'll say at the outset that no sort of music literally _leads_ to any other. The most it does is present effects and procedures new to those hearing it, unfamiliar sounds which subsequent composers may use or which may inspire composers to have ideas of their own, ideas which might inspire still other composers to do likewise. We look at the overall progression of ideas and say that the first sort of music "led" to those which it influenced, but no inevitability attaches to this process: the precise direction in which music develops depends on the individual composers who develop it, and they are influenced by the cultural context in which they live and work as much as by their musical predecessors. Music can "lead" down different roads, not all of which are taken.

It can be difficult to trace musical influences in any precise way, to assign them to specific composers and works. Wagner's musical style didn't arise fully formed in a vacuum, and much has been rightly said about the many influences that contributed to it. Maybe the most relevant to this discussion is Wagner's own remark, "since I've known Liszt, and since he plays for me, I have become quite a different harmonist than formerly." Chromatic harmony and uncertain tonal direction were not invented for _Tristan und Isolde_; composers had been using them for centuries - see Marenzio, Gesualdo, Purcell, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Chopin, et al. - and there was always the theoretical option of using such harmony more extensively than it actually was used. Chromaticism was a resource inherent in the harmonic language of Western music which composers saw early on and could draw upon at will, but there is no mysterious "force" inherent in that language that compels composers to write music of increasing tonal ambiguity. And there is no force inherent in chromaticism that compels any composer, much less any musical culture, to renounce tonality as a basic principle of musical construction or a basic vehicle of expression and meaning. Liszt composed a few short, experimental pieces he called "without tonality"; they sound quite mild to ears familiar with the thoroughgoing atonality of Schoenberg and his successors. Wagner himself wrote a few passages in his most harmonically complex scores, _Tristan_ and _Parsifal,_ that induce tonal vertigo in the listener, but there is always specific dramatic justification for them; like every composer in the history of Western tonal music, Wagner regarded tonality as a language affording a great range of possibilities, of which tonal ambiguity was one, to be employed to whatever degree served his expressive aims. He had no interest in what he called "effects without causes," and he warned young composers against the indiscriminate use of devices for which he himself required the most compelling justification in the context of realizing his dramatic conceptions. The refusal of tonal progressions to resolve for which _Tristan _is famous is the musical expression of the unrequited and hopeless passion of its protagonists; similar effects in _Parsifal_ portray the spiritual desperation and corruption of the knights of the Holy Grail. But _Tristan_ and _Parsifal_ both conclude with the clearest, strongest affirmation of tonality imaginable.

The idea of expunging tonality as a principle of harmonic progression and formal organization is a radical one, and there is nothing in the music of Wagner, even when it's most chromatically dense, to suggest that he desired or contemplated it. He, like composers before him, showed that chromaticism is a _tonal_ concept, that tonal ambiguity is just that - tonal - and that it derives power from its tonal moorings, even by the very act of rendering those merely implicit and temporarily uncertain. It's possible to use chromaticism in such a way as to obliterate any sense of tonal coherence and remove tonality as an organizing principle, but Wagner's work didn't provide any examples of what such music would sound like or "lead" to Schoenberg's decision to write it.


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## millionrainbows

I think isorhythm said it very well:



isorhythm said:


> I think the claim of the "Wagner leads to atonality" people is being misunderstood: no one's actually saying that tonality isn't central to Wagner's music (as counterpoint is central to Bach's, even in the prelude that's just a sequence of of arpeggiated chords). The claim is that Wagner pushed the role of unstated tonics to the point where other phenomena (the linear movement of highly chromatic lines and the sheer sound of the harmonies that result), start to become as important to listeners' actual experience of the music as the underlying tonal grammar, and that suggested new directions to composers that ultimately led to atonality.
> 
> I was reminded of this recently when you quoted this book: "The manipulation of unstated tonics in motivic sequence then becomes a direct manipulation of an unconscious psychological process of projecting order. It is not an invention or deviation from the theoretical structure of tonal practice, but a realization of possibilities inherent within the system. As such it represents a profound stylistic advance, and the possibilities which it opened may remain largely unexplored by later composers."
> 
> I think the reason it was largely unexplored by later composers is that if you push it much further, the unconscious psychological process breaks down and most listeners cease perceiving the sequences of unstated tonics. Anyway that's how it is for me when I try to listen to Berg's piano sonata or Schoenberg's chamber symphony, and it seems very natural that those composers ended up going the way they did.


Myself, I have no problem with Berg's Op. 1 or either of Schoenberg's chamber symphonies; I can follow them all the way through, and none of it sounds "atonal" to me. I can hear a higher tonal logic in it; and I think Wagner's music and thinking have explanations. I think this is what is meant by "amplification of the tonal space." What does that imply, "tonal space?"


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> We look at the overall progression of ideas and say that the first sort of music "led" to those which it influenced, but no inevitability attaches to this process: the precise direction in which music develops depends on the individual composers who develop it, and they are influenced by the cultural context in which they live and work as much as by their musical predecessors. Music can "lead" down different roads, not all of which are taken.


 This view takes all the "nuts and bolts" out of music, and while it is an art, it is at the same time a form of mathematics, as the Greeks thought of it regarding the quadrivium.



> ...there is no mysterious "force" inherent in that language that compels composers to write music of increasing tonal ambiguity. And there is no force inherent in chromaticism that compels any composer, much less any musical culture, to renounce tonality as a basic principle of musical construction or a basic vehicle of expression and meaning.


No, not a 'force,' but maybe a 'higher tonal logic.' This suggests that tonality is expandable 'past' chromaticism, not just hitting it like a brick wall, and would begin to use the chromatic collection to develop new tonal relations. There must be some 'higher tonal logic' at work here.



> The idea of expunging tonality as a principle of harmonic progression and formal organization is a radical one, and there is nothing in the music of Wagner, even when it's most chromatically dense, to suggest that he desired or contemplated it. He, like composers before him, showed that chromaticism is a _tonal_ concept, that tonal ambiguity is just that - tonal - and that it derives power from its tonal moorings, even by the very act of rendering those merely implicit and temporarily uncertain.


Chromaticism was certainly a tonal concept in the hands of Wagner. "Tonal moorings" originate with the ear; uncertainty is the ear/brain, trying to perceive tonal connections.

It's possible to use chromaticism in such a way as to obliterate any sense of tonal coherence and remove tonality as an organizing principle, but Wagner's work didn't provide any examples of what such music would sound like or "lead" to Schoenberg's decision to write it.[/QUOTE]Probably true, at least to the ear. It sounds like there is a big chasm between Wagner and Schoenberg.
Then it follows that tonality's organizing principles must be taken to a higher level, without obliterating them, once and for all separating tonal thought from atonal or serial thought. What is called for is a "new tonality"and a :new music theory" to follow after.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> This view takes all the "nuts and bolts" out of music, and while it is an art, it is at the same time a form of mathematics, as the Greeks thought of it regarding the quadrivium.


I'm not following this. The acoustical aspects of music, pertaining to sound, can be expressed mathematically, like any physical science, and rhythm is expressed in ratios (2/4 et al.), but neither of those facts necessitates any particular course of stylistic change in the art.



> No, not a 'force,' but maybe a 'higher tonal logic.' This suggests that tonality is expandable 'past' chromaticism, not just hitting it like a brick wall, and would begin to use the chromatic collection to develop new tonal relations. There must be some 'higher tonal logic' at work here.


What sort of "tonal expansion past chromaticism" are you thinking of? What do you mean by "tonal logic," much less of a "higher" sort? Different tonalities already exist in various world musics. Is there something they have in common that might inform a "higher" tonality featuring "new tonal relations"? Why would it be "higher"?



> Chromaticism was certainly a tonal concept in the hands of Wagner. "Tonal moorings" originate with the ear; uncertainty is the ear/brain, trying to perceive tonal connections.


"It's possible to use chromaticism in such a way as to obliterate any sense of tonal coherence and remove tonality as an organizing principle, but Wagner's work didn't provide any examples of what such music would sound like or 'lead' to Schoenberg's decision to write it."(Woodduck)



> Probably true, at least to the ear. It sounds like there is a big chasm between Wagner and Schoenberg.


I think atonality represents a distinct break, not just an end point in making tonal relations less and less perceptible or important. Schoenberg had to look for ways to prevent the mere suggestion of tonality from arising in the listener's mind, since that mind is fiercely determined to read tonal relations into pitches sounded either simultaneously or successively. Wagner plays with our tonal expectations in a multitude of ways, including the use of incomplete and deceptive cadences, rapid modulatory sequences, frequent use of chords that can resolve in different ways (such as diminished and half-diminished sevenths), and non-chord tones that suggest alien tonal centers (such as the disorienting g# in the first statement of the "Tristan chord," which makes harmonic "sense" only retroactively as the music continues). Schoenberg didn't want to play with tonal expectations but to block them so that harmony would be heard differently. You can take tonally derived chromaticism beyond Wagner, but the result is not Schoenberg's atonality but simple incoherence, with the listener's tonal sense constantly provoked but never satisfied, like an itch that's never scratched. That isn't what a true atonal idiom is supposed to do to us.



> Then it follows that tonality's organizing principles must be taken to a higher level, without obliterating them, once and for all separating tonal thought from atonal or serial thought. What is called for is a "new tonality"and a :new music theory" to follow after.


Hard to see how that follows, since what it means is unclear.


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## camus

In a sense, yes. Wagner is considered to be the one (or at least one of a few) who bridged late romantic music and the 12 tone system on the horizon.
Tristan chord is the quintessence of Wagner's brilliant manipulation of the tonal system. Think of it in terms of voice-leading, not necessarily as a functional chord on its own.


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## Phil loves classical

Not at all. Why pick on Wagner? I would say Debussy is a more likely candidate, but that is only on hindsight. In the end it all rests on Schoenberg.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> I'm not following this. The acoustical aspects of music, pertaining to sound, can be expressed mathematically, like any physical science, and rhythm is expressed in ratios (2/4 et al.), but neither of those facts necessitates any particular course of stylistic change in the art.


I'm not talking acoustics, but using the quadrivium idea to contrast what you are saying above: that the development of a new tonality past Wagner is up to "individual personalities", which (I've heard you say before) leads back to "Wagner the man" and how unsurpassably brilliant he was, and that tonality reached its highest point with him. I'm not satisfied with that "cult of personality" answer. Here's a past example of your "solution" to the question of tonality:



Woodduck said:


> Your explanation for the theories of the "Wagner leads to atonality people" is very conciliatory! Actually, I don't think all those people have the same theory about how an expanded tonality "evolves" into atonality. There was Schoenberg's concept of "the emancipation of the dissonance,"which postulated that, over time, people learn to regard harmonies previously considered dissonant as consonant, and that logic therefore dictates that we go all the way and remove the tonal functions that provide the criteria for what's consonant and what isn't. Then there's the notion that because Romantic composers were making harmony more and more chromatic and using more chords that couldn't be "explained" by reference to theoretical systems then current, the obscuring of tonal centers which resulted would inevitably lead to a "breakdown of tonality" and its total abandonment as a constructive principle in music.
> 
> Wagner would have spat out his coffee at such notions. No composer in history was more attentive to tonal relationships than he was, or exercised more far-reaching and iron-handed control over them. He was, however, well aware of what a Pandora's box of potential abuses his enriched tonal vocabulary would open up for aspiring composers tempted by what he described as "effects without causes." Young composers, he said, would come to him with compositions filled with novel and complicated harmonies, hoping to be praised for their expressiveness and creativity, and he would be quick to set them straight.
> 
> Wagner's music does indeed force us to think of musical form - and this includes harmony - in ways that Bach's or Mozart's does not. But it no more implies, or suggests as desirable, the negation of the very principle of tonality than theirs does. I would dispute your suggestion that in his music "other phenomena (the linear movement of highly chromatic lines and the sheer sound of the harmonies that result), start to become as important to listeners' actual experience of the music as the underlying tonal grammar." Wagner's radical movement away from a "top-down" approach to harmonic structuring - in which the stations of tonal movement, the "functional" pillars of tonal harmony, are explicitly stated as the audible scaffolding of a basically abstract form - to a "bottom-up" approach - in which tonal structuring is guided by a sense of dramatic/expressive narrative inherent in the tonal language - is not a movement away from tonality but an extrapolation of a potential which had been present in it from the start and was in fact adumbrated many times in the work of earlier composers. What Wagner saw was the extent of that potential to create large-scale dramatic works in which the expressive language of tonal harmony could guide the creation of coherent musical statements without signaling its "mechanics" to the conscious mind of the listener.
> 
> A real comprehension of what Wagner was doing in his music depends first and foremost on an intuitive sense of its organicity, its underlying logic, and that depends on our ability to abandon the Classical expectation that musical form, particularly form based on tonal structures, is created and perceived "from the top down." The musical conservatives of his day were opposed to his conception of musical form; I've known people, even musicians, who are not comfortable with it even today, and can't listen to a Wagner opera without feeling disoriented and irritated by the refusal of the music to congeal into neat structures. Wagner's mature works are an uncompromising expression of the Romantic conception of music as the language of the soul, a language which comes "from the bottom up," and Wagner uses drama as the scaffolding on which our conscious mind can fixate while the music goes to work on our unconscious.
> 
> I've managed to get my hands on a copy of the book from which the excerpt you've quoted comes:_ "The manipulation of unstated tonics in motivic sequence then becomes a direct manipulation of an unconscious psychological process of projecting order. It is not an invention or deviation from the theoretical structure of tonal practice, but a realization of possibilities inherent within the system. As such it represents a profound stylistic advance, and the possibilities which it opened may remain largely unexplored by later composers."_ The book, "Musical Structures in Wagnerian Opera" by Marshall Tuttle, is a work of thorough scholarship and meticulous analysis, and it isn't an easy read (I'm skimming parts of it first time around). But it's definitely confirming and filling out my long-standing intuitions about Wagner's music and how it works. Among other things, it helps me understand why his scores are full of changes of key signature when it's often impossible to find more than a bar or two that actually seems to be in the specified key - and why, despite surface appearances, Wagner stated that one should never leave a key until one has said everything necessary within it.
> 
> I understand Tuttle's suggestion that _"the possibilities which [Wagner's techniques] opened may remain largely unexplored by later composers"_ to indicate, not that composers declined to push his techniques further lest they inevitably confound the listener's tonal expectations or be forced to leave tonality behind, but that they simply could not manipulate the surface vocabulary of his style with the intuitive control of the layers of tonal organization, mediated through motivic sequence and metamorphosis, which enabled him to generate a sense of narrative inevitability and expressive specificity on a grand scale. There's a great deal of post-Wagnerian music that sounds "Wagnerian" but, in any profound sense, isn't. Tuttle's observation also points out the fundamental fact that Wagner's music took the form it did under the impetus of the need for dramatic expression - "dramatic" in the specific sense. Tuttle's book shows in (sometimes ponderous) detail how dramatic ideas and musical structures are inseparable in the operas, to the extent that, more than with any other composer, understanding the latter is essential to understanding the former, and how the precise manipulation of tonal relationships provides a key to that understanding. Wagner was so convinced that music could be an articulate language, and so relentless and thorough in the use of hamony's tools to achieve that end, that he would eventually call his operas "deeds of music made visible."
> 
> I would say that anyone who thinks that Wagner's music "leads to" atonality doesn't understand very much about it. Scholarly scuffles over how to name the Tristan chord are apt to be missing the forest for the trees.





> What sort of "tonal expansion past chromaticism" are you thinking of? What do you mean by "tonal logic," much less of a "higher" sort? Different tonalities already exist in various world musics. Is there something they have in common that might inform a "higher" tonality featuring "new tonal relations"? Why would it be "higher"?


I invite your speculation.

"It's possible to use chromaticism in such a way as to obliterate any sense of tonal coherence and remove tonality as an organizing principle, but Wagner's work didn't provide any examples of what such music would sound like or 'lead' to Schoenberg's decision to write it."(Woodduck)



> I think atonality represents a distinct break, not just an end point in making tonal relations less and less perceptible or important. Schoenberg had to look for ways to prevent the mere suggestion of tonality from arising in the listener's mind, since that mind is fiercely determined to read tonal relations into pitches sounded either simultaneously or successively. Wagner plays with our tonal expectations in a multitude of ways, including the use of incomplete and deceptive cadences, rapid modulatory sequences, frequent use of chords that can resolve in different ways (such as diminished and half-diminished sevenths), and non-chord tones that suggest alien tonal centers (such as the disorienting g# in the first statement of the "Tristan chord," which makes harmonic "sense" only retroactively as the music continues). Schoenberg didn't want to play with tonal expectations but to block them so that harmony would be heard differently.





> You can take tonally derived chromaticism beyond Wagner, but the result is not Schoenberg's atonality but simple incoherence, with the listener's tonal sense constantly provoked but never satisfied, like an itch that's never scratched. That isn't what a true atonal idiom is supposed to do to us.


I think you are placing too much bias on Wagner, as if all tonal music ended there, and I don't believe that's true._ "...tonality's organizing principles must be taken to a higher level, without obliterating them, once and for all separating tonal thought from atonal or serial thought. What is called for is a "new tonality"and a "new music theory" to follow after."_



> Hard to see how that follows, since what it means is unclear.


It sounds like you've already made your mind up that everything peaked with Wagner, so there's not much use in discussing any other possibilities without you 'shredding' them.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> I'm not talking acoustics, but using the quadrivium idea to contrast what you are saying above: that the development of a new tonality past Wagner is up to "individual personalities", which (I've heard you say before) leads back to "Wagner the man" and how unsurpassably brilliant he was, and that tonality reached its highest point with him. I'm not satisfied with that "cult of personality" answer.


It would be better if you'd confine your responses to ideas actually expressed in my post, since you normally misrepresent me when you don't. I've said nothing about "Wagner the man" or suggested any need for a "cult of personality," so your imagination is clearly working overtime. I think my earlier thoughts, which you've quoted at length, state my views on his musical style clearly and eloquently, and I hope that others will derive something from them.



> I think you are placing too much bias on Wagner, as if all tonal music ended there, and I don't believe that's true. It sounds like you've already made your mind up that everything peaked with Wagner, so there's not much use in discussing any other possibilities without you 'shredding' them.


Nothing I've said suggests that "tonal music ended," or that "everything" peaked, with Wagner. That doesn't represent my views. There was plenty of interesting tonal music after Wagner, in many different styles, using harmonic combinations he did not.

You haven't said anything concrete about "other possibilities," so there's nothing to "shred." The following hardly does it:



> "...tonality's organizing principles must be taken to a higher level, without obliterating them, once and for all separating tonal thought from atonal or serial thought. What is called for is a "new tonality"and a "new music theory" to follow after."


I can only repeat my assertion that the meaning of that is unclear.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> It would be better if you'd confine your responses to ideas actually expressed in my post, since you normally misrepresent me when you don't. I've said nothing about "Wagner the man" or suggested any need for a "cult of personality," so your imagination is clearly working overtime. I think my earlier thoughts, which you've quoted at length, state my views on his musical style clearly and eloquently, and I hope that others will derive something from them.


This is the way I have interpreted what you say. Now you're accusing me. Apparently, you don't want to discuss anything. You're impossible.



Woodduck said:


> Nothing I've said suggests that "tonal music ended," or that "everything" peaked, with Wagner. That doesn't represent my views. There was plenty of interesting tonal music after Wagner, in many different styles, using harmonic combinations he did not.


This is the way I have interpreted what you say.



> You haven't said anything concrete about "other possibilities," so there's nothing to "shred." The following hardly does it:
> 
> I can only repeat my assertion that the meaning of that is unclear.


You are so negative; it's a bad experience interacting with you.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> This is the way I have interpreted what you say. Now you're accusing me. Apparently, you don't want to discuss anything. You're impossible.
> 
> This is the way I have interpreted what you say.
> 
> You are so negative; it's a bad experience interacting with you.


If expecting people to refrain from misstating my views, and asking them to explain what they're talking about in clear language, is negativity, then long live negativity.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> If expecting people to refrain from misstating my views, and asking them to explain what they're talking about in clear language, is negativity, then long live negativity.


It's not my problem if you feel 'misrepresented,' which I don't think you really do. You're just trying to invalidate me as a person.

It's hard to back-up anything on this subject with real substance. If we have an idea what Wagner was doing from a theoretical standpoint, it can be justified with "It was because he was a dramatist" or "he was the supreme tonalist; he rejected younger composers."

If Wagner was an advanced tonal thinker, which I think he was, what was he thinking from a theoretical standpoint? Explain it. It's far easier to justify it all with "Wagner the man," because of "father-figure complexes" in many males, arising from the suppression of the libido into a sublimated 'hero' complex.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> It's not my problem if you feel 'misrepresented,' which I don't think you really do. You're just trying to invalidate me as a person.
> 
> It's hard to back-up anything on this subject with real substance. *If we have an idea what Wagner was doing from a theoretical standpoint, it can be justified with "It was because he was a dramatist" or "he was the supreme tonalist; he rejected younger composers." *
> 
> If Wagner was an advanced tonal thinker, which I think he was, what was he thinking from a theoretical standpoint? Explain it. *It's far easier to justify it all with "Wagner the man," because of "father-figure complexes" in many males, arising from the suppression of the libido into a sublimated 'hero' complex.*


This is all fantasy. I've said none of what you're claiming.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> This is all fantasy. I've said none of what you're claiming.


Even if I pasted the post you said it in, you'd disagree. Or have I already posted it? Oh, ha ha, yes, I did!

Here it is:

_










Originally Posted by *Woodduck* 
Your explanation for the theories of the "Wagner leads to atonality people" is very conciliatory!







Actually, I don't think all those people have the same theory about how an expanded tonality "evolves" into atonality. There was Schoenberg's concept of "the emancipation of the dissonance,"which postulated that, over time, people learn to regard harmonies previously considered dissonant as consonant, and that logic therefore dictates that we go all the way and remove the tonal functions that provide the criteria for what's consonant and what isn't. Then there's the notion that because Romantic composers were making harmony more and more chromatic and using more chords that couldn't be "explained" by reference to theoretical systems then current, the obscuring of tonal centers which resulted would inevitably lead to a "breakdown of tonality" and its total abandonment as a constructive principle in music.

Wagner would have spat out his coffee at such notions. No composer in history was more attentive to tonal relationships than he was, or exercised more far-reaching and iron-handed control over them. He was, however, well aware of what a Pandora's box of potential abuses his enriched tonal vocabulary would open up for aspiring composers tempted by what he described as "effects without causes." Young composers, he said, would come to him with compositions filled with novel and complicated harmonies, hoping to be praised for their expressiveness and creativity, and he would be quick to set them straight.

Wagner's music does indeed force us to think of musical form - and this includes harmony - in ways that Bach's or Mozart's does not. But it no more implies, or suggests as desirable, the negation of the very principle of tonality than theirs does. I would dispute your suggestion that in his music "other phenomena (the linear movement of highly chromatic lines and the sheer sound of the harmonies that result), start to become as important to listeners' actual experience of the music as the underlying tonal grammar." Wagner's radical movement away from a *"top-down"* approach to harmonic structuring - in which the stations of tonal movement, the "functional" pillars of tonal harmony, are explicitly stated as the audible scaffolding of a basically abstract form - to a *"bottom-up" approach - in which tonal structuring is guided by a sense of dramatic/expressive narrative inherent in the tonal language *- is not a movement away from tonality but an extrapolation of a potential which had been present in it from the start and was in fact adumbrated many times in the work of earlier composers. What Wagner saw was the extent of that potential to create large-scale dramatic works in which *the expressive language of tonal harmony could guide the creation of coherent musical statements without signaling its "mechanics" to the conscious mind of the listener.*

*A real comprehension of what Wagner was doing in his music depends first and foremost on an intuitive sense of its organicity, its underlying logic, and that depends on our ability to abandon the Classical expectation that musical form, particularly form based on tonal structures, is created and perceived "from the top down." *The musical conservatives of his day were opposed to his conception of musical form; I've known people, even musicians, who are not comfortable with it even today, and can't listen to a Wagner opera without feeling disoriented and irritated by the refusal of the music to congeal into neat structures. Wagner's mature works are *an uncompromising expression of the Romantic conception of music as the language of the soul, a language which comes "from the bottom up," and Wagner uses drama as the scaffolding on which our conscious mind can fixate while the music goes to work on our unconscious. *

I've managed to get my hands on a copy of the book from which the excerpt you've quoted comes: "The manipulation of unstated tonics in motivic sequence then becomes a direct manipulation of an unconscious psychological process of projecting order. It is not an invention or deviation from the theoretical structure of tonal practice, but a realization of possibilities inherent within the system. As such it represents a profound stylistic advance, and the possibilities which it opened may remain largely unexplored by later composers." The book, "Musical Structures in Wagnerian Opera" by Marshall Tuttle, is a work of thorough scholarship and meticulous analysis, and it isn't an easy read (I'm skimming parts of it first time around). But it's definitely confirming and filling out my long-standing intuitions about Wagner's music and how it works. Among other things, it helps me understand why his scores are full of changes of key signature when it's often impossible to find more than a bar or two that actually seems to be in the specified key - and why, despite surface appearances, Wagner stated that one should never leave a key until one has said everything necessary within it.

I understand Tuttle's suggestion that "the possibilities which [Wagner's techniques] opened may remain largely unexplored by later composers" to indicate, not that composers declined to push his techniques further lest they inevitably confound the listener's tonal expectations or be forced to leave tonality behind, but that they simply could not manipulate the surface vocabulary of his style with the intuitive control of the layers of tonal organization, mediated through motivic sequence and metamorphosis, which enabled him to generate a sense of narrative inevitability and expressive specificity on a grand scale. There's a great deal of post-Wagnerian music that sounds "Wagnerian" but, in any profound sense, isn't. Tuttle's observation also points out the fundamental fact that Wagner's music took the form it did under the impetus of the need for dramatic expression - "dramatic" in the specific sense. Tuttle's book shows in (sometimes ponderous) detail how dramatic ideas and musical structures are inseparable in the operas, to the extent that, more than with any other composer, understanding the latter is essential to understanding the former, and how the precise manipulation of tonal relationships provides a key to that understanding. Wagner was so convinced that music could be an articulate language, and so relentless and thorough in the use of hamony's tools to achieve that end, that he would eventually call his operas "deeds of music made visible."

I would say that anyone who thinks that Wagner's music "leads to" atonality doesn't understand very much about it. Scholarly scuffles over how to name the Tristan chord are apt to be missing the forest for the trees.

Click to expand...

_


> _
> *What sort of "tonal expansion past chromaticism" are you thinking of? What do you mean by "tonal logic," much less of a "higher" sort? Different tonalities already exist in various world musics. Is there something they have in common that might inform a "higher" tonality featuring "new tonal relations"? Why would it be "higher"? *_




Since you should already have explained this, if you are going to make such claims, I might ask the same question of you: what is meant by _"the expressive language of tonal harmony could guide the creation of coherent musical statements without signaling its "mechanics" to the conscious mind of the listener"_? That sound vague to me.

What do you mean, in real musical terms, by _"A real comprehension of what Wagner was doing in his music depends first and foremost on an intuitive sense of its organicity, its underlying logic, and that depends on our ability to abandon the Classical expectation that musical form, particularly form based on tonal structures, is created and perceived "from the top down."?

_This sounds like so much hot air, unless it's too much trouble to explain in real musical terms. But I quoted it from your reply to someone else, when you had your guard down. It reveals you as a Wagner fanboy with CP training which stops there, not much more.

So, once again, I ask:
*
If Wagner was an advanced tonal thinker, which I think he was, what was he thinking from a theoretical standpoint? Explain it. *


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## NLAdriaan

I think Liszt should actually be the object of this thread. 

Liszt, father-in-law of Wagner, made steps ahead deep into the 20th century in his last creative period. The music that Liszt composed since the 1870's comes from a different planet compared to his earlier music. You can hear directions towards impressionism of Ravel and Debussy (a misrepresented modernist himself) and atonal music (Bagatelle sans tonalité). Liszt kept these works largely to himself. Still, this music is not well known as his mainstream virtuoso work. And Liszt obviously knew his fanbase wouldn't understand this music 

It is well-known that Wagner, who also was the neighbor of Liszt in Bayreuth, largely ignored this late music by Liszt and had very strong negative opinions about it. This leads to the logical conclusion that Wagner was not, at least not consciously, a modernist avant la lettre. Liszt however was leading the way as an avantgardist, be it in obscurity, where his late works unfortunately still are. These works deserve our attention as they represent the true inner spirit of the composer. I can't think of any composer whose 'late creative period' is so much in contrast to his earlier works.


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## millionrainbows

NLAdriaan said:


> I think Liszt should actually be the object in this thread. Liszt, father-in-law of Wagner, made steps ahead deep into the 20th century in his last creative period. The music that Liszt composed since the 1870's comes from a different planet as his earlier music. You can hear directions towards impressionism of Ravel and Debussy (a misrepresented modernist himself) and atonal music (Bagatelle sans tonalité). Liszt kept these works largely to himself. Still, this music is not well known as his mainstream virtuoso work. And Liszt obviously knew his fanbase wouldn't understand this music
> 
> It is well-known that *Wagner*, who also was the neighbor of Liszt in Bayreuth, l*argely ignored this late music by Liszt and had very strong negative opinions about it.* This leads to the logical conclusion that Wagner was not, at least not consciously, a modernist avant la lettre. Liszt however was leading the way as an avantgardist, be it in obscurity, where his late works unfortunately still are. These works deserve our attention as they represent the true inner spirit of the composer. I can't think of any composer whose 'late creative period' is so much in contrast to his earlier works.


You mean to say that Wagner wouldn't have spat out his coffee at such notions? Or did he? But this elevation of Liszt contradict's Woodduck's assertion that Wagner was the apotheosis of advanced tonality (modernism).


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## Woodduck

NLAdriaan said:


> I think Liszt should actually be the object of this thread.
> 
> Liszt, father-in-law of Wagner, made steps ahead deep into the 20th century in his last creative period. The music that Liszt composed since the 1870's comes from a different planet compared to his earlier music. You can hear directions towards impressionism of Ravel and Debussy (a misrepresented modernist himself) and atonal music (Bagatelle sans tonalité). Liszt kept these works largely to himself. Still, this music is not well known as his mainstream virtuoso work. And Liszt obviously knew his fanbase wouldn't understand this music
> 
> It is well-known that Wagner, who also was the neighbor of Liszt in Bayreuth, largely ignored this late music by Liszt and had very strong negative opinions about it. This leads to the logical conclusion that Wagner was not, at least not consciously, a modernist avant la lettre. Liszt however was leading the way as an avantgardist, be it in obscurity, where his late works unfortunately still are. These works deserve our attention as they represent the true inner spirit of the composer. I can't think of any composer whose 'late creative period' is so much in contrast to his earlier works.


Yes, Liszt experimented with harmonic discontinuities beyond what Wagner did. I wouldn't say that they took him "deep into the 20th century," but your basic point is certainly right. Wagner had the problem of giving coherence to lengthy dramatic structures, and was always intensely aware of the role of tonality in achieving that. Liszt was sitting at his piano playing around with harmony. Wagner reached for striking harmonic effects when he needed them. Liszt did so just because he liked them.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> You mean to say that Wagner wouldn't have spat out his coffee at such notions? Or did he? But this elevation of Liszt contradict's Woodduck's assertion that Wagner was the apotheosis of advanced tonality (modernism).


Woodduck never said that Wagner was the apotheosis of "modernism." I don't consider Wagner a "modernist," though he was reasonably considered, and was, avant-garde in his time.

I don't like to use the term "modernism" in this generalized and careless way. It's confusing rather than specific and useful.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> what is meant by _"the expressive language of tonal harmony could guide the creation of coherent musical statements without signaling its "mechanics" to the conscious mind of the listener"_? That sound vague to me.


Harmonic progressions, long passages, and whole pieces of music can feel purposeful and cohesive without the explicit or conspicuous stating of tonal centers, tonics, dominants, etc. to grab the listener's attention and orient him, as is the typical practice in Baroque, Classical and much Romantic music. Generating a sense of coherence on an unconscious level was an art that Wagner mastered. This is not to say that he couldn't or didn't create music that wore its tonal heart on its sleeve; set the preludes to _Tristan_ and _Meistersinger_ side by side to see the principle. Both hang together beautifully, but with the former piece the listener neither knows nor cares how he does it. Passages from within the operas are even less obvious, and we're not supposed to think about it. Tonal (and motivic, and rhythmic) organization become a dramatic, more than a formal, language.



> What do you mean, in real musical terms, by "A real comprehension of what Wagner was doing in his music depends first and foremost on an intuitive sense of its organicity, its underlying logic, and that depends on our ability to abandon the Classical expectation that musical form, particularly form based on tonal structures, is created and perceived "from the top down."?


That's another way of making the same point. "From the top down" could mean "from the conscious mind down." As listeners to Wagner's musical/dramatic narrative, we are not conscious, intellectually, of his methods in the way that we're conscious of Beethoven's. We're not supposed to be. His job was to make this work musically, and he did so on a level not seen before and rarely equaled since. The third act of _Tristan_ is in my opinion a dramatically and musically integrated structure with which nothing else in music can be reasonably compared.



> This sounds like so much hot air, unless it's too much trouble to explain in real musical terms. But I quoted it from your reply to someone else, when you had your guard down. It reveals you as a Wagner fanboy with CP training which stops there, not much more.


Blah blah blah...



> So, once again, I ask:
> 
> If Wagner was an advanced tonal thinker, which I think he was, what was he thinking from a theoretical standpoint? Explain it.


What exactly do you want me to do? Read Wagner's mind as he sits composing? Take you through a score and point out secondary dominants? I'm making a general statement about his methods.

You're so _demanding._


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## NLAdriaan

I looked for some comprehensive evidence, which I found in an interview with Nike Wagner (great-granddaughter) by the German magazine 'der Spiegel' in 2011, the full article can be found here: https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/the-bayreuth-clan-nike-wagner-on-her-family-s-past-a-775814.html. If you look into anything on the Wagner family, controversy and deep conflicts are around any corner, still to this day. A NYT article calls the Wagners 'the most dysfunctional musical family in Europe'. The quote below is clear enough, where of course Nike Wagner represents a faction of this family herself.



> SPIEGEL: What did people say about Liszt in your home, the Villa Wahnfried?
> 
> Wagner: He never counted for anything in the Wagner household. In fact, people would poke fun at him now and again, calling him 'the abbot' or dismissing him as a mere drawing-room performer. Richard Wagner despised that kind of musician and considered them to be nothing more than a showman. He also despised Liszt because he composed symphonies and religious works [which he did not consider to be serious enough]. *Wagner thought Liszt was crazy in his later years. And yet his late works and their emerging atonality were far more modern than Wagner's*. But it's true that Richard loved and always respected Franz. Liszt's music wasn't buried until after his death.
> 
> SPIEGEL: In July 1886, Cosima refused to halt the festival even though her father was dying in Bayreuth. His death was kept secret.
> 
> Wagner: He died in the house next door, poorly looked after, and in great pain. Suddenly, the loneliness that the restless Liszt had presumably always carried around became visible. Maybe the somewhat formal way he addressed people, which was seen as coldness on his part, was simply a form of escape. Indeed Liszt appears far more mysterious today than the ever-exuberant Wagner, who externalized everything. Liszt was discreet. His ego was delicate, and he never forced himself center stage, an interesting contrast to his skillfully executed public performances.
> 
> SPIEGEL: He supported his son-in-law unreservedly.
> 
> Wagner: Wagner felt guilty about Liszt all his life. He knew he was indebted to him. He also said so in public time and again, especially after he had made the breakthrough in Bayreuth.
> 
> SPIEGEL: Although it's the 200th anniversary of Liszt's birth in October, the festival isn't marking the occasion.
> 
> Wagner: That's incomprehensible, embarrassing and scandalous. The city of Bayreuth does this and that, but it doesn't owe Franz Liszt anything. That's the exclusive responsibility of the Wagner family. The Wagners are deeply indebted to Liszt. It would be historically irresponsible to deny that. I was deeply hurt that my cousins were deaf to my appeals to open up the concert hall for a major festival and birthday concert on October 22. It would have been a wonderful event, as well as a way to start repaying that debt.
> 
> SPIEGEL: Liszt was Catholic and had received his minor orders in Rome. Wagner was Protestant. What was your childhood like from a religious point of view?
> 
> Wagner: Traditionally Protestant. But probably only because of Johann Sebastian Bach.


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## millionrainbows

Wager took tonality to its limits by exploiting its most "glitchy" feature, the viiº chord. Diminished sevenths can have 4 possible roots. That's why it's ambiguous, it's as simple as that.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Wager took tonality to its limits by exploiting its most "glitchy" feature, the viiº chord. Diminished sevenths can have 4 possible roots. That's why it's ambiguous, it's as simple as that.


The diminished seventh is an obvious device for modulating and achieving a feeling of instability or uncertainty. Weber used it dramatically in his operas, and Wagner followed suit. But Wagner's fullest expansion of tonality didn't occur until he realized the possibilities of the _half-diminished_ seventh. In his later works - from the first chord of _Tristan_ on - it becomes his personal "signature," used in all its inversions and its potential for chromatic sliding as his primary harmonic pivot and source of instability, ambiguity and tension. In his earlier works it's heard mostly "in embryo" as a component of a V9 or as a vii or a ii with an added sixth. Later on it would shed such obvious functions and could dominate long sequences in which tonal centers and roots make only fleeting appearances, the harmony slipping from one half-diminished chord to another, often remote one, on its way to some clearer tonal marker.


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## BabyGiraffe

Woodduck said:


> The diminished seventh is an obvious device for modulating and achieving a feeling of instability or uncertainty. Weber used it dramatically in his operas, and Wagner followed suit. But Wagner's fullest expansion of tonality didn't occur until he realized the possibilities of the _half-diminished_ seventh. In his later works - from the first chord of _Tristan_ on - it becomes his personal "signature," used in all its inversions and its potential for chromatic sliding as his primary harmonic pivot and source of instability, ambiguity and tension. In his earlier works it's heard mostly "in embryo" as a component of a V9 or as a vii or a ii with an added sixth. Later on it would shed such obvious functions and could dominate long sequences in which tonal centers and roots make only fleeting appearances, the harmony slipping from one half-diminished chord to another, often remote one, on its way to some clearer tonal marker.


He was ahead of his time. If we split the tritone in 12 equal, we can get in some sense 13 equal where 4th inversion of half-diminished chord is the basic chord with similar structural properties to the triad in 7 equal (in a way diatonic scale is 7 equal, embedded in 12 equal). Wyshnegradsky used regularly a 13 note scale in his 1/4 tone works, but I think the best division of octave for such ultrachromatic, half-diminished seventh works is 36 or 37 equal ( if we are after two chromas in the scale; if we are after only one, 22 is probably better than 24). Still, I doubt it is easy to hear a 13 note scale or complex chords (like 5:6:7:8 - fourth inversion of half-diminished) as tonal, because of many well knons facts from psychoacoustics. (Numbers like 3, 7, 13, 21, 31 are very good for harmonic systems, because of their mathematical properties - check any book on projective geometry and translation planes for more information).


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## Woodduck

BabyGiraffe said:


> He was ahead of his time. If we split the tritone in 12 equal, we can get in some sense 13 equal where 4th inversion of half-diminished chord is the basic chord with similar structural properties to the triad in 7 equal (in a way diatonic scale is 7 equal, embedded in 12 equal). Wyshnegradsky used regularly a 13 note scale in his 1/4 tone works, but I think the best division of octave for such ultrachromatic, half-diminished seventh works is 36 or 37 equal ( if we are after two chromas in the scale; if we are after only one, 22 is probably better than 24). Still, I doubt it is easy to hear a 13 note scale or complex chords (like 5:6:7:8 - fourth inversion of half-diminished) as tonal, because of many well knons facts from psychoacoustics. (Numbers like 3, 7, 13, 21, 31 are very good for harmonic systems, because of their mathematical properties - check any book on projective geometry and translation planes for more information).


Sounds impressive. I wish it weren't way over my head!


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## millionrainbows

A "half-diminished" chord is known in jazz as a "min 7 b5" chord. 
In A minor: 
This also happens to be the ii function in a minor key (B-D-F-A).
It could also be interpreted as a minor sixth: D-F-A with B as the sixth or thirteenth.


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## Barbebleu

In answer to the thread question - no, it didn’t,,

Those who think it did are wrong. Those who, like all right thinking people, e.g. me, think it didn’t, are absolutely right.

I will not be backing this up with outlandish pseudo-intellectual theorising.

I bid you all a good night!


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## BabyGiraffe

Woodduck said:


> Sounds impressive. I wish it weren't way over my head!


Well, there is the microtonal (xenharmonic) wikipedia online and there was some microtonal encyclopedia, if you are interested in such stuff. There are also many academic articles online and google books has previews (search for"Microtones and projective planes").

Music of Wagner, other modernists and jazz idioms cannot be easily explained by standard theories, but microtonality deals easily with them - it looks all seventh and 9th chords and chromatic harmonies used in Western art music act as 7-limit harmony.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7-limit_tuning

There are several ways to retune 12 equal as 7-limit scale (which would be just a subset of a bigger system, just like 7-note diatonic is a subset of a bigger system).

We can use Hasse diagrams to generate all possible chords in a given tuning system - in 5-limit the main intervals are 4/3, 5/4 and 6/5 - fourth, major and minor thirds, with chromas - 16/15 - diatonic semitone and 25/24 - chromatic semitone, so 19 equal is actually better than 12, because the difference between these small intervals is not tempered (the first chroma easily leads to pentatonic, the second one - to heptatonic scales); and chords are major/mnor triads and all their inversions.

In 7-limit (a system that would support better barbershop chords and bluesy/jazzy intervals, btw, I am pretty sure that I have recordings of Debussy and Wagner that sound quite microtonally at some point) - the main intervals are 5/4, 6/5, 7/6 and 8/7 and chromas - 25/24, 36/35 and 49/48, so the generated JI systems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fokker_periodicity_block) should be 3-dimensional (having two chromas and you cannot get it from single interval stacking modulo octave), unless one of these is tempered. (Here is another good article on generated tone systems, but it's behind a paywall - https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-39357-0_18)


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

Woodduck said:


> Sounds impressive. I wish it weren't way over my head!


It's really not. He's just being grandiloquent and appealing to as much mathematical terminology as he can to make his points appear needlessly intimidating and abstruse (I'm mot saying that the math has no place or use in music or tuning theory, but for the purposes of this discussion, BG could explain his points much more simply). And he hasn't actually provided an example of a passage where the kind of analysis he proposes helps to functionally explain harmonies used by Wagner or Debussy in places where traditional tonal analysis might not be so satisfactory. I would definitely be interested in discussing such an example.


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## Woodduck

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> It's really not. He's just being grandiloquent and appealing to as much mathematical terminology as he can to make his points appear needlessly intimidating and abstruse (I'm mot saying that the math has no place or use in music or tuning theory, but for the purposes of this discussion, BG could explain his points much more simply). And he hasn't actually provided *an example of a passage where the kind of analysis he proposes helps to functionally explain harmonies used by Wagner or Debussy in places where traditional tonal analysis might not be so satisfactory. I would definitely be interested in discussing such an example.*


That's hard to do in a forum like this, isn't it? That doesn't bother me, though. Frankly, I doubt that microtonal analysis - whatever that is - would tell me anything about Wagner I need to know. In fact I doubt that Wagner himself would have been very interested. For an advanced harmonist, he left us very few statements about his harmonic procedures, and as far as I know those are about general principles, not mechanical specifics. He preferred philosophical talk to academic nuts and bolts theory.


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## BabyGiraffe

Many composers preferred to keep their methods in secret. (And some weren't very happy when people were analysing in depth their music - for example Brahms after reading H. Riemann writings on his own compositions told something like: "Music should be mystery not mechanical exercises" or something in this spirit ) 
My main point is that instead of thinking of "atonality", many modernists works can be analysed as extended tonality where the whole chromatic is the main scale, not just 7-note subset of it. This doesn't quite work in 12 equal, but 12 (13, if we say that diminished fifths and augmented fourths are different notes) equal becomes a family of "tonal" scales on in bigger systems just like 7 equal becomes many scales in bigger systems like 12 equal, actually Dorian mode is the closest of all scales in 12 equal to 7 equal tuning).
Here someone created lattices, depicting various historical or theoretical tunings in 5-limit:
http://www.siementerpstra.com/writings/Terpstra-JustChromaticTopology.pdf
It is 2-d: major/minor thirds and fifths/fourths.
If we want to create systems that add just sevenths and their inversions. we need to add third dimension.
here is more information on tuning lattices - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_(music)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Riemannian_theory#Graphical_representations


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

Yes. We get your point. It's an interesting theory and I can see its theoretical appeal... That's all well and good; now can you provide an example and apply it to the music of Wagner or some other composer of 12 TET music? Just one example please... A YouTube video with a timestamp along with your analysis will do. Linking to a relevant academic paper is fine too. Thank you.


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## millionrainbows

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Yes. We get your point. It's an interesting theory and I can see its theoretical appeal... That's all well and good;* now can you provide an example and apply it to the music of Wagner or some other composer of 12 TET music? Just one example please...* A YouTube video with a timestamp along with your analysis will do. Linking to a relevant academic paper is fine too. Thank you.


I think this has already been done, using the graphic lattices that BabyGiraffe alludes to. This is a far simpler explanation:
https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?as...linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_w7hKEbAJT4TP0


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## Flamme

WaRgner was imho, more liberal than his critix give him credit 4, mostly because he was loved by ''extreme traditionalists'', nazis etc...


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## millionrainbows

Flamme said:


> WaRgner was imho, more liberal than his critix give him credit 4, mostly because he was loved by ''extreme traditionalists'', nazis etc...


Here we go again...


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## hammeredklavier

millionrainbows said:


> Flamme said:
> 
> 
> 
> WaRgner, nazis
> 
> 
> 
> Here we go again...
Click to expand...

Now you have a boner XD


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Here we go again...


Can we nip it in the bud?


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Can we nip it in the bud?


So, Woodduck, you actually "liked" my post about viiº (#24, p.2) and diminished sevenths. I find this next to unbelievable.




millions said:


> Wager took tonality to its limits by exploiting its most "glitchy" feature, the viiº chord. Diminished sevenths can have 4 possible roots. That's why it's ambiguous, it's as simple as that.


Really? Why are you agreeing? Just to keep the discussion going? I'm totally mystified. Especially since I called viiº "glitchy." I know how you hate glitches in your precious CP system of perfection.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> So, Woodduck, you actually "liked" my post about viiº (#24, p.2) and diminished sevenths. I find this next to unbelievable.
> 
> Really? Why are you agreeing? Just to [/COLOR]keep the discussion going? I'm totally mystified. Especially since I called viiº "glitchy." I know how you hate glitches in your precious CP system of perfection.


Is there a point in the above?


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Is there a point in the above?


No, I'm just flabbergasted.


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