# Classical Music: Understanding versus Mystery?



## Klassic

someone says (for example), "I don't like the music of Pierre Boulez." This is fine, but the question is whether or not they understood it before they sought to reject it? Those of you who understand the music of Boulez will comprehend my meaning: understanding versus mystery. ...however, it is important to clarify that one can understand the music of Boulez and still dislike it. Understanding does not always equal appreciation, but disregard without understanding seems a bit premature.


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## mmsbls

I think this issue depends on what is meant by understanding. I would not say I really understand any piece of music. I recognize some aspects of music but nothing significant and nothing that really changes my feeling about the work. So I would say I like Mozart and do not understand his work, and I generally don't like Xenakis and also do not understand his work. 

if one listens to particular music enough for them to have a sense whether they like it or not, they can report on their feelings. For some, listening enough may involve a few minutes; whereas, for others, it may involve many repeated listenings. I'm not sure I would require someone understanding a work or set of works for that person to say whether they like the work or composer.


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## SeptimalTritone

Hi Klassic. Are you currently listening to Boulez and trying to make sense of his music, but finding difficulty?

I think that it's always okay to dislike any music. There are people with music PhDs who would give high ratings to Boulez, and people with music PhDs who would give low ratings to Boulez.

But if you want help with Boulez, here's my advice. I would just try to listen to it using the same listening skills one would apply to Bach, Mahler, and Stravinsky... but just remembering that harmony, melodic figures, sonority, rhythm, and contrapuntal texture are different for Boulez. That's really it.

In something like Sur Incises 



 try to just focus on the motivic and harmonic patterns made by the piano at the forefront, and the echos of the harp and percussion in the background. Sometimes these instruments will sound separate and do separate things, and sometimes they will interact densely in a flurry. There will be a lot of glowing sustained chords, and activity on top of these chords as the sonorities blend.

Then, at the 4 minute mark in the performance I linked, the music suddenly picks up a distinct fast pulse and the density of activity vastly increases. Try to focus on the different patterns in the different instruments, while at the same time listening to the overall sound.

Just as how in the highly contrapuntal music of Bach one tries to listen for both the individual lines as well as the overall sound, so does one do the same with Boulez. And when one does that, one is carried away by its waves of energy, and its extreme contrasts between stasis of sound and flurry of activity. Unless one wants to learn about music compositional technique or music history at a deep level, there's no need for any intellectual understanding. Only gut understanding is needed, and this is possible using the same listening skills one uses for earlier composers.


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## Nereffid

My attitude is that, given that listening to any specific piece of music is a voluntary activity (exceptions noted), and given that we only have a finite amount of listening available to us, nobody is under any obligation to spend a requisite amount of time listening to anything, let alone trying to _understand_ it. Deciding that one doesn't like it before one understands it may be a way of saving a lot of time. Or it might mean missing out on something that ultimately would have proved very rewarding. That's a decision up to each individual every time. Some may want to at least try to understand everything they listen to, or everything that other people say is great, or whatever; some may just like to stick with what they're comfortable with; it's their choice.

Dismissing a piece of music as _bad_ without trying to understand what's going on is foolhardy, but that doesn't appear to be what we're talking about here.


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## Guest

Klassic said:


> Understanding does not always equal appreciation, but disregard without understanding seems a bit premature.


Happens all the time - and not just wrt classical music. But it is also possible to appreciate without understanding (my wife and I might both be guilty of that).


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## Art Rock

Option A: I don't like the music of composer X. Let's spend a lot of time trying to understand it so maybe I will like it one day.
Option B: I don't like the music of composer X. Let's switch to composer Y and see whether I like that, or switch to one of many, many composers that I know that I like.

Option B for me every time.


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## Guest

Art Rock said:


> Option B: I don't like the music of composer X. Let's switch to composer Y and see whether I like that, or switch to one of many, many composers that I know that I like.
> 
> Option B for me every time.


Gets my vote too.


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## Mandryka

But what happens where someone listens too Art of Fugue, say, or the Machaut Mass, or the Schoenberg string teio, and doesn't like them? Knowing that people who have devoted much time and thought to Bach and Machaut and Schoenberg rate them as masterpieces. I think it's a bit glib to just say to yourself "oh well, not for me, let's move on", just as you might do with, for example, a ride in a theme park. 

(think of someone taking the same approach to Shakespeare or Aristotle)

Another approach would be to rise to the challenge: listen harder, to different interpretations, read books, talk to people who do appreciate it. . . .



Music can make people feel uncomfortable and disorientated because they haven't learned how to listen. That takes perseverance sometimes.


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## helenora

the question we discuss in this thread strongly reminded me of a question "Agnostic vs Gnostic " approach.


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## Nereffid

Mandryka said:


> Music can make people feel uncomfortable and disorientated because they haven't learned how to listen. That takes perseverance sometimes.


FWIW, there's a lot of music I don't like, but I would never characterize my feelings toward it as "uncomfortable and disorientated".



Mandryka said:


> But what happens where someone listens too Art of Fugue, say, or the Machaut Mass, or the Schoenberg string teio, and doesn't like them?


Well, yeah, _what_ happens?
What happens when someone listens to them and _does_ like them?
Does a fairy get its wings or something?
I'm being sarcastic, but seriously, why should these individuals' personal thoughts matter to us?


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## Art Rock

Mandryka said:


> Knowing that people who have devoted much time and thought to Bach and Machaut and Schoenberg rate them as masterpieces..


So what? It boils down to personal preference. Why should I let other people, no matter whether they are scholars or not, dictate what I'm supposed to like? I can make that decision myself, thank you.


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## Wood

If you don't like the music of a leading composer, then you don't understand it in the sense that you don't get it. The shortcoming that many have on here is to criticise the quality of the music rather than their own lack of ability to understand and appreciate it.


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## Mandryka

Nereffid said:


> why should these individuals' personal thoughts matter to us?


Because these individuals are civilised.


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## Pugg

Art Rock said:


> So what? It boils down to personal preference. Why should I let other people, no matter whether they are scholars or not, dictate what I'm supposed to like? I can make that decision myself, thank you.


Amen to this..........................


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## Animal the Drummer

Wood said:


> If you don't like the music of a leading composer, then you don't understand it in the sense that you don't get it. The shortcoming that many have on here is to criticise the quality of the music rather than their own lack of ability to understand and appreciate it.


I was with you on this until the last few words. I don't see an inability to understand and appreciate a particular composer's work as some kind of mistake - however great the composer, differences in personal taste don't seem to me to be matters for criticism. One example: Vaughan Williams could see the quality of Beethoven's music but couldn't stand listening to it. That may mystify me, but I couldn't regard it as somehow objectively "wrong".


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## Wood

Animal the Drummer said:


> I was with you on this until the last few words. I don't see an inability to understand and appreciate a particular composer's work as some kind of mistake - however great the composer, differences in personal taste don't seem to me to be matters for criticism. One example: Vaughan Williams could see the quality of Beethoven's music but couldn't stand listening to it. That may mystify me, but I couldn't regard it as somehow objectively "wrong".


Perhaps you misread my post. 

I did not say, and do not believe that the lack of an ability to appreciate a composer's work is either a 'mistake' or 'objectively wrong'.


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## micro

I think one shouldn't understand music theory, counterpart and other technical issues before he judges a work. Why a normal guy like myself fell instantly in love with Tchaikovsky's violin concerto or Brahms violin sonata no.3? I understand nothing about music but I ,and millions like me, can instantly judge these works as masterpieces. They can be easily detected as beautiful and sublime works.

The same people including me, if they are exposed to a avant garde masterpiece, like one of xenakis or john cage works, statistically, what would you expect? Let the ignorant peasants like me aside. If we resurrected the great Beethoven or the legendary Mozart today and made them listen to such works. What can we expect? I can at least expect rage and cursing from Beethoven.


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## juliante

Art Rock said:


> Option A: I don't like the music of composer X. Let's spend a lot of time trying to understand it so maybe I will like it one day.
> Option B: I don't like the music of composer X. Let's switch to composer Y and see whether I like that, or switch to one of many, many composers that I know that I like.
> Good framing. I hear you on that e.g with modern art - do I really want to have to read a long and possibly self indulgent explanatory note beside the piece in order to be able to know how to approach/appreciate/understand it? However it's got to be Option A for me... much great art demand some effort to appreciate.. had I been a B I would have missed out on Mahler!!! (Albeit I may have come to him by just being ready and stumbling on the right piece...)


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## Wood

Art Rock said:


> Option A: I don't like the music of composer X. Let's spend a lot of time trying to understand it so maybe I will like it one day.
> Option B: I don't like the music of composer X. Let's switch to composer Y and see whether I like that, or switch to one of many, many composers that I know that I like.
> 
> Option B for me every time.


Option C: Listen to composer X and listen to composer Y. Don't judge either of them in terms of like and dislike, just hear the notes.


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## Nereffid

Mandryka said:


> Because these individuals are civilised.


The individuals I was talking about were not the people recommending I listen to something, but all individuals who decide whether or not to listen to any given music.

But the thing is, I'm thinking about all the people I know who like listening to classical music (or more specifically, those who like Bach, Machaut or Schoenberg), and all the people I know who say, _"oh well, not for me, let's move on", just as you might do with, for example, a ride in a theme park_, and I'm damned if I can see how the former are more civilised than the latter, or for that matter how they're somehow better, or better off, or happier, or whatever.


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## mmsbls

Wood said:


> Option C: Listen to composer X and listen to composer Y. Don't judge either of them in terms of like and dislike, just hear the notes.


Does "Don't judge either of them in terms of like and dislike, just hear the notes" mean the same as "Don't like or dislike either of them, just hear the notes"? I'm not sure it's physically possible to do the latter.

Certainly one can withhold final judgement on a work while still recognizing that one likes or dislikes something.


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## Mahlerian

micro said:


> I think one shouldn't understand music theory, counterpart and other technical issues before he judges a work. Why a normal guy like myself fell instantly in love with Tchaikovsky's violin concerto or Brahms violin sonata no.3? I understand nothing about music but I ,and millions like me, can instantly judge these works as masterpieces. They can be easily detected as beautiful and sublime works.
> 
> The same people including me, if they are exposed to a avant garde masterpiece, like one of xenakis or john cage works, statistically, what would you expect? Let the ignorant peasants like me aside. If we resurrected the great Beethoven or the legendary Mozart today and made them listen to such works. What can we expect? I can at least expect rage and cursing from Beethoven.


But I don't find the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto particularly sublime at all. I find it to be one of the composer's worse pieces overall and an example of some of his bad habits indulged far too much. Beautiful? It has its moments, but I don't really find it all that beautiful, either.

On the other hand, Boulez's Le marteau sans Maitre is assuredly beautiful and sublime. Forget Xenakis or Cage, if Beethoven or Mozart had been exposed to Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, you can be sure that they would have considered it shockingly course and dissonant, and probably would have agreed with Hanslick that it was music that "stinks to the ear."


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## Wood

mmsbls said:


> Does "Don't judge either of them in terms of like and dislike, just hear the notes" mean the same as "Don't like or dislike either of them, just hear the notes"? I'm not sure it's physically possible to do the latter.


It is more a question of attitude when listening to the music rather than involuntary physical reactions. Hearing music without the aim of deciding whether to like or dislike it but merely accepting that it is objectively a high quality piece of work, in my experience, leads to greater musical appreciation.


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## SixFootScowl

I can't comprehend the concept of understanding a piece of music as a combination of various sounds into a unified whole. To me, either I like it or I don't. 

But I do appreciate the kind of understanding that comes from reading about a composer's life and learning some of the things that inspired that composer to write the work. For example, I just read that visiting the ruins of Holyrood Palace and saw the room where Rizzio was murdered in front of the pregnant Mary Stuart (Queen of Scots) at a dinner party and so the Scottish symphony was written in memory of Mary Queen of Scotts.


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## Mandryka

Nereffid said:


> The individuals I was talking about were not the people recommending I listen to something, but all individuals who decide whether or not to listen to any given music.
> 
> But the thing is, I'm thinking about all the people I know who like listening to classical music (or more specifically, those who like Bach, Machaut or Schoenberg), and all the people I know who say, _"oh well, not for me, let's move on", just as you might do with, for example, a ride in a theme park_, and I'm damned if I can see how the former are more civilised than the latter, or for that matter how they're somehow better, or better off, or happier, or whatever.


More civilised in the sense that their discernment and acuity has developed in a way which lets them appreciate Schoenberg etc.

Better off to the extent that becoming more discerning is an extra skill. An potential made actual.


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## violadude

Art Rock said:


> Option A: I don't like the music of composer X. Let's spend a lot of time trying to understand it so maybe I will like it one day.
> Option B: I don't like the music of composer X. Let's switch to composer Y and see whether I like that, or switch to one of many, many composers that I know that I like.
> 
> Option B for me every time.


Hm, out of curiosity though, if it's option B every time. Do you never like pieces that you didn't like right away? I find that hard to believe considering the amount of music that you like.

I usually choose option A, so I'm not sure how that works.


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## scratchgolf

violadude said:


> Hm, out of curiosity though, if it's option B every time. Do you never like pieces that you didn't like right away? I find that hard to believe considering the amount of music that you like.
> 
> I usually choose option A, so I'm not sure how that works.


Or maybe Option A leads to Option B naturally. If we cannot define "a lot of time", and we cannot unless we compare it to X amount of time, then how can Option B not follow option A? To deny option A is to deny Option B and Option B cannot exist without Option A.

For example. I listened to Xenakis and did not like what I heard. I listened for 5 seconds and turned it off. Those 5 seconds were an attempt to maybe "understand" it one day (Option A). Then I switched to Cage (Option B) and I .........

So the only way Option A exists without Option B is if you're still currently listening to the first and only composer you have ever tried. Since literally no one on the site has heard only one composer, Option B has already happened for every single person on this site.

Another example is the Number 2 cannot exist without the Number 1. One cannot contain Two and Two cannot exist without One.


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## Pat Fairlea

Animal the Drummer said:


> I was with you on this until the last few words. I don't see an inability to understand and appreciate a particular composer's work as some kind of mistake - however great the composer, differences in personal taste don't seem to me to be matters for criticism. One example: Vaughan Williams could see the quality of Beethoven's music but couldn't stand listening to it. That may mystify me, but I couldn't regard it as somehow objectively "wrong".


I wholly agree. Music is an act of communication. If that communication fails, the fault, if any, lies as much with the transmitter as with the receiver. It is not unreasonable to criticise the 'quality' of a piece of music because it fails to convey anything to that particular listener, just so long as we all accept that appreciation of music is subjective and individual. I can't be doing with the Beatles or Bruckner, but quite accept that others will differ. It doesn't mean, I hope, that I am somehow lacking in my 'understanding' of the music. That's the sort of solipsism that leads some proponents of serialist music to treat those of us who don't appreciate it as dunderheads who simply lack the knowledge or refined cognitive sensibilities to recognise the technical and innovative genius of the music. In criticising the 'quality' of a piece of music, I might be able to pick out some specific justification (clumsy reiteration of themes, predictable orchestration), but more likely all I mean is that the piece has failed to communicate with me.

To put that another way, I don't know much about music, but I know what I like (and don't)!


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## Nereffid

Mandryka said:


> More civilised in the sense that their discernment and acuity has developed in a way which lets them appreciate Schoenberg etc.
> 
> Better off to the extent that becoming more discerning is an extra skill. An potential made actual.


So if I you develop your discernment and acuity in a way that lets you appreciate Einaudi, you are more civilised than someone who doesn't appreciate Einaudi...? Probably not what you meant. Presumably there's a list somewhere of exactly what's included in that "etc". I'm guessing it's been drawn up by the civilised people.


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## Mahlerian

Pat Fairlea said:


> I wholly agree. Music is an act of communication. If that communication fails, the fault, if any, lies as much with the transmitter as with the receiver. It is not unreasonable to criticise the 'quality' of a piece of music because it fails to convey anything to that particular listener, just so long as we all accept that appreciation of music is subjective and individual. I can't be doing with the Beatles or Bruckner, but quite accept that others will differ. It doesn't mean, I hope, that I am somehow lacking in my 'understanding' of the music. That's the sort of solipsism that leads some proponents of serialist music to treat those of us who don't appreciate it as dunderheads who simply lack the knowledge or refined cognitive sensibilities to recognise the technical and innovative genius of the music. In criticising the 'quality' of a piece of music, I might be able to pick out some specific justification (clumsy reiteration of themes, predictable orchestration), but more likely all I mean is that the piece has failed to communicate with me.
> 
> To put that another way, I don't know much about music, but I know what I like (and don't)!


Speaking for myself, I don't see people who criticize serial music as "dunderheads" or as needing some special knowledge or sensibilities. It has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with experience.

People who say that Schoenberg's music has no melodies are factually wrong, of course, but they're not wrong because they're stupid, they're wrong because they haven't taken the time to familiarize themselves with the idiom before launching into criticisms of it.


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## violadude

scratchgolf said:


> Or maybe Option A leads to Option B naturally. If we cannot define "a lot of time", and we cannot unless we compare it to X amount of time, then how can Option B not follow option A? To deny option A is to deny Option B and Option B cannot exist without Option A.
> 
> For example. I listened to Xenakis and did not like what I heard. I listened for 5 seconds and turned it off. Those 5 seconds were an attempt to maybe "understand" it one day (Option A). Then I switched to Cage (Option B) and I .........
> 
> So the only way Option A exists without Option B is if you're still currently listening to the first and only composer you have ever tried. Since literally no one on the site has heard only one composer, Option B has already happened for every single person on this site.
> 
> Another example is the Number 2 cannot exist without the Number 1. One cannot contain Two and Two cannot exist without One.


Or maybe option A and option B aren't the only options? I mean, I just find it hard to believe that people just sit around listening to piece after piece for a few minutes and instantly deciding they don't like it. I thought it was pretty common knowledge in the Classical Music Community that many of the best pieces take time to fully appreciate.


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## scratchgolf

violadude said:


> Or maybe option A and option B aren't the only options? I mean, I just find it hard to believe that people just sit around listening to piece after piece for a few minutes and instantly deciding they don't like it. I thought it was pretty common knowledge in the Classical Music Community that many of the best pieces take time to fully appreciate.


You and I both seem to believe this. However, scrolling through the most recent topics here, there are more repetitions than a Schubert piece. Some people move on faster than others. After all, we are just organisms, bouncing into things and deciding what feels good to us and what does not. Sometimes we bounce into something a 2nd time and it feels better than the 1st time. And what feels good to some does not to others. How else can you explain people eating mushrooms?


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## Mahlerian

violadude said:


> Or maybe option A and option B aren't the only options? I mean, I just find it hard to believe that people just sit around listening to piece after piece for a few minutes and instantly deciding they don't like it. I thought it was pretty common knowledge in the Classical Music Community that many of the best pieces take time to fully appreciate.


I know I returned to things that I had thought were not for me, only to find that they were. You never know exactly how your tastes might change in the future.


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## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> But I don't find the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto particularly sublime at all. I find it to be one of the composer's worse pieces overall and an example of some of his bad habits indulged far too much. Beautiful? It has its moments, but I don't really find it all that beautiful, either.
> 
> On the other hand, Boulez's Le marteau sans Maitre is assuredly beautiful and sublime. Forget Xenakis or Cage, if Beethoven or Mozart had been exposed to Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, you can be sure that they would have considered it shockingly course and dissonant, and probably would have agreed with Hanslick that it was music that "stinks to the ear."


I agree about the Tchaikvosky. However, Boulez's Le marteau sans Maitre "is assuredly" rolleyes enormously tedious and uninteresting.


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## Mandryka

Nereffid said:


> So if I you develop your discernment and acuity in a way that lets you appreciate Einaudi, you are more civilised than someone who doesn't appreciate Einaudi...? Probably not what you meant. Presumably there's a list somewhere of exactly what's included in that "etc". I'm guessing it's been drawn up by the civilised people.


You have a certain civilisation, surely, if you appreciate Einaudi. Look I'm guessing there's a community which pretty consistently and articulately discerns the value in what he does, so of course if you can acquire that discernment that's a good thing.

The problem will come when cultures don't sit easily with each other (sorry for the metaphor.) Einaudi and Schoenberg lets say for the sake of argument. There's a fascinating area of logic to be investigated there. But maybe not tonight.


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## Mahlerian

EdwardBast said:


> I agree about the Tchaikvosky. However, Boulez's Le marteau sans Maitre "is assuredly" rolleyes enormously tedious and uninteresting.


Well, you can keep your sarcasm and your Shostakovich, and I'll enjoy my Boulez.

My whole point was that not everyone is moved by the same things, so claims of universality for a warhorse like the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto are not going to apply to everyone.


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## Wood

Pat Fairlea said:


> I wholly agree. Music is an act of communication. If that communication fails, the fault, if any, lies as much with the transmitter as with the receiver. It is not unreasonable to criticise the 'quality' of a piece of music because it fails to convey anything to that particular listener, just so long as we all accept that appreciation of music is subjective and individual. I can't be doing with the Beatles or Bruckner, but quite accept that others will differ. It doesn't mean, I hope, that I am somehow lacking in my 'understanding' of the music*. That's the sort of solipsism that leads some proponents of serialist music to treat those of us who don't appreciate it as dunderheads who simply lack the knowledge or refined cognitive sensibilities to recognise the technical and innovative genius of the music.* In criticising the 'quality' of a piece of music, I might be able to pick out some specific justification (clumsy reiteration of themes, predictable orchestration), but more likely all I mean is that the piece has failed to communicate with me.
> 
> To put that another way, I don't know much about music, but I know what I like (and don't)!


Who said that????


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## Bulldog

There are some folks who regularly listen to a new work at least a few times before making a decision to drop it; even then, many will get back to the work/composer a few months or years later to give it another spin. At the other end, some people give a work a few short minutes and move on. I don't consider one approach any better than the other. After all, as listeners we can do whatever the hell we want. 

Some days I'm keen to hear new music; on other days just the mention of a Boulez or Stockhausen makes me grimace.


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## Art Rock

violadude said:


> Hm, out of curiosity though, if it's option B every time. Do you never like pieces that you didn't like right away? I find that hard to believe considering the amount of music that you like.
> 
> I usually choose option A, so I'm not sure how that works.


To be clear, I am not dissing composer A (or selected compositions) based on a few minutes. Take Beethoven's 9th. I must have listened to that voluntarily at least ten times if not more (plus countless involuntary exposures). I don't like it. Since most experts and many others love it, should I keep on listening to it until I "get it" (whatever that means)? No, thanks.

I have listened several times to my 7 Handel CD's, including a recent re-try. Simply not for me. Again, I don't see the point of keeping listening to Handel.

Wrt repeated listening, yes, most of my favourite composers and compositions get even more appreciation from me after frequent re-listening. But I can't think of any example where my initial reaction was "no" and it turned to a "yes" after a few more listens.


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## mmsbls

Wood said:


> It is more a question of attitude when listening to the music rather than involuntary physical reactions. Hearing music without the aim of deciding whether to like or dislike it but merely accepting that it is objectively a high quality piece of work, in my experience, leads to greater musical appreciation.


Completely agree.


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## hpowders

Why make this stuff needlessly complicated? Do you analyze Johnny Mercer this way?

Just soak in the notes and enjoy!


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## KenOC

Wood said:


> Who said that????


Nobody seems to know who said it first, but it's quite old.

"I don't pretend to know much about art; But I know what pleases." New York Times - May 28, 1880


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## millionrainbows

I have a different twist on mystery. I think a work of art is not interesting unless it has some element of mystery. That's what kept me listening to contemporary music; I didn't understand it.

Now that I understand more about it, I wonder about the other elements that are still a mystery, like "how the hell did he do that?"


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## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> People who say that Schoenberg's music has no melodies are factually wrong, of course, but they're not wrong because they're stupid, they're wrong because they haven't taken the time to familiarize themselves with the idiom before launching into criticisms of it.


Or perhaps they have an intuitive idea about the nature of melody and the meaning of the term that is different from yours.


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## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> Well, you can keep your sarcasm and your Shostakovich, and I'll enjoy my Boulez.
> 
> My whole point was that not everyone is moved by the same things, so claims of universality for a warhorse like the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto are not going to apply to everyone.


My whole point was that it is amusing to hear someone reject universality and argue for the relativism of taste with respect to Tchaikovsky while telling us that Boulez "is assuredly beautiful and sublime."

And what is it with you and Shostakovich? Somewhere along the line you seem to have gotten it into your head that he was my favorite composer or something. I'm not sure why. I certainly never said that.


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## Mahlerian

EdwardBast said:


> Or perhaps they have an intuitive idea about the nature of melody and the meaning of the term that is different from yours.


There's no definition of melody that can include the melodies of Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven while excluding Schoenberg's music. If they tried to expand on their intuitive ideas, they would run into a brick wall where the only reason they were excluding Schoenberg is because they didn't want Schoenberg in particular to be included.


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## Mahlerian

EdwardBast said:


> My whole point was that it is amusing to hear someone reject universality and argue for the relativism of taste with respect to Tchaikovsky while telling us that Boulez "is assuredly beautiful and sublime."
> 
> And what is it with you and Shostakovich? Somewhere along the line you seem to have gotten it into your head that he was my favorite composer or something. I'm not sure why. I certainly never said that.


I'm not arguing for a relativism of taste, I'm explaining a difference in perception. I am by no means a relativist. As for Shostakovich, he is merely a convenient example of a composer that you admire greatly and I do not (though he wrote some fine pieces, to be sure).


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## Woodduck

"Understanding" music can mean several things, but whatever it means it exists along a continuum. Wherever along the continuum our understanding falls, deciding whether we've understood "enough" is neither a scientific nor a moral matter. It's just a question of our personal inclinations and values. I find there's too much music, and too little time, to worry about it. 

I was likely to spend more time "figuring out" a piece of music when I was young and didn't know much music, or much about it. When you're receiving a lot of new information every time you listen - hearing new things to respond to - your feelings about the music may change noticeably. Not much escapes my ear now (attaching names to what I hear may take longer, but isn't necessary for musical perception), and so I quickly take in the qualities of a work that will determine my response to it. Most music that I deem to be well-written will sound well-written right off the bat; good music is generally strong and arresting from its first notes. That's no guarantee that I'll like a piece, of course, but if it's going to strike me as interesting it will begin to interest me before I'm far into it. If a piece doesn't seem to be delivering the goods in what I feel to be a reasonable time, I'll be asking whether it's a work I might want to try again some time, or whether I'd rather not waste the time at all.

For me, it rarely happens that repeated listening changes radically my feelings about a work, even over the long term. What it may do is reduce the strangeness or unpleasantness of my first exposure; I simply get used to the sounds, or perhaps perceive some structural elements that can entertain my mind even while my basic feeling response doesn't change much. Music is very personal; it reaches some very deep-seated places in us, and our responses to it tend to be fairly tenacious over periods of years simply because our emotional makeup is slow to change too. We do change, and our musical tastes change accordingly, but I find this has more to do with natural personal development than with determined efforts to "understand" music.


----------



## Wood

KenOC said:


> Nobody seems to know who said it first, but it's quite old.
> 
> "I don't pretend to know much about art; But I know what pleases." New York Times - May 28, 1880


'Scuse me? What does that have to do with this?

*That's the sort of solipsism that leads some proponents of serialist music to treat those of us who don't appreciate it as dunderheads who simply lack the knowledge or refined cognitive sensibilities to recognise the technical and innovative genius of the music.*


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## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> There's no definition of melody that can include the melodies of Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven while excluding Schoenberg's music. If they tried to expand on their intuitive ideas, they would run into a brick wall where the only reason they were excluding Schoenberg is because they didn't want Schoenberg in particular to be included.


To be fair the most common definitions of melody includes those of Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven while excluding Schoenberg's music for many, if not most, people. Looking up the definition I find:



> a pleasing series of musical notes that form the main part of a song or piece of music


Merriam-Webster



> A pleasing succession or arrangement of sounds


The Free Dictionary

Admittedly these are not music theory definitions such as:



> a rhythmic succession of single tones organized as an aesthetic whole


Merriam-Webster

The point is melody has a technical and a generic definition, and it's not unreasonable for people to use the generic definition and to believe that Mozart's music has melodies whereas Schoenberg's does not.


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## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> To be fair the most common definitions of melody includes those of Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven while excluding Schoenberg's music for many, if not most, people. Looking up the definition I find:
> 
> The point is melody has a technical and a generic definition, and it's not unreasonable for people to use the generic definition and to believe that Mozart's music has melodies whereas Schoenberg's does not.


But by those definitions, Mozart's music cannot be said to have melodies any more than Schoenberg's, because whether or not a sequence of notes is pleasing is merely in the ear of the listener.

Furthermore, I'd wager that, shorn of other context, the average listener would perceive Schoenberg's melodies as melodies. The only reason why not everyone does is because of an unfamiliar harmonic context combined with a densely contrapuntal idiom that makes it difficult for them to isolate and separate the important lines, without which they cannot hope to retain them in the memory.


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## Vaneyes

Re classical, I discriminate with or without "understanding". There are only 24 hours in a day, 8 of which are for sleeping. And a good portion of the rest for various tasks and unrelated pleasures. Sorry, Pugg, some must go.


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## KenOC

Wood said:


> 'Scuse me? What does that have to do with this?


It was a response to your question, "Who said that????", which I assumed you were asking about the last line of the post your were responding to: "To put that another way, I don't know much about music, but I know what I like (and don't)!"


----------



## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> But by those definitions, Mozart's music cannot be said to have melodies any more than Schoenberg's, because whether or not a sequence of notes is pleasing is merely in the ear of the listener.


That's exactly the point. For most people melody is subjective (i.e. does it sound pleasing or not?).



Mahlerian said:


> Furthermore, I'd wager that, shorn of other context, the average listener would perceive Schoenberg's melodies as melodies.


I don't know what the average listener would say. I certainly never heard melodies in Schoenberg for quite a while. No one makes jokes about the melodies of Mozart or Beethoven like this one. We know Schoenberg, Berg, and others have melodies, but for many, it takes some time to hear them as such.


----------



## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> That's exactly the point. For most people melody is subjective (i.e. does it sound pleasing or not?).


Well, then once again, one can't say that melodies exist in Mozart any more than in Schoenberg by such a definition. So the point stands that no definition exists that includes Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven, but not Schoenberg.

At any rate, people do tend to understand what is meant by an "annoying melody," a "boring melody," a "bad melody," and other such terms, so I don't think that even the conventional colloquial definition is limited only to those things the listener finds pleasing.



mmsbls said:


> I don't know what the average listener would say. I certainly never heard melodies in Schoenberg for quite a while. No one makes jokes about the melodies of Mozart or Beethoven like this one. We know Schoenberg, Berg, and others have melodies, but for many, it takes some time to hear them as such.


Did you hear the pieces in full, or just the melodies out of context? The latter is what I'm referring to here.

The reason people make jokes like that stems from the same reason people make racist and sexist jokes. They dislike something and they want to take it down a notch without expressing their opinion directly. (Although actually that "12-tone Commercial," featuring almost no 12-tone music, is a decently amusing parody of old Time-Life collection ads.)

If you go back far enough you'll find some critic who complained that everything new in music was completely devoid of melody. Erik Satie wrote a joking list of "rules" of the school of Debussy where he told adherents to avoid any kind of melody whatsoever.


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## ArtMusic

Klassic said:


> someone says (for example), "I don't like the music of Pierre Boulez." This is fine, but the question is whether or not they understood it before they sought to reject it? Those of you who understand the music of Boulez will comprehend my meaning: understanding versus mystery. ...however, it is important to clarify that one can understand the music of Boulez and still dislike it. Understanding does not always equal appreciation, but disregard without understanding seems a bit premature.


A good question. But does the music need understanding of a particular type or knowledge or experience or whatever? If it does, then so be it, in which case the listener cannot be expected to know every time. Or if great music (such as those by Bach) are in fact complex (fugues, counterpoint etc.) but yet so accessible by anyone without much or any understanding of the complexities, then is understanding necessary?


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## violadude

Woodduck said:


> "Understanding" music can mean several things, but whatever it means it exists along a continuum. Wherever along the continuum our understanding falls, deciding whether we've understood "enough" is neither a scientific nor a moral matter. It's just a question of our personal inclinations and values. I find there's too much music, and too little time, to worry about it.
> 
> I was likely to spend more time "figuring out" a piece of music when I was young and didn't know much music, or much about it. When you're receiving a lot of new information every time you listen - hearing new things to respond to - your feelings about the music may change noticeably. Not much escapes my ear now (attaching names to what I hear may take longer, but isn't necessary for musical perception), and so I quickly take in the qualities of a work that will determine my response to it. Most music that I deem to be well-written will sound well-written right off the bat; good music is generally strong and arresting from its first notes. That's no guarantee that I'll like a piece, of course, but if it's going to strike me as interesting it will begin to interest me before I'm far into it. If a piece doesn't seem to be delivering the goods in what I feel to be a reasonable time, I'll be asking whether it's a work I might want to try again some time, or whether I'd rather not waste the time at all.
> 
> For me, it rarely happens that repeated listening changes radically my feelings about a work, even over the long term. What it may do is reduce the strangeness or unpleasantness of my first exposure; I simply get used to the sounds, or perhaps perceive some structural elements that can entertain my mind even while my basic feeling response doesn't change much. Music is very personal; it reaches some very deep-seated places in us, and our responses to it tend to be fairly tenacious over periods of years simply because our emotional makeup is slow to change too. We do change, and our musical tastes change accordingly, but I find this has more to do with natural personal development than with determined efforts to "understand" music.


You and I are exactly opposite on this issue then, and I find that interesting. It may surprise some people to know, since my taste in classical music is so varied, but I can probably count on my hand the number of works I found immediately gratifying. I usually get a little bored or my mind wanders on my first listen of a work. I usually only really love works after giving them a few listens or more. That's why I found/find it so baffling that so many people seem to listen once and stop. It goes against my natural disposition. If I took that approach I probably wouldn't be here now.


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## violadude

Art Rock said:


> To be clear, I am not dissing composer A (or selected compositions) based on a few minutes. Take Beethoven's 9th. I must have listened to that voluntarily at least ten times if not more (plus countless involuntary exposures). I don't like it. Since most experts and many others love it, should I keep on listening to it until I "get it" (whatever that means)? No, thanks.
> 
> I have listened several times to my 7 Handel CD's, including a recent re-try. Simply not for me. Again, I don't see the point of keeping listening to Handel.
> 
> Wrt repeated listening, yes, most of my favourite composers and compositions get even more appreciation from me after frequent re-listening. But I can't think of any example where my initial reaction was "no" and it turned to a "yes" after a few more listens.


Thank you for clarifying.


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## Woodduck

violadude said:


> You and I are exactly opposite on this issue then, and I find that interesting. It may surprise some people to know, since my taste in classical music is so varied, but I can probably count on my hand the number of works I found immediately gratifying. I usually get a little bored or my mind wanders on my first listen of a work. I usually only really love works after giving them a few listens or more. That's why I found/find it so baffling that so many people seem to listen once and stop. It goes against my natural disposition. If I took that approach I probably wouldn't be here now.


People's brains do work differently. Perhaps an important part of the difference is age. I've been listening to classical music for nearly six decades, and I used to have it going constantly (I can't stand to do that now; silence is golden!). As a student I was much more likely to repeat a listening experience, at least if there was something there that sounded interesting. I am a little surprised, though, that getting into a piece takes that much of an effort for you - and yet your musical perceptiveness can be so impressive; I've never encountered comments on Schumann as sharp, and as moving to me, as yours. Yeah, it just goes to show how differently brains work.


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## Woodduck

mmsbls said:


> For most people melody is subjective (i.e. does it sound pleasing or not?).
> 
> I don't know what the average listener would say. I certainly never heard melodies in Schoenberg for quite a while. No one makes jokes about the melodies of Mozart or Beethoven like this one. We know Schoenberg, Berg, and others have melodies, but for many, it takes some time to hear them as such.


"Sounding pleasing" is another way of saying "comprehensible and memorable as a distinct entity." The comprehensibility and memorability of a melody depend to a great extent on whether it traces or implies a comprehensible harmonic progression. It's one thing to say that a succession of tones is melody, as in "music has melody, harmony, and rhythm." It's another to feel that a given succession has meaningful progression and shape, and its harmonic implications have a lot to do with that. If the melodic gestures aren't taking you on a journey through a harmonic topography the ground plan of which you can follow, the musical lines will sound less "melodious" even if they create interesting patterns and forceful gestures. Clarity of harmonic progression and the differentiation of tonal levels not only contribute to melodic strength and distinctness but permit melodies to extend themselves almost endlessly in time: melody in non-tonal music tends to be fragmentary, because the tonal scaffolding which would support extended, interrelated, hierarchically structured melodic units adding up to a continuous, cumulative, well-defined melodic entity is absent.

When people say there's no melody in Schoenberg, they're incorrect, but they're not incorrect in hearing an enormous difference between this






and this


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## EarthBoundRules

I used to be very obsessive about listening to the same music ridiculous numbers of times to try and enhance my appreciation of it. These days I just listen to a piece once before deciding whether I like it or not, as I've found that my opinions rarely change that much.


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## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> Well, then once again, one can't say that melodies exist in Mozart any more than in Schoenberg by such a definition. So the point stands that no definition exists that includes Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven, but not Schoenberg.


I don't understand what this means. People use the generic subjective definition to say there are no "pleasing succession or arrangement of sounds" in Schoenberg but there are in Mozart. For them this means that there are no melodies in Schoenberg but there are in Mozart. Melodies for them are very different than melodies for you or me.

Those same people could also use Woodduck's phrase "comprehensible and memorable as a distinct entity." Many would find no (or very few) bars in Schoenberg that were comprehensible and memorable as a distinct entity, but they certainly do in Mozart. There's nothing right or wrong about this reaction.


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## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> I don't understand what this means. People use the generic subjective definition to say there are no "pleasing succession or arrangement of sounds" in Schoenberg but there are in Mozart. For them this means that there are no melodies in Schoenberg but there are in Mozart. Melodies for them are very different than melodies for you or me.
> 
> Those same people could also use Woodduck's phrase "comprehensible and memorable as a distinct entity." Many would find no (or very few) bars in Schoenberg that were comprehensible and memorable as a distinct entity, but they certainly do in Mozart. There's nothing right or wrong about this reaction.


My point is that if the definition of melody is subjective, then it is no more correct to say that there is no melody in Mozart than to say the same of Schoenberg. If the question of whether or not a melody exists at all is dependent on the perceiver, then naturally there is no criterion by which to say melodies do not exist in a given thing that cannot be applied to some other thing as well. The fact that you can't conceive of hearing Mozart without melodies is irrelevant, because I can't conceive of Schoenberg without melody, and anyone who doesn't hear the melodies in Schoenberg's music isn't perceiving Schoenberg the way they would if they understood it.

Now, if people used that definition to say they didn't personally hear melodies in Schoenberg, that's different. That just means they haven't listened to enough Schoenberg to perceive his music correctly, not that they're perceiving what I'm calling his melodies and judging them not to be melodies.

That may sound overly harsh, but you have to understand the utter absurdity of suggesting that Schoenberg's music isn't filled with melodies. It is like telling somebody that there is no horse in this:










And insisting on it to the bitter end, even past when it has been shown conclusively that there is a horse there.


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## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> My point is that if the definition of melody is subjective, then it is no more correct to say that there is no melody in Mozart than to say the same of Schoenberg.


That's not quite true. Many definitions are subjective - big, pretty, mountain. Even though pretty is subjective, if 99 out of 100 people believe that person A is prettier than person B, I think most would believe it's correct to say "A is prettier than B."

I'm just pointing out that I understand how people can use their definition, in good faith, to believe that Schoenberg's music does not have melodies. But I think we've drifted a bit far. After all you and I both believe Schoenberg's music has melodies.


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## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> That's not quite true. Many definitions are subjective - big, pretty, mountain. Even though pretty is subjective, if 99 out of 100 people believe that person A is prettier than person B, I think most would believe it's correct to say "A is prettier than B."


That's a comparative. We're not talking about how much Schoenberg's melodies fit one's idea of melody, we're talking about whether or not there is anything there to be identified as melody in the first place.

It doesn't depend on the individual observer to say that the above Marc painting has a horse as its subject, right? How can one say that it is up to the individual observer to identify whether or not a piece of music has a subject (ie a melody or theme)? It makes just as little sense.

Naturally one can imagine situations in which an observer does not _perceive_ the horse, or is unnerved by the odd coloration (my example was not by any means chosen haphazardly), but none in which their not perceiving a horse should lead us to question whether or not one can say that a horse is present in the painting.



mmsbls said:


> I'm just pointing out that I understand how people can use their definition, in good faith, to believe that Schoenberg's music does not have melodies. But I think we've drifted a bit far. After all you and I both believe Schoenberg's music has melodies.


And I'm trying to explain how there is no possible definition of melody, minus ad hoc additions, that does not also include Schoenberg. Like I said, anyone who would judge Schoenberg's music devoid of melodies is not informed enough to have an opinion about his melodies.

I could prove to ANY observer who isn't incurably biased against Schoenberg that his melodies are melodies just by playing them in isolation. They have every single characteristic which one normally associates with melodies, from distinctive contour to rhythmic unity and especially coherence.


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## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> We're not talking about how much Schoenberg's melodies fit one's idea of melody, we're talking about whether or not there is anything there to be identified as melody in the first place.


Sorry to butt in, but I've just read the last 12 hours of this thread and it seems that's what you _were_ talking about, at least at first:


EdwardBast said:


> Or perhaps they have an intuitive idea about the nature of melody and the meaning of the term that is different from yours.


Speaking from my own experience of first listening to classical music, I agree with EdwardBast and mmsbls, and would add that asking me then "does Schoenberg's music have melodies?" (for a given value of "Schoenberg", obv.) would have been somewhat analogous to "is there a horse in _this_ picture?"








In order for you to convince me that those notes constituted a _proper melody_, you would first have had to convince me to change my definition of a melody. And by "definition" in fact I don't mean "definition" because people don't go through life clutching rigid definitions, they deal in roughly delineated concepts; but let's just continue using the term "definition" anyway.

So in this scenario my "horse" is specifically what scientists would call _Equus ferus_, whereas yours is just any member of the genus _Equus_. Before I'll change my definition of "horse" to allow that your zebra is also a horse, there's going to be a lot of to-and-fro, and me saying things like "oh for f- sake, any idiot can see that thing has stripes and is therefore not a horse!"

Before you point out the obvious flaws in the analogy, let me just make it clear that this is _how it may seem to someone who doesn't think Schoenberg's music has melodies_: a zebra is not a horse. Ultimately it is demonstrable that a zebra is indeed a horse, but still: a zebra is not a horse.


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## Wood

KenOC said:


> It was a response to your question, "Who said that????", which I assumed you were asking about the last line of the post your were responding to: "To put that another way, I don't know much about music, but I know what I like (and don't)!"


It was the bolded bit that I was responding to.


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## Guest

Nereffid said:


> asking me then "does Schoenberg's music have melodies?" (for a given value of "Schoenberg", obv.) would have been somewhat analogous to "is there a horse in _this_ picture?"
> View attachment 88222


I like the shift in the business of defining that you signal. It prompts other thoughts, such as this

View attachment 88223


or this

View attachment 88224


or this

View attachment 88225


Where this takes us with the business of 'understanding', I'm not quite sure.


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## violadude

If Schoenberg's music doesn't have melodies, then I don't know what I've been singing in the shower all this time.


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## Guest

violadude said:


> If Schoenberg's music doesn't have melodies, then I don't know what I've been singing in the shower all this time.


If that's an invitation to come and join you in the shower to help determine, include me out!


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## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> That's a comparative. We're not talking about how much Schoenberg's melodies fit one's idea of melody,


OK so here's the problem. I _am exactly talking_ about how much Schoenberg's music fit's _some_ people's idea (or definition) of melody, but you are not. You are saying that the generic (subjective) dictionary definition of melody cannot be accepted as a definition. I'm simply saying that many (most?) people do define it that way.



Mahlerian said:


> I could prove to ANY observer who isn't incurably biased against Schoenberg that his melodies are melodies just by playing them in isolation. They have every single characteristic which one normally associates with melodies, from distinctive contour to rhythmic unity and especially coherence.


I think not unless you force them to use your definition, and even then I doubt it. And resorting to the fallback that they are therefore "incurably biased against Schoenberg" would be silly since overwhelmingly they would not know who Schoenberg is. Years ago I heard several Second Viennese School melodies played in isolation (piano). They sounded random to me. I would never have thought they constituted melodies. I assure you that coherence would be one of the last characteristics I would have associated with them. The only way I would agree that they were melodies is by using the objective definition, and I would have thought that definition was pretty useless since it includes every set of notes. Now maybe you think that I was incurably biased against Schoenberg, but that would be false.

Now, obviously I do not feel the same way. I have learned to hear the music differently so I now do hear melodies. But I did not before (by the subjective definition or "comprehensible and memorable as a distinct entity").


----------



## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> OK so here's the problem. I _am exactly talking_ about how much Schoenberg's music fit's _some_ people's idea (or definition) of melody, but you are not. You are saying that the generic (subjective) dictionary definition of melody cannot be accepted as a definition. I'm simply saying that many (most?) people do define it that way.


I'm trying to explain that the way most people define it shouldn't be important at all. If most people want to claim that Beethoven's Fifth is a song, they can, but they're still wrong, even though it fits their subjective definition of song as meaning "any piece of music."

I'm not saying that they are not correct by their own subjective definition, I'm saying that their subjective definition has no bearing whatsoever on the truth of the matter and, furthermore, that any recourse to subjectivity will make it so that every sequence of notes is potentially a melody or not.



mmsbls said:


> I think not unless you force them to use your definition, and even then I doubt it.


Like I said, my definition is probably pretty much the same as anyone else's.



mmsbls said:


> And resorting to the fallback that they are therefore "incurably biased against Schoenberg" would be silly since overwhelmingly they would not know who Schoenberg is. Years ago I heard several Second Viennese School melodies played in isolation (piano). They sounded random to me. I would never have thought they constituted melodies.


Melodies or tone rows? People often confuse the two for some reason I cannot fathom, and continue to make jokes about how the composers expected listeners to go around whistling 12-tone rows on the street, which is idiotic.


----------



## GreenMamba

mmsbls said:


> Now, obviously I do not feel the same way. I have learned to hear the music differently so I now do hear melodies. But I did not before (by the subjective definition or "comprehensible and memorable as a distinct entity").


But doesn't this support the notion that the melodies have always been there? Your ears didn't suddenly add them.

This could all be avoided if critics just said "Schoenberg doesn't write melodies I like" or Schoenberg didn't write catchy tunes" (both clearly subjective).

I've heard non-Classical fans claim that certain Classical pieces "lack rhythm." They clearly are thinking of heavy beats. Are they not wrong, however?


----------



## Mahlerian

GreenMamba said:


> But doesn't this support the notion that the melodies have always been there? Your ears didn't suddenly add them.
> 
> This could all be avoided if critics just said "Schoenberg doesn't write melodies I like" or Schoenberg didn't write catchy tunes" (both clearly subjective).
> 
> I've heard non-Classical fans claim that certain Classical pieces "lack rhythm." They clearly are thinking of heavy beats. Are they not wrong, however?


Yes, I would say that I did not always hear the melodies in Schoenberg (though I did hear some of them in some works). It was not that my definition of melody ever changed, but rather that I became able to hear the things that were already there that fit the definition of melody that I had.

Really, the reason why people say there is no melody in Schoenberg, and persist in saying it in the face of anyone correcting them, is because they wish to validate their own subjective perceptions.


----------



## Nereffid

GreenMamba said:


> But doesn't this support the notion that the melodies have always been there? Your ears didn't suddenly add them.
> 
> This could all be avoided if critics just said "Schoenberg doesn't write melodies I like" or Schoenberg didn't write catchy tunes" (both clearly subjective).
> 
> I've heard non-Classical fans claim that certain Classical pieces "lack rhythm." They clearly are thinking of heavy beats. Are they not wrong, however?


The problem could _not_ be avoided by people saying "Schoenberg doesn't write melodies I like", because the problem is that according to these people's concept of melody, what Schoenberg wrote was not melodies. 
Zebras are not horses, unless your definition of horses includes zebras.


----------



## Mahlerian

Nereffid said:


> The problem could _not_ be avoided by people saying "Schoenberg doesn't write melodies I like", because the problem is that according to these people's concept of melody, what Schoenberg wrote was not melodies.
> Zebras are not horses, unless your definition of horses includes zebras.


No, that isn't the problem. The problem is that they are not in a position from which they can judge Schoenberg's melodies as melodies or not.


----------



## Magnum Miserium

Klassic said:


> Understanding does not always equal appreciation, but disregard without understanding seems a bit premature.


Wagner for one would probably say regard has to precede understanding. ("Ich fühl's und kann's nicht versteh'n.")


----------



## Dim7

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, I would say that I did not always hear the melodies in Schoenberg (though I did hear some of them in some works).


What do you mean by that you didn't hear melodies in Schoenberg?


----------



## Mahlerian

Dim7 said:


> What do you mean by that you didn't hear melodies in Schoenberg?


I mean that there was a time when I missed the melodies that are there because I was not used to the language. It's not strange. The same thing happened to me with certain pieces by Mahler and Debussy. I see people here who don't hear melodies in Tristan, for example. It doesn't make me wonder whether or not the melodies in the work fit or don't fit their subjective definition.

Like I said before, it is not that my definition of melody changed, it was a case of my previously not being in a position from which to judge at all.


----------



## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> No, that isn't the problem. The problem is that they are not in a position from which they can judge Schoenberg's melodies as melodies or not.


But still, it doesn't matter whether you or I think they're not in a position to judge them, they're already judging. As far as they're concerned, they _are_ in a position to judge. Maybe we could call it the Dunning-Krueger effect in action; but I think it's more complicated than that because on top of the factual existence of Schoenbergian melodies, which they can be wrong about, there's also an aesthetic judgement, which is an ear-of-the-beholder thing.


----------



## Mahlerian

Nereffid said:


> But still, it doesn't matter whether you or I think they're not in a position to judge them, they're already judging. As far as they're concerned, they _are_ in a position to judge. Maybe we could call it the Dunning-Krueger effect in action; but I think it's more complicated than that because on top of the factual existence of Schoenbergian melodies, which they can be wrong about, there's also an aesthetic judgement, which is an ear-of-the-beholder thing.


The fact that someone is producing judgements doesn't in any way imply that those judgements have any relevance to the issue. In the last year or so there has been a new crop of conspiracy theorists propping up the idea that the Earth is flat. Their proof for this consists of simple observation and disbelieving anything the scientific establishment says on the basis that the scientific establishment were the ones who said it.

If someone looks out and they say "Gee, the Earth looks flat to me," we don't start taking their observation as pertinent to the question of the shape of the Earth. Any such observer is not in a position (literally) to judge.

I agree that there is a subjective aesthetic element, and obviously not everyone who hears Schoenberg's melodies will like his music, but my dislike for music such as Ernst Boehe's or Dittersdorf's has never led me to conclude that it lacks melodies. I don't think we should leave discussions of objective elements up to subjectivity.


----------



## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> There's no definition of melody that can include the melodies of Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven while excluding Schoenberg's music.


Of course there is!: The colloquial one for which "tune" is a synonym. Roughly, a sequence of pitches analogous to a sentence in language, articulated by clear punctuation, grammar and closure. It is probably the most widely understood and accepted definition on the planet.


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## Mahlerian

EdwardBast said:


> Of course there is!: The colloquial one for which "tune" is a synonym. Roughly, a sequence of pitches analogous to a sentence in language, articulated by clear punctuation, grammar and closure. It is probably the most widely understood and accepted definition on the planet.


So, like the melodies of Schoenberg, then. They have clear articulation, internal coherence, and full closure as well.


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## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> The fact that someone is producing judgements doesn't in any way imply that those judgements have any relevance to the issue. In the last year or so there has been a new crop of conspiracy theorists propping up the idea that the Earth is flat. Their proof for this consists of simple observation and disbelieving anything the scientific establishment says on the basis that the scientific establishment were the ones who said it.
> 
> If someone looks out and they say "Gee, the Earth looks flat to me," we don't start taking their observation as pertinent to the question of the shape of the Earth. Any such observer is not in a position (literally) to judge.
> 
> I agree that there is a subjective aesthetic element, and obviously not everyone who hears Schoenberg's melodies will like his music, but my dislike for music such as Ernst Boehe's or Dittersdorf's has never led me to conclude that it lacks melodies. I don't think we should leave discussions of objective elements up to subjectivity.


But I thought the issue _was_ the judgements, not whether there are or aren't melodies in Schoenberg's music.

Again:


EdwardBast said:


> Or perhaps they have an intuitive idea about the nature of melody and the meaning of the term that is different from yours.


I think we're all agreed that Schoenberg's music contains melodies, and what we're arguing over is why someone who thinks it doesn't should think that way.

I think you may have it bass-ackwards anyway, because it's not about someone's dislike for X's music leading them to conclude that it lacks melodies, it's about someone failing to hear any melodies and concluding that this is why they dislike X's music.


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## Balthazar

EdwardBast said:


> Of course there is!: The colloquial one for which "tune" is a synonym. Roughly, a sequence of pitches analogous to a sentence in language, articulated by clear punctuation, grammar and closure. It is probably the most widely understood and accepted definition on the planet.


That definition would include the opening phrase of Schoenberg's Piano Concerto (for starters).


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## Mahlerian

Nereffid said:


> But I thought the issue _was_ the judgements, not whether there are or aren't melodies in Schoenberg's music.


It was whether or not a definition of melody would necessarily include Schoenberg if it includes composers before him.



Nereffid said:


> I think we're all agreed that Schoenberg's music contains melodies, and what we're arguing over is why someone who thinks it doesn't should think that way.


So we are agreed that any definition of melody (that includes the masters of the past) will also include Schoenberg's melodies? Because I thought that was the point under contention. It's not why people think what they do so much as the rationalization used to justify it.



Nereffid said:


> I think you may have it bass-ackwards anyway, because it's not about someone's dislike for X's music leading them to conclude that it lacks melodies, it's about someone failing to hear any melodies and concluding that this is why they dislike X's music.


The initial reaction is not the important part. The important part is the continued persistence in a false belief despite the presentation of evidence that disconfirms it.


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## Nereffid

EdwardBast said:


> Of course there is!: The colloquial one for which "tune" is a synonym. Roughly, a sequence of pitches analogous to a sentence in language, articulated by clear punctuation, grammar and closure. It is probably the most widely understood and accepted definition on the planet.


It's one of those "I know it when I hear it" sort of things; the problem is that not everyone hears things the same way. But _most_ people seem to.

A short article on modern music by Michael Oliver in the 2003 _Gramophone Good CD Guide_ puts it usefully:
"Most melodies of the classical and romantic periods are either relatively short, spanning an even number of bars (often eight) or, when longer, proceed in closely inter-related phrases, again relatively short and usually of an even number of bars. These successive phrases often aid memorability by repeating a few notes from an earlier phrase... What we take to be a 'tuneless' melody may in fact be amply tuneful, but because it doesn't proceed in eight-bar phrases but is asymmetrical, because its rises and descents aren't those that we half expect and it doesn't repeat itself, it takes a little effort to grasp."
While arguing that the "colloquial" one, as you call it, isn't adequate, he's nonetheless acknowledging that it's an actual thing.


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## fluteman

Klassic said:


> someone says (for example), "I don't like the music of Pierre Boulez." This is fine, but the question is whether or not they understood it before they sought to reject it? Those of you who understand the music of Boulez will comprehend my meaning: understanding versus mystery. ...however, it is important to clarify that one can understand the music of Boulez and still dislike it. Understanding does not always equal appreciation, but disregard without understanding seems a bit premature.


I think it's always very much a two-way street. It is the artist's responsibility to reach and move his audience. If he fails, he has only himself to blame. However, it's perfectly reasonable for the artist to intend his work for, and direct his work to, an audience that is well-versed in the cultural, and even social, political and economic, contexts in which the work was created. There is nothing snobby or wrong in aiming for an audience that is sophisticated in that sense. They are the ones in a position to understand and appreciate the artist's message.

By the same token, if the work is a late 19th-century French opera, and you don't speak or understand French, and know little about late 19th-century France, you might still appreciate the opera, even if you don't fully understand everything the composer was trying to convey. After all, the libretto can be translated, and late 19th-century France isn't too wildly unfamiliar. And with a little study and listening experience, you can become a lot more familiar with that opera. But if the art work comes from sub-Saharan Africa, or 12th-century Japan or ancient Tibet, it might take a lot more study of cultural context to get something out of it. Whether you want to put in the effort is entirely your choice.

Avant garde artists produce work a bit like that of 12th century Japan. They are venturing out to the boundaries of their cultural context, well beyond the familiar comfort zone of most of the people around them. The risk of failure is great, but so is the potential reward - a great expansion of their society's cultural horizon. Again, the choice is your whether you want to attempt the journey. But it's pretty silly to ridicule those who do, especially where the avant garde artist in question has already found his audience and achieved that cultural expansion.


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## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> So, like the melodies of Schoenberg, then. They have clear articulation, internal coherence, and full closure as well.


You left out punctuation and, crucially, _grammar_. You could be right. I will reserve judgment until you explain the grammar and the nature of closure of melodies in his 12-tone music.


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## Woodduck

As a musician, acquainted with a technical, inclusive definition of "melody," I'm perfectly capable of peceiving that there is melody in Schoenberg's 12-tone works. The opening of his violin concerto - take, say, the first two minutes - has melody:






You can sing that in the shower. You can sing any succession of pitches in the shower, if you can remember them. I very much doubt, though, whether most people would be capable of remembering a succession of pitches like that. But they could probably remember on very brief acquaintance a melody like this:






or this:






or, with a little more difficulty, this:






It shouldn't be hard to hear what makes the Mendelssohn, the Sibelius, and the Bartok more memorable than the Schoenberg, though most people without musical training wouldn't be able to explain it. The question is whether most of us, who rely on our natural sense of what makes pitches hang together in something we recognize as a melody - our feeling for structure, internal relationships, balance, things having a beginning, a middle, and an end, progression toward a goal, pitches relating to an underlying harmonic plan and following each other in a way that feels logical and right - are talking nonsense when we say that the Mendelssohn, Sibelius and Bartok are melodious and the Schoenberg is not.

Technically, what the violin is playing in the Schoenberg is "the melody." But how well does it exemplify those qualities that make for clear, strong, memorable musical entities that make people say "That's a beautiful (or a charming, powerful, or haunting) melody," and have them singing in the shower without even realizing they're doing it? Pretty poorly, I'd say. Alongside that, arguments about the "correct definition" of melody are academic. One hears music, not definitions.


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## Mahlerian

EdwardBast said:


> You left out punctuation and, crucially, _grammar_. You could be right. I will reserve judgment until you explain the grammar and the nature of closure of melodies in his 12-tone music.


What is up with this obsession with theory? I feel the grammar and the closure of such melodies when I hear them. That I cannot explain why they are right doesn't in any way imply that they are less correct than things which are already understood.

Like Schoenberg, I hear and write music in intuitive terms, not in terms of theory.

Putting it a different way, I can't answer your question because the way I hear the grammar and the punctuation and the closure in a 12-tone work is exactly the same as in any other music (or any other non-common practice era music, anyway).


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## EdwardBast

Nereffid said:


> It's one of those "I know it when I hear it" sort of things; the problem is that not everyone hears things the same way. But _most_ people seem to.
> 
> A short article on modern music by Michael Oliver in the 2003 _Gramophone Good CD Guide_ puts it usefully:
> "Most melodies of the classical and romantic periods are either relatively short, spanning an even number of bars (often eight) or, when longer, proceed in closely inter-related phrases, again relatively short and usually of an even number of bars. These successive phrases often aid memorability by repeating a few notes from an earlier phrase... What we take to be a 'tuneless' melody may in fact be amply tuneful, but because it doesn't proceed in eight-bar phrases but is asymmetrical, because its rises and descents aren't those that we half expect and it doesn't repeat itself, it takes a little effort to grasp."
> While arguing that the "colloquial" one, as you call it, isn't adequate, he's nonetheless acknowledging that it's an actual thing.


Well, yes. That was my point. It is an actual thing. And it is therefore absurd to assert that there is no definition that distinguishes common-practice melodies, as colloquially heard and understood, and those of "atonal" and serial works.


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## Mahlerian

EdwardBast said:


> Well, yes. That was my point. It is an actual thing. And it is therefore absurd to assert that there is no definition that distinguishes common-practice melodies, as colloquially heard and understood, and those of "atonal" and serial works.


But no one has been saying that. Obviously there are differences in practice, and it is those differences which lead people to say that the one has no melody and the other does.

But those differences are not in any way related to the fundamental definition of what a melody is in general. They are much more related to the harmonic context and the degree of chromaticism present.


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## fluteman

EdwardBast said:


> You left out punctuation and, crucially, _grammar_. You could be right. I will reserve judgment until you explain the grammar and the nature of closure of melodies in his 12-tone music.


Interesting! One remarkable thing to me about Schoenberg's music is how arch-conservative much of it is, other than the single (admittedly profoundly important) innovation of abandoning the traditional western scale and formulating an entirely different melodic system. He was a real Brahms and Dvorak disciple.


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## Woodduck

GreenMamba said:


> But doesn't this support the notion that the melodies have always been there? Your ears didn't suddenly add them.
> 
> This could all be avoided if critics just said "Schoenberg doesn't write melodies I like" or Schoenberg didn't write catchy tunes" (both clearly subjective).
> 
> I've heard non-Classical fans claim that certain Classical pieces "lack rhythm." They clearly are thinking of heavy beats. Are they not wrong, however?


They are not wrong. _All_ music has rhythm, which means simply that its components succeed each other in time. But when people say that music lacks rhythm, they're making a relative judgment, not an absolute one - and so, relatively speaking, they are correct. Saying that some music lacks melody is correct in the same way.


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## Mahlerian

fluteman said:


> Interesting! One remarkable thing to me about Schoenberg's music is how arch-conservative much of it is, other than the single (admittedly profoundly important) innovation of abandoning the traditional western scale and formulating an entirely different melodic system. He was a real Brahms and Dvorak disciple.


Replace Dvorak with Mozart or Mahler there and I'm with you.

I love Schoenberg's music because it is the truest extension of common practice rhetoric, its way of constructing phrases and shaping harmonic arches, of just about any composer in the 20th century. That and I'm a sucker for ingenious thematic/motivic development.


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## Magnum Miserium

fluteman said:


> One remarkable thing to me about Schoenberg's music is how arch-conservative much of it is, other than the single (admittedly profoundly important) innovation of abandoning the traditional western scale and formulating an entirely different melodic system. He was a real Brahms and Dvorak disciple.


True, but it's important to keep in mind that the "athematic" works of his Expressionist period are a _major_ exception.


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## Dim7

fluteman said:


> Interesting! One remarkable thing to me about Schoenberg's music is how arch-conservative much of it is, other than the single (admittedly profoundly important) innovation of abandoning the traditional western scale and formulating an entirely different melodic system. He was a real Brahms and Dvorak disciple.


It's more conservative than most people realize maybe - but works like Suite for piano op. 25 do not sound bizarre to the conservative ear merely because they lack traditional tonality.


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## fluteman

Magnum Miserium said:


> True, but it's important to keep in mind that the "athematic" works of his Expressionist period are a _major_ exception.


Yes, indeed. I wanted to avoid those thickets, that's why I said "much of it". I see one has to watch one's step around here. But I'll hang in, I enjoy many of the posts I'm reading.


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## mmsbls

GreenMamba said:


> But doesn't this support the notion that the melodies have always been there? Your ears didn't suddenly add them.


Actually this is a very interesting point. If one believes that melodies are defined objectively solely on the music, then you are correct. I do not believe that. I think melodies are defined because human brains hear music and respond to certain segments differently than to others. Melodies arise due to the interaction between the music and brain states. By this view melodies are subjective.

I would say that I heard no melodies in Schoenberg (or other Second Viennese School composers) because nothing I heard and interpreted matched my definition of melody. Later, using the same definition, I did hear melodies because my brain interpreted the music differently. I was able to hear segments that were comprehensible and memorable as a distinct entity. Before I could not. My brain _did_ suddenly add them.

I guess it would be correct to say that Schoenberg's music contains segments that some people's brains hear and interpret as melodies but that other people's brains do not (using the same subjective definition). The question then is who gets to decide. _If 90% (or some large number) of all people believe there are no melodies by this subjective definition_, it seems odd to state definitively that there are melodies unless one uses a different definition.


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## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> No, that isn't the problem. The problem is that they are not in a position from which they can judge Schoenberg's melodies as melodies or not.


To me that's like saying there are people who are not in a position from which they can judge whether someone is tall or not. Everyone can judge whether someone is tall, but people will differ on what they believe tall is.


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## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> To me that's like saying there are people who are not in a position from which they can judge whether someone is tall or not. Everyone can judge whether someone is tall, but people will differ on what they believe tall is.


No, because the problem is not that they have perceived Schoenberg's melodies and judged them unmelodic so much as that they have not been able to distinguish much of anything from a group of notes and assume that there are no connections between them. I am sure people who say they do not perceive melodies are telling the truth, but that is a result of their not being able to perceive them, not a result of something being lacking in the music.


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## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> What is up with this obsession with theory? I feel the grammar and the closure of such melodies when I hear them. That I cannot explain why they are right doesn't in any way imply that they are less correct than things which are already understood.


If you can't explain the common ground allegedly uniting melody in Schoenberg's 12-tone music and that of Mozart, Bach and Beethoven with reference to their essential characteristics, perhaps you shouldn't be asserting that they are indistinguishable by definition.


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## Mahlerian

EdwardBast said:


> If you can't explain the common ground allegedly uniting melody in Schoenberg's 12-tone music and that of Mozart, Bach and Beethoven with reference to their essential characteristics, perhaps you shouldn't be asserting that they are indistinguishable by definition.


But I did. I said that Schoenberg's melodies have defined contour, definite beginning and ending points, are connected to the underlying harmony, and so forth. I don't understand what quality of melodies they're supposed to lack.


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## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> No, because the problem is not that they have perceived Schoenberg's melodies and judged them unmelodic so much as that they have not been able to distinguish much of anything from a group of notes and assume that there are no connections between them. I am sure people who say they do not perceive melodies are telling the truth, but that is a result of their not being able to perceive them, not a result of something being lacking in the music.


This puts me in mind of that Wittgenstein quote about the Sun going round the Earth versus the Earth rotating on its axis...
To someone who is unable to perceive the connections between a group of connected notes, what would a group of _un_connected notes sound like?
This is just me being whimsical; no response expected.


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## Woodduck

mmsbls said:


> Actually this is a very interesting point. If one believes that melodies are defined objectively solely on the music, then you are correct. I do not believe that. I think melodies are defined because human brains hear music and respond to certain segments differently than to others. Melodies arise due to the interaction between the music and brain states. By this view melodies are subjective.
> 
> I would say that I heard no melodies in Schoenberg (or other Second Viennese School composers) because nothing I heard and interpreted matched my definition of melody. Later, using the same definition, I did hear melodies because my brain interpreted the music differently. I was able to hear segments that were comprehensible and memorable as a distinct entity. Before I could not. My brain _did_ suddenly add them.
> 
> I guess it would be correct to say that Schoenberg's music contains segments that some people's brains hear and interpret as melodies but that other people's brains do not (using the same subjective definition). The question then is who gets to decide. _If 90% (or some large number) of all people believe there are no melodies by this subjective definition_, it seems odd to state definitively that there are melodies unless one uses a different definition.


I'm not sure how much we agree, but my position may be less generous than yours. Identifying melody isn't purely a matter of listener sophistication. I believe that melodies vary objectively in the qualities which make them coherent, perceivable, and memorable as entities, even though ears vary in their ability to detect those qualities. Some melodic lines are, in this sense, actually more melodious, more tuneful, than others. Refer to my post #90 for concrete examples.

"Melody" has two basic definitions. The broad technical definition, "the linear succession of pitches in music," is pretty useless for purposes of this discussion. For any random succession of tones - pick 'em out of a hat if you like - there's somebody who'll be able to remember it and sing it to you. Whether it amounts to a good melody that most people would recognize as such depends largely on how successfully it exemplifies certain structural qualities. Among other factors, the elimination of a tonal grammar puts the hopeful composer of melodies at a real disadvantage.


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## Mahlerian

Magnum Miserium said:


> True, but it's important to keep in mind that the "athematic" works of his Expressionist period are a _major_ exception.


Yes, it is of course fair to point to a few of the more extreme cases, like Farben, which actually isn't guided by melody at all, or Erwartung, which seems to defy any kind of logical analysis, as truly radical works.


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## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> No, because the problem is not that they have perceived Schoenberg's melodies and judged them unmelodic so much as that they have not been able to distinguish much of anything from a group of notes and assume that there are no connections between them.


I think this issue gets to the core of the disagreement. I think you view the definition as objective, and necessarily so; whereas, I view the most useful definition as subjective.

I would change your answer above to "Yes _because they have not been able to distinguish much of anything from a group of notes and assume that there are no connections between them_." I used your exact words to answer differently than you did.



Mahlerian said:


> I am sure people who say they do not perceive melodies are telling the truth, but that is a result of their not being able to perceive them, not a result of something being lacking in the music.


Actually it is a result of something lacking (or at least different) in the music causing them not to perceive them. How would those people be able to perceive melodies in some music and not in others if it weren't for differences in the music.

Here's a definition of melody that explicitly relies on subjectivity.

melody - a sequence of single notes that is musically satisfying in that the sequence _is heard and interpreted_ as comprehensible and memorable as a distinct entity.

Just as with variation in determining whether someone is tall, some people will say Schoenberg's music has melodies and others will not _even if both groups use this definition_. And both groups will be correct because the definition is subjective. I would guess that the vast majority of people would accept this definition (or something fairly similar).


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## mmsbls

Woodduck said:


> I'm not sure how much we agree, but my position may be less generous than yours. Identifying melody isn't purely a matter of listener sophistication. I believe that melodies vary objectively in the qualities which make them coherent, perceivable, and memorable as entities, even though ears vary in their ability to detect those qualities. Some melodic lines are, in this sense, actually more melodious, more tuneful, than others. Refer to my post #90 for concrete examples.
> 
> "Melody" has two basic definitions. The broad technical definition, "the linear succession of pitches in music," is pretty useless for purposes of this discussion. For any random succession of tones - pick 'em out of a hat if you like - there's somebody who'll be able to remember it and sing it to you. Whether it amounts to a good melody that most people would recognize as such depends largely on how successfully it exemplifies certain structural qualities. Among other factors, the elimination of a tonal grammar puts the hopeful composer of melodies at a real disadvantage.


I think we generally do agree. I have used your phrase "comprehensible and memorable as a distinct entity" because I think that gets to the essence of what most people view as melodies. You are focusing more on the objective variation in the qualities of melodies making them coherent and perceivable. I do think that's very interesting and agree certain music will "allow" people to hear the melodies more easily.


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## SeptimalTritone

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, it is of course fair to point to a few of the more extreme cases, like Farben, which actually isn't guided by melody at all, or Erwartung, which seems to defy any kind of logical analysis, as truly radical works.


Hmm... I agree that Farben is defined through glacial canonic changes of that five-note chord combined with its timbral changes rather than melody.

Erwartung, however, seems to be filled with melody. The only issue is that there is no, or almost no, thematic regularity or recall, or at least none that I perceive. There are some important regularities in it that I think I perceive: a very stepwise melodic weaving of the orchestra that (probably) has a tendency to end on certain chords, a use of ostinato where the chord notes don't change at all before evaporating.


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## Mahlerian

SeptimalTritone said:


> Hmm... I agree that Farben is defined through glacial canonic changes of that five-note chord combined with its timbral changes rather than melody.
> 
> Erwartung, however, seems to be filled with melody. The only issue is that there is no, or almost no, thematic regularity or recall, or at least none that I perceive. There are some important regularities in it that I think I perceive: a very stepwise melodic weaving of the orchestra that (probably) has a tendency to end on certain chords, a use of ostinato where the chord notes don't change at all before evaporating.


I didn't mean to use Erwartung as an example of music without melody, but rather as an example of a piece that is radical in its replacing an ongoing thematic/motivic dialogue with a stream-of-consciousness.


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## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> I think this issue gets to the core of the disagreement. I think you view the definition as objective, and necessarily so; whereas, I view the most useful definition as subjective.
> 
> I would change your answer above to "Yes _because they have not been able to distinguish much of anything from a group of notes and assume that there are no connections between them_." I used your exact words to answer differently than you did.


I don't understand why the perceptions of those who have the wrong perspective matter, and I also don't understand why your subjective definition allows us to say that Mozart and Bach definitely have melody without being able to say the same of Schoenberg.



mmsbls said:


> Actually it is a result of something lacking (or at least different) in the music causing them not to perceive them. How would those people be able to perceive melodies in some music and not in others if it weren't for differences in the music.


I didn't say there weren't differences. I said that the differences are not related to whether or not melody is present. The same goes for arguments regarding "atonality." I am not saying that the tonal organization is not different from traditional tonality, I am saying that there is still tonal organization as the people I am arguing with define the term.



mmsbls said:


> Here's a definition of melody that explicitly relies on subjectivity.
> 
> melody - a sequence of single notes that is musically satisfying in that the sequence _is heard and interpreted_ as comprehensible and memorable as a distinct entity.


I can't agree with that. It doesn't allow for bad melodies or poorly thought-out melodies or lots of other things that the general listener would him/herself identify as a melody.


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## SeptimalTritone

mmsbls said:


> I think we generally do agree. I have used your phrase "comprehensible and memorable as a distinct entity" because I think that gets to the essence of what most people view as melodies. You are focusing more on the objective variation in the qualities of melodies making them coherent and perceivable. I do think that's very interesting and agree certain music will "allow" people to hear the melodies more easily.


Remember that easy perception of the coherence of melody isn't necessarily a desirable thing.

If we wanted easy perception we would always write 4 or 8 bar phrases, with a good deal of soft repetition (in contour, rhythm, texture) between these units. With the expansion of harmony, especially to 12 tone harmony, this was made much less possible, because such rhythmic definition was inappropriate for a music with unique interval relations between notes.

And not only that, but the melodic leaps became wider, and more regularly wide. And consider that it common practice music, consistent wide leaps usually outlined a tertian chord, but in Schoenberg, that's normally not the case.

There was also a much greater focus in Schoenberg on contrapuntal texture as grammatic structure, making it more difficult to isolate melody. Things like the rhythmic dissonance between melody and accompaniment in the 4th quartet were not dramatic aberrations, but necessary elements of the basic grammar.

All these things were necessary for the music though. I don't think you would really want Schoenberg to have softened on these things! And even those who don't like Schoenberg: they would definitely not like it more if Schoenberg made these adjustments. Schoenberg really does make it more difficult for the average listener to isolate in their mind melody, and harmonic regularity generally has to be perceived intuitively rather than "oh yeah that's a minor subdominant chord, that's a dominant chord, that's A flat major etc."

Just as Mozart didn't back down to the Emperor and not write "too many notes" in TalkClassical's favorite movie, thank God Schoenberg didn't limit himself to older subjective ideas about good melody and harmony.


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## Richannes Wrahms

Wide leaps outlining perfect quintal chords are only a little bit more intense than leaps outlining tertian chords, the ear is very accustomed to pentatonicism. 

Technically all chords can be viewed as rearrangements of the quintal chord that contains the 12 tones, though this perspective is only useful when a chord structure contains superimposed fourths and fifths which is not a rare occurrence in modern and contemporary music.


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## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> But I did. I said that Schoenberg's melodies have defined contour, definite beginning and ending points, are connected to the underlying harmony, and so forth. I don't understand what quality of melodies they're supposed to lack.


Empty assertions. "Defined contour?" A poodle has defined contour. "Connected to the harmony?" This statement is devoid of content. By what principles connected? Definite beginning and end points? Perhaps. But beginnings and endings in Mozart, Bach and Beethoven are governed by a clear grammar any competent theory student can explain. If the melodies of Schoenberg are indistinguishable from these by definition, as you assert, then, obviously, there must be some comparable organizing principle; Otherwise they would be quite clearly distinguishable by the presence or absence of such a principle.


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## millionrainbows

Schoenberg's "melodies" may have contour, beginning and endpoints, etc, but the one crucial element they lack is tonal meaning.

In the key of C, on a C chord, each note of a melody has its own weight. For example E, the M3, has a more crucial meaning than D, a transitional or passing tone. The same with other triad notes C and G.

In this regard, these 'melodies' of Schoenberg's are linear constructs, derived from the row, and are related to the rest of the music by being derived from row considerations, not tonal meanings.

But Schoenberg's 'melodies' are not tonal, so that makes them something else (linear constructs) if your definition of "melody" assumes that the melody is tonal and reflects and reinforces the music in a tonal, harmonic way. Look at all these definitions of "melody," and note that they all at least imply that a melody be "pleasing" or have musical meaning in a tonal way, to the ear and brain.

That doesn't mean that Schoenberg's linear constructs are not "beautiful" in their own, specialized way. 

I can appreciate a nice contour, but that doesn't mean I'm going to go around saying that they are "totally normal" and that there is "no difference" between this and Mozart. 

That sort of defense of Schoenberg implies that "his music is only good enough if it is equivalent to tonality, so I must prove there is no difference in order to justify it".

Modern music needs no such justification if it is accepted on its own (non-tonal) terms.


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## millionrainbows

EdwardBast said:


> If the melodies of Schoenberg are indistinguishable from these by definition, as you assert, then, obviously, there must be some comparable organizing principle; Otherwise they would be quite clearly distinguishable by the presence or absence of such a principle.


Yes, and that principle is called a tone row. It might not be audible, though, so don't listen for it.


----------



## mmsbls

SeptimalTritone said:


> Remember that easy perception of the coherence of melody isn't necessarily a desirable thing.


Of course not. But some musical phrases are less comprehensible and memorable as a distinct entities. So some people do not recognize them as melodies. None of this has anything to do with how good certain music is.


----------



## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> I don't understand why the perceptions of those who have the wrong perspective matter, and I also don't understand why your subjective definition allows us to say that Mozart and Bach definitely have melody without being able to say the same of Schoenberg.


Because they don't have the wrong perspective. They have a different perspective.



Mahlerian said:


> I didn't say there weren't differences. I said that the differences are not related to whether or not melody is present.


The differences are relevant to whether people find the passages as comprehensible and memorable as a distinct entity. So of course they are relevant to whether or not melody is present.



Mahlerian said:


> I can't agree with that. It doesn't allow for bad melodies or poorly thought-out melodies or lots of other things that the general listener would him/herself identify as a melody.


OK change it to "a sequence of single notes that is heard and interpreted as comprehensible and memorable as a distinct entity."

I don't see an end to this debate so let me ask one question. Do you think melody is only a technical term such as quantum field that requires education or expertise to evaluate, or do you think it can be 
casual term used properly by the masses?


----------



## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> Because they don't have the wrong perspective. They have a different perspective.


If they merely had a different perspective, it wouldn't lead to such a bewilderingly false conclusion. Saying Schoenberg's music lacks melody should be treated with the same derision reserved for claims that Protocols of the Elders of Zion was proof of a Jewish conspiracy.

At the very least, it is exactly equal to saying that Bach or Handel or Schumann lack melody.



mmsbls said:


> I don't see an end to this debate so let me ask one question. Do you think melody is only a technical term such as quantum field that requires education or expertise to evaluate, or do you think it can be
> casual term used properly by the masses?


Of course people can use the term. I'm not disputing their right to use the term, I'm disputing their right to define it for themselves. The average person isn't allowed to define what a C major chord is, and I don't see why they should be allowed to define what a melody is.

Furthermore, their commonsense understanding of melody isn't really very different from any technical definition, it's just that Schoenberg is also within their commonsense definition, whether they know that or not.


----------



## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> At the very least, it is exactly equal to saying that Bach or Handel or Schumann lack melody.


Absolutely.



Mahlerian said:


> Of course people can use the term. I'm not disputing their right to use the term, I'm disputing their right to define it for themselves. The average person isn't allowed to define what a C major chord is, and I don't see why they should be allowed to define what a melody is.


The average person doesn't define melody - society collectively does. That's why the main definitions are things like:



> a pleasing series of musical notes that form the main part of a song or piece of music.


or


> A sequence of single notes that is musically satisfying


Those are very subjective, and people using them will find melodies in some works and not others. You are free to consider those people wrong or not in position to judge properly, but I just think they are using the conventional definition of melody and saying what is obvious and true subjectively to them.



Mahlerian said:


> Furthermore, their commonsense understanding of melody isn't really very different from any technical definition, it's just that Schoenberg is also within their commonsense definition, whether they know that or not.


Really? The technical definition is like those above? And people find Schoenberg's melodies comprehensible and memorable as a distinct entity even if they don't? We are clearly talking about very different things.


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## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> Absolutely.


Then why were you arguing with me and saying that there was more justification for saying Schoenberg lacks melody than others?



mmsbls said:


> Those are very subjective, and people using them will find melodies in some works and not others. You are free to consider those people wrong or not in position to judge properly, but I just think they are using the conventional definition of melody and saying what is obvious and true subjectively to them.


What seems intuitively obvious and subjectively correct can also be entirely wrong. As I said, when I first encountered certain pieces by Schoenberg and Debussy and Mahler, my own intuitions were wrong in not recognizing the melodies and the tonal relationships which are very clearly present to me now. I don't consider that I was correct in the past in my own subjective way, I was just plain wrong and now I've corrected my view.



mmsbls said:


> Really? The technical definition is like those above? And people find Schoenberg's melodies comprehensible and memorable as a distinct entity even if they don't? We are clearly talking about very different things.


I am not saying that people perceive Schoenberg's melodies when they don't, I'm saying that Schoenberg's melodies are there whether they are perceived or not.


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## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> The average person doesn't define melody - society collectively does.


This reminds me of a guy from the Oxford English Dictionary I saw quoted the other day, talking about what's a real word and what isn't: "For the OED, it's definitely a question of usage, and to what extent that usage penetrates language itself." I would say the same of the performing repertoire and of art in general. Obviously that will give some heartburn! :lol:


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## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> Then why were you arguing with me and saying that there was more justification for saying Schoenberg lacks melody than others?


I don't remember saying that. Empirically it may be true of modern music (in the subjective sense).


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## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> I don't remember saying that. Empirically it may be true of modern music (in the subjective sense).


So you would say that for a future generation that's assimilated modernist music and for whom Schoenberg is as natural as Brahms or Wagner, there would be subjectively no difference? If the current trends continue, that's coming bit by bit.

Because on an objective level, Schoenberg's music is nearly entirely comprised of melodies. From my perspective, it's baffling that anyone would question that. It is just as inane as claiming that Schubert lacks melodies.


----------



## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> So you would say that for a future generation that's assimilated modernist music and for whom Schoenberg is as natural as Brahms or Wagner, there would be subjectively no difference? If the current trends continue, that's coming bit by bit.


That's possible. I really don't know how people 100 years from now will view Schoenberg and others. I would guess more (maybe many more) would hear melodies, but one can ask why hasn't that already happened even though those works are about 100 years old now.



Mahlerian said:


> Because on an objective level, Schoenberg's music is nearly entirely comprised of melodies. From my perspective, it's baffling that anyone would question that. It is just as inane as claiming that Schubert lacks melodies.


You said you didn't hear the melodies at one time. Why is it hard for you to imagine people would question whether Schoenberg's music has melodies? I would have thought everyone would assume that many people would claim Schoenberg's music doesn't have melodies.


----------



## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> That's possible. I really don't know how people 100 years from now will view Schoenberg and others. I would guess more (maybe many more) would hear melodies, but one can ask why hasn't that already happened even though those works are about 100 years old now.


To some degree it has. But there hasn't been nearly enough exposure for much of the general classical listening public. Still, we're in an era where Moses und Aron can sell out an opera house and a soloist who puts Schoenberg on his or her program is more likely to have their fans try it out with interest rather than believe the soloist has gone crazy or is somehow deficient as a musician.

If in 1950 Henry Pleasants expressed the view of the populist reactionary by saying that Wagner was the last composer who truly had a public and whose music spoke to its time, then isn't it indicative of some kind of progress that such a view would be viewed with disbelief today? Who would suggest that Sibelius, Stravinsky, Mahler, and Debussy were not popular? It's bizarre enough that Schoenberg, who is among the most performed of all composers, is somehow considered unpopular.



mmsbls said:


> You said you didn't hear the melodies at one time. Why is it hard for you to imagine people would question whether Schoenberg's music has melodies? I would have thought everyone would assume that many people would claim Schoenberg's music doesn't have melodies.


Because I wasn't so full of myself as to think that my own perceptions couldn't be tempered by those who were more knowledgeable about a subject. Even if I didn't hear it, I figured there was something there.


----------



## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> If in 1950 Henry Pleasants expressed the view of the populist reactionary by saying that Wagner was the last composer who truly had a public and whose music spoke to its time, then isn't it indicative of some kind of progress that such a view would be viewed with disbelief today? Who would suggest that Sibelius, Stravinsky, Mahler, and Debussy were not popular? It's bizarre enough that Schoenberg, who is among the most performed of all composers, is somehow considered unpopular.


It's great that so much modern music is recorded that I can almost always find a recording of any work mentioned on TC. I would love for more of Schoenberg and other modern composers to be played publicly, and yes, he is certainly not ignored in concert. For you and me, that's great, and we can look forward to more progress even if I still have doubts about where things will stand 50 years from now.



Mahlerian said:


> Because I wasn't so full of myself as to think that my own perceptions couldn't be tempered by those who were more knowledgeable about a subject. Even if I didn't hear it, I figured there was something there.


I knew that Schoenberg was considered great, and I certainly expected to hear his music as beautiful eventually. But 10 years ago I'm not sure if I would have thought that Schoenberg's music must have melodies. I thought it was very different, and maybe part of that difference was the lack of melodies. I suspect that many people believe that now. And for those who know nothing about Schoenberg (the overwhelming majority of people), I would honestly be surprised if they thought it obvious that his music had melodies.


----------



## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> I knew that Schoenberg was considered great, and I certainly expected to hear his music as beautiful eventually. But 10 years ago I'm not sure if I would have thought that Schoenberg's music must have melodies. I thought it was very different, and maybe part of that difference was the lack of melodies. I suspect that many people believe that now. And for those who know nothing about Schoenberg (the overwhelming majority of people), I would honestly be surprised if they thought it obvious that his music had melodies.


Once again, though, they're not in a position to make any real judgement on Schoenberg's melodies, because they haven't even perceived them so that they can make a judgement. It's like asking someone who can't read French what their favorite line from Hugo's original Notre Dame was, and they come back saying that it didn't have any sentences in it. It's a myopic way of viewing the world to think that you personally understand everything. I know *I* don't.


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## ArtMusic

I don't think it is appropriate to mix Schubert's melody in the same sentence as Schoenberg's melodies. The former is based on traditional models and that which is considered as melody by the majority of society, while the latter is a different soundscape which is not melody in the traditional sense but may well be considered as melody in a different sense by other listeners. The rest are discussion points and perception.


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## Mahlerian

ArtMusic said:


> I don't think it is appropriate to mix Schubert's melody in the same sentence as Schoenberg's melodies. The former is based on traditional models and that which is considered as melody by the majority of society, while the latter is a different soundscape which is not melody in the traditional sense but may well be considered as melody in a different sense by other listeners. The rest are discussion points and perception.


No, I consider it melody in the exact same sense.


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## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> Once again, though, they're not in a position to make any real judgement on Schoenberg's melodies, because they haven't even perceived them so that they can make a judgement. It's like asking someone who can't read French what their favorite line from Hugo's original Notre Dame was, and they come back saying that it didn't have any sentences in it. It's a myopic way of viewing the world to think that you personally understand everything. I know *I* don't.


What does people thinking they understand everything have to do with this topic? I'm completely lost.


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## ArtMusic

Mahlerian said:


> No, I consider it melody in the exact same sense.


Good for you, you belong to one of the latter groups I described perfectly in my post above.


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## ArtMusic

Mahlerian said:


> Once again, though, they're not in a position to make any real judgement on Schoenberg's melodies, because they haven't even perceived them so that they can make a judgement. It's like asking someone who can't read French what their favorite line from Hugo's original Notre Dame was, and they come back saying that it didn't have any sentences in it. It's a myopic way of viewing the world to think that you personally understand everything. I know *I* don't.


Well then, you can argue that one cannot make real judgement about Bach's music or Liszt's music or Alma Deutscher's music? But why are we here at TalkClassical?


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## Nereffid

Is anyone else as turned on as I am by the sight of two mods having an argument about semantics?




:devil:


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## DeepR

As you can see Klassic, Schoenberg is very much alive, as every other thread involving modern music sooner or later turns into a discussion about his music. 

I agree that understanding music (in either an intuitive or more theoretical way) doesn't always lead to appreciation. Understanding is a key factor in appreciation, but it doesn't automatically lead to appreciation. This is clear from a very simple example: pop music from the hit charts is easy to follow and understand, but many of us do not appreciate it.


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## Guest

violadude said:


> Hm, out of curiosity though, if it's option B every time. Do you never like pieces that you didn't like right away? I find that hard to believe considering the amount of music that you like.
> 
> I usually choose option A, so I'm not sure how that works.


Here's an example. Prompted by a comment here, I finally got round to listening to some spectralism. It took little time for me to decide that it wasn't for me. That is to say, I don't wish to spend a considerable amount of time trying to understand or appreciate it, though at some point in the future I might try it again. On the other hand, Bruckner and Norgard are sufficiently similar to what I usually enjoy that I might give both time that I'll not give the Grisey or the Murail. So, Option A for Bruckner, Option B for Grisey.


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## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> What does people thinking they understand everything have to do with this topic? I'm completely lost.


If one considers him or herself the measure of a definition, then one is setting oneself up as the standard. I do not consider myself the standard for deciding what melody is or what music is or anything else.


----------



## Mahlerian

ArtMusic said:


> Good for you, you belong to one of the latter groups I described perfectly in my post above.


No I don't. The latter group in your post considers Schoenberg's melody in a completely different sense from Schubert's melody. I consider it melody in the exact same sense and the exact same way.


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## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> If one considers him or herself the measure of a definition, then one is setting oneself up as the standard. I do not consider myself the standard for deciding what melody is or what music is or anything else.


I'm not sure anyone "considers him or herself the measure of a definition." People use words based on how others use them. Some words are more subjective than others.

Let's take "insult." We all know roughly what it means, but people can look at the same statement with some considering it an insult while others do not. Within the general definition people have differing constructs of meaning. On TC some people will point to a statement calling it an insult, but the moderators will not agree.

Or take liquid. A liquid is a substance that flows freely and has constant volume. So is glass a liquid? Physicists say yes because it actually does flow freely with constant volume. I'm pretty sure few other people say that unless they might have heard about the physics of glass. For others, glass does not flow freely. It's a solid. I'm not sure it would help to tell the other people that they are not in a position from which they can judge if glass is a liquid. It also wouldn't help to say they simply can't perceive the flowing nature of glass. That's true, but _that's not why they say glass is a solid_. Their definition of solid works and almost everyone they know uses that technically improper but very useful definition.


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## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> I'm not sure anyone "considers him or herself the measure of a definition." People use words based on how others use them. Some words are more subjective than others.
> 
> Let's take "insult." We all know roughly what it means, but people can look at the same statement with some considering it an insult while others do not. Within the general definition people have differing constructs of meaning. On TC some people will point to a statement calling it an insult, but the moderators will not agree.
> 
> Or take liquid. A liquid is a substance that flows freely and has constant volume. So is glass a liquid? Physicists say yes because it actually does flow freely with constant volume. I'm pretty sure few other people say that unless they might have heard about the physics of glass. For others, glass does not flow freely. It's a solid. I'm not sure it would help to tell the other people that they are not in a position from which they can judge if glass is a liquid. It also wouldn't help to say they simply can't perceive the flowing nature of glass. That's true, but _that's not why they say glass is a solid_. Their definition of solid works and almost everyone they know uses that technically improper but very useful definition.


Yes, you are talking about category resemblances. But you don't seem to understand that when we speak of Schoenberg's melodies and Schubert's melodies, they have _all of the same attributes in exactly the same way_ that make them melodies. There is no difference of definition being applied, no qualities that separate one from the other at all. That is why I said that the people saying Schoenberg's music has no melodies, if they were able to perceive Schoenberg's music correctly, would, _by the definition they already have,_ agree that his music is filled with melodies.


----------



## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, you are talking about category resemblances. But you don't seem to understand that when we speak of Schoenberg's melodies and Schubert's melodies, they have _all of the same attributes in exactly the same way_ that make them melodies. There is no difference of definition being applied, no qualities that separate one from the other at all. That is why I said that the people saying Schoenberg's music has no melodies, if they were able to perceive Schoenberg's music correctly, would, _by the definition they already have,_ agree that his music is filled with melodies.


But you're still discounting an aesthetic dimension that will always be subjective and personal and, unfortunately, _indefinable_. I doubt that there's any definition of "melody" that can't be responded to with "no, that's not the sort of thing I mean". Each person's own subjective idea of melody can't, I think, be turned into an actual _definition_, in much the same way as I think it would be impossible to define exactly what somebody means by "beautiful" even if you could analyse every piece of music they consider beautiful and every piece of music they don't consider beautiful. It's too personal and too subjective; it's not merely a set of rules and parameters against which the individual listener examines each piece of music; it's just too nebulous.

If people are failing to perceive the melodies in Schoenberg's music but have no problem perceiving the melodies in Schubert's music, then clearly there _are_ some different attributes. Maybe those attributes aren't in the melodies per se, but the attributes are inextricably tied to the melodies. Sort of like where coloration is not an inherent part of the definition of a horse, but if your horse has black and white stripes it ceases to be a horse and becomes a zebra.

_Will no one think of the zebras???_


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## Mahlerian

Nereffid said:


> If people are failing to perceive the melodies in Schoenberg's music but have no problem perceiving the melodies in Schubert's music, then clearly there _are_ some different attributes. Maybe those attributes aren't in the melodies per se, but the attributes are inextricably tied to the melodies. Sort of like where coloration is not an inherent part of the definition of a horse, but if your horse has black and white stripes it ceases to be a horse and becomes a zebra.
> 
> _Will no one think of the zebras???_


As I said, they differ in _context_. The setting prevents people from extracting and recalling the relevant information.

To suggest that context can make a melody not a melody would be to suggest that "Happy Birthday to You" is only a melody so long as it is placed in a context we recognize it in.

Look, I can easily think of borderline cases in melody, where some people could legitimately debate whether something is a melody or not. Think of sequences of percussion of indeterminate pitch, for example. They have contour and pitch, but that pitch is more difficult to discern.


----------



## Mandryka

Mahlerian said:


> As I said, they differ in _context_. The setting prevents people from extracting and recalling the relevant information.
> 
> .


Can you say a bit more about what it is about the context which prevents people from perceiving the melodies as melodies?

By the way, a thing like you're describing may happen in early contrapuntal music, big pieces of imitative counterpoint.


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## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> As I said, they differ in _context_. The setting prevents people from extracting and recalling the relevant information.


Well, there you go. _Context_ is a crucial attribute of an individual's personal and subjective idea of a melody.



Mahlerian said:


> To suggest that context can make a melody not a melody would be to suggest that "Happy Birthday to You" is only a melody so long as it is placed in a context we recognize it in.


Yeah, that makes sense to me. If the notes of "Happy Birthday" were used as, say, a very slow-moving drone in a complex piece of polyphony, how many listeners would consider it as a melody? But of course we're going round in circles because you can just come back and say "well, it _is_ a melody even if you lack the critical faculties to identify it"...

My impression from this discussion is that you want to discount _the vague and inconsistent way in which people of differing knowledge levels decide what they want to call a melody_ as being irrelevant, whereas others are quite certain that _that's_ the actual focus of the discussion.


----------



## Mahlerian

Mandryka said:


> Can you say a bit more about what it is about the context which prevents people from perceiving the melodies as melodies?
> 
> By the way, a thing like you're describing may happen in early contrapuntal music, big pieces of imitative counterpoint.


The way our brains process auditory information is by comparing what we are hearing the things we are familiar with. If any novel information enters, say an unfamiliar harmony, it can be processed by a process of comparison, but a rapid chain of such will not allow for that sort of processing and be rejected as noise.

Contrapuntal music is similar in that it rejects the schemata that most people have in their brains for listening, which is set up for homophony, and provides overstimulation with an excess of melodic information.

Schoenberg's music is difficult for both of these reasons. His music is both filled with streams of novel harmonies (none of which in themselves are completely unfamiliar, but rather which are in unfamiliar relationships) and is constantly contrapuntal in providing multiple melodic lines at the same time. On top of that, the music is rhythmically extremely diverse, and these overlapping melodies will often begin and end at very different times and have completely separate inflections.

All of this leads to people not being able to extract which lines even are important, let alone isolate one as the most important. It's like a constant stream of unconnected notes to them.


----------



## Mahlerian

Nereffid said:


> Yeah, that makes sense to me. If the notes of "Happy Birthday" were used as, say, a very slow-moving drone in a complex piece of polyphony, how many listeners would consider it as a melody? But of course we're going round in circles because you can just come back and say "well, it _is_ a melody even if you lack the critical faculties to identify it"...


Wait, so you're saying Happy Birthday to You stops being a melody if it's used in an unrecognizable way? I understand saying that it's no longer _perceived_ as a melody, but that's a different issue.

So it's sometimes a melody and sometimes not a melody? The identification of the notes is the same. We would identify them, out of context, as the melody "Happy Birthday." I would not stop considering it a melody even if it were played too slow or too fast for a human to identify; it's still the same musical element.


----------



## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, you are talking about category resemblances. But you don't seem to understand that when we speak of Schoenberg's melodies and Schubert's melodies, they have _all of the same attributes in exactly the same way_ that make them melodies. There is no difference of definition being applied, no qualities that separate one from the other at all.


I agree with Nereffid that if Schoenberg's melodies and Schubert's melodies, have _all of the same attributes in exactly the same way_, then everyone who heard Schubert's melodies would also hear Schoenberg's. Since that's not true, then they don't have all the same attributes in exactly the same way. One attribute seems to be something along the lines of "interacting with people's brains to produce sounds comprehensible and memorable as a distinct entity." Some melodies can achieve that with people who would then agree they are hearing melodies. Other melodies cannot achieve that with segments of listeners who would then say they are not listening to melodies.

So I think that _you_ are saying "Schoenberg's melodies and Schubert's melodies, have _all of the same attributes in exactly the same way_ that make them melodies." I, and I assume Nereffid, are saying the music-person system _does not_ have the same attributes. The subjective definition of melody takes the listener into account. As far as I can tell, that's the real difference between what you are arguing and what I am arguing.

People use words to communicate, and definitions reflect that. And people use words differently. Most on TC might have no problem communicating when they say Schoenberg's music has melodies. In certain circles people who don't recognize those melodies would not understand the question, "Do you enjoy that melody?" They might reply, "What melody?" The same could be true when someone refers to glass as a liquid or to a zebra as a horse. Their definition does not include glass as a liquid or a zebra as a horse. To do so would not make sense and doing so would make communication more difficult.



Mahlerian said:


> So it's sometimes a melody and sometimes not a melody? The identification of the notes is the same. We would identify them, out of context, as the melody "Happy Birthday." I would not stop considering it a melody even if it were played too slow or too fast for a human to identify; it's still the same musical element.


I think most people would be perfectly justified to consider glass a solid at room temperature and a liquid at higher temperatures. So sometimes it's a solid and sometimes a liquid depending on the situation. And the two situations for glass are more similar than the situations for "Happy Birthday" you described.


----------



## Mahlerian

But everyone WOULD recognize them as melodies if they perceived them. That's been my point all along. You keep saying that they have to have some other attribute, but I've already explained how that isn't necessarily true. The context, not the content, is what prevents people from identifying the melodies.

The listener isn't important to whether a melody exists, or it wouldn't come into existence before it is played and heard by a listener. Say that a computer generates a piece of music. Would you say, if no one has yet heard it, that that music does not yet have any melodies in it?

Furthermore, Happy Birthday is identified by its melody, not by any other aspect (not key, for example, or setting, or harmonization, even). You're essentially saying that Happy Birthday is sometimes not Happy Birthday if it's not perceived that way. That kind of subjectivity leads to absurd conclusions.


----------



## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> Wait, so you're saying Happy Birthday to You stops being a melody if it's used in an unrecognizable way? I understand saying that it's no longer _perceived_ as a melody, but that's a different issue.
> 
> So it's sometimes a melody and sometimes not a melody?


Yes!

It _can_ stop being a melody if the context changes, because the context can affect the definition of a melody. It doesn't _necessarily_ stop being a melody if the context changes; that depends on how the individual listener's _personal, subjective and ultimately indefinable_ idea of a melody interacts with the context.

_Being_ a melody and _being perceived as_ a melody are, in my book, pretty much the same thing, though the latter trumps the former. As mmsbls put it, "I think melodies are defined because human brains hear music and respond to certain segments differently than to others. Melodies arise due to the interaction between the music and brain states. By this view melodies are subjective." Melodies can seem to be - and, effectively, they _are_ - an objective thing when the music interacts with (pretty much) everyone's brain states in the same way.

I'm inclined to fall back on a circular definition, as I have with "great composer": a melody can be defined as a sequence of notes that people tend to describe as "a melody". I guess this is the antithesis of what you'd like, but when I say _personal, subjective and ultimately indefinable_, by God I mean it!

ETA: I was writing this while mmsbls responded, and I just want to add that I do indeed agree with mmsbls.


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## Mahlerian

So then Schubert's melodies are no more melodies than Schoenberg's, because they both depend on a subjective observer to identify them as such.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> ...But you don't seem to understand that when we speak of Schoenberg's melodies and Schubert's melodies, they have _all of the same attributes in exactly the same way_ that make them melodies. There is no difference of definition being applied, no qualities that separate one from the other at all.


Except for this one fact: Schubert's melodies have tonal meanings, and Schoenberg's 12-tone melodies do not. You are correct, though; in all other respects they are the same.


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## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> Except for this one fact: Schubert's melodies have tonal meanings, and Schoenberg's 12-tone melodies do not. You are correct, though; in all other respects they are the same.


But they DO have tonal meaning. How can a relationship between tones break down simply by using all of the notes? I hear the same kinds of relationships, Schoenberg and other 12-tone composers heard these relationships, and their music is based on them.


----------



## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> But everyone WOULD recognize them as melodies if they perceived them. That's been my point all along.


But from my point of view, this is as egregious a tautology as my definition of a melody; to me, "recognize" and "perceive" mean the same thing here.


----------



## millionrainbows

Nereffid said:


> But you're still discounting an aesthetic dimension that will always be subjective and personal and, unfortunately, _indefinable_. I doubt that there's any definition of "melody" that can't be responded to with "no, that's not the sort of thing I mean".


I know the definable answer. Atonality sounds much different, because it is not tonal. That's what people are hearing: the difference between tonal and atonal melody. To say that this is totally "subjective" is somewhat misleading.


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## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> So then Schubert's melodies are no more melodies than Schoenberg's, because they both depend on a subjective observer to identify them as such.


Yes.
Though the number of subjective observers who identify Schubert's melodies as such would appear to be greater than the number who identify Schoenberg's, so Schubert's melodies have a greater claim to any spurious notion of objectivity.


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## Mahlerian

Nereffid said:


> But from my point of view, this is as egregious a tautology as my definition of a melody; to me, "recognize" and "perceive" mean the same thing here.


You seem not to understand what I meant.

The connections between notes are already in the music itself. It is by perceiving these connections that a listener recognizes the melody.


----------



## Mahlerian

Nereffid said:


> Yes.
> Though the number of subject observers who identify Schubert's melodies as such would appear to be greater than the number who identify Schoenberg's, so Schubert's melodies have a greater claim to any spurious notion of objectivity.


No, because the objectivity would necessarily be related to the music itself, and the music alone. Listeners are unnecessary to identifying any element therein.

My question to you is if you believe so firmly in absolute subjectivity as regards aesthetics and even as regards identification of the elements of a piece of music, why are you specifically arguing against and attempting to question the music of modernists? If you really believed what you say, you would think of them no differently as anything else, only perhaps as something you dislike.

I dislike lots of things, and I don't really care enough about them to talk about them at all. I don't feel any compulsion to attack them or to tell their fans that they're wrong or say that their music is objectively tuneless.


----------



## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> You seem not to understand what I meant.
> 
> The connections between notes are already in the music itself. It is by perceiving these connections that a listener recognizes the melody.


I still seem not to understand.
A particular melody is defined (ugh, there's that word again) by the connections between the notes, so perceiving the connections _is_ recognizing the melody, isn't it?

If I don't perceive the connections, it's impossible for me to recognize the melody. If I _do_ perceive the connections, then I have therefore recognized the melody.

That's why I see it as tautological. But anyway, this is only a minor point. I get your basic argument: melodies are objective things that don't depend on a listener; the only relevance the listener has to the existence of a melody is whether he or she is able to perceive it, and any failure to perceive it has zero impact on whether the melody actually exists.
The fundamental disagreement is over whether melodies are objectively defined; and this is a world-view thing, unlikely to be amenable to change over the course of this discussion.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> But they DO have tonal meaning. How can a relationship between tones break down simply by using all of the notes?


Because chromaticism destroys tonality.

12-tone melodies are not fixed pitch identities per se. They are just relations of adjacent intervals; a series of intervals. The note names do not matter.

A real tonal "melody" has relations between each of its notes as specific pitch names, related to a single key note with a note-name.

Even a chromatic 12-note melody can have tonal meaning if each note, or subsets, or the whole thing is related to "roots" (with a note name), either one fixed root, changing roots, or 12 separate roots.

A melody in a 12-tone context, or a melody in a totally chromatic tonal context, can both appear to have these pitch-name relations temporarily or fleetingly, but at best this is not for long, since all 12 notes must appear, or are appearing, and not nearly as emphatically as a more stable (less chromatic) tonal piece.

Furthermore, these relations might not be true "roots" with pitch names; this may just be an area of apparent centricity around a pitch name, with harmonic identity that is fleeting and constantly shifting.

Chromatic melodies, derived from totally chromatic tonal music with constantly shifting root movement, even if the context is tonal, have little advantage over 12-tone melodies in this regard. Tonal music with this degree of chromaticism has such a weakened or virtually nonexistent sense of tonality that comparisons like this are essentially meaningless.

That's another reason why it is misleading to compare Schubert's melodies to Schoenberg's; Schoenberg's music is much too chromatic by comparison.


----------



## Mahlerian

Nereffid said:


> I still seem not to understand.
> A particular melody is defined (ugh, there's that word again) by the connections between the notes, so perceiving the connections _is_ recognizing the melody, isn't it?
> 
> If I don't perceive the connections, it's impossible for me to recognize the melody. If I _do_ perceive the connections, then I have therefore recognized the melody.
> 
> That's why I see it as tautological. But anyway, this is only a minor point. I get your basic argument: melodies are objective things that don't depend on a listener; the only relevance the listener has to the existence of a melody is whether he or she is able to perceive it, and any failure to perceive it has zero impact on whether the melody actually exists.
> The fundamental disagreement is over whether melodies are objectively defined; and this is a world-view thing, unlikely to be amenable to change over the course of this discussion.


What I don't understand is what kind of existence you think music has. It's a very concrete and tangible thing to me. I can hear the relationships as well as perceive them on the page. My perspective on a piece may change and give me greater or lesser insight, but I can't change what's actually there by looking at it differently.

I know the infinite variety of possible perspectives may _seem_ like complete subjectivity, but we are all in fact perceiving the same object, just through a variety of lenses. It's no different from a painting, which is various elements which may look different depending on perspective, though none of the elements themselves are changed.

That's why I brought up the issue of the horse in the Marc painting earlier. A melody or theme in music is present in the same way as the horse in the painting, and constitutes the subject of the work. What you're suggesting is akin to saying that the subject of the painting can change or even not be present depending on the particular perspective of the observer (and perhaps they're just too distant to see it correctly!).


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## Guest

millionrainbows said:


> Except for this one fact: Schubert's melodies have tonal meanings, and Schoenberg's 12-tone melodies do not. You are correct, though; in all other respects they are the same.


Can you point to an example of a piece of Schoenberg where the 12-tone melody does not have a tonal meaning? I'd like to hear what it sounds like.


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## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> 12-tone melodies are not fixed pitch identities per se. They are just relations of adjacent intervals. A real "melody" has relations between each of its notes related to a single key note.


No, that's a row. A melody in a 12-tone work has relations between each of its notes, which form a harmonic relationship, just as with any other music. If a melody included a set of relationships to a single key note as a part of its identity, how would you discuss melodies that are reharmonized or that are ambiguous in their orientation?



millionrainbows said:


> Even a chromatic 12-note melody can have tonal meaning if each note, or subsets, or the whole thing is related to "roots", either one fixed root, changing roots, or 12 separate roots.
> 
> A 12-tone row can appear to have these relations temporarily or fleetingly, but at best this is not for long, and not nearly as emphatically as a more stable tonal piece. Furthermore, these relations might not be true "roots;" this may just be an area of apparent centricity, with harmonic identity that is fleeting and unsupported in its larger context, as tonal melodies have.
> 
> Chromatic melodies, derived from totally chromatic music with constantly shifting root movement, even if the context is tonal, have little advantage over 12-tone melodies in this regard. Tonal music with this degree of chromaticism has such a weakened or virtually nonexistent sense of tonality that comparisons like this are essentially meaningless.


I don't find anything weak about the sense of tonal center in Schoenberg or Mahler. Shifting, yes. Perhaps ambiguous at times, but often it is extremely strong.


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## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> You're essentially saying that Happy Birthday is sometimes not Happy Birthday if it's not perceived that way. That kind of subjectivity leads to absurd conclusions.


No, we're saying that people may not call it Happy Birthday if they don't perceive it as Happy Birthday. People call glass a solid because they don't perceive it as a liquid. Technically it still is a liquid, but it makes sense for people not to call it a liquid. That is hardly absurd.



Mahlerian said:


> The connections between notes are already in the music itself. It is by perceiving these connections that a listener recognizes the melody.


The nature of glass exists in the molecules, but it only perceiving them that people do determine if it is a solid or liquid. So in the same way, listeners perceive the music and determine if it meets their definition of melody.



Mahlerian said:


> No, because the objectivity would necessarily be related to the music itself, and the music alone. Listeners are unnecessary to identifying any element therein.


Listeners are not necessary to identify element of the music itself just as people are not necessary to identify elements of glass. But people must perceive glass as either a liquid or solid depending on how they perceive it. In an exactly analogous way, listeners must perceive music to determine whether it has a melody or not. You are focused on the objective definition, and we are focused on the subjective.

Just to be clear. You seem to be arguing that the music itself does not change and definitions of melody that depend _only_ on the music ought to find both Schubert's and Schoenberg's music as having melodies. Fine.

I (and Nereffid I believe) are not arguing that. We are arguing that words have meanings based on how people use them. People use words based on how others use them and on how those words will be understood by others. Many words are interpreted subjectively (i.e. including human brain states). So glass is a liquid or solid based on how people perceive it. And strings of sounds are _described as_ melodies or not depending on how people perceive them.


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## Adam Weber

mmsbls said:


> People call glass a solid because they don't perceive it as a liquid. Technically it still is a liquid, but it makes sense for people not to call it a liquid. That is hardly absurd.


Probably not super relevant to the thread, but that's a myth.

http://www.df.unipi.it/~leporini/DFWebSite/ReviewsTg/florin.html

http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-glass-is-a-liquid-myth-has-finally-been-destroyed-496190894


----------



## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> What I don't understand is what kind of existence you think music has. It's a very concrete and tangible thing to me. I can hear the relationships as well as perceive them on the page. My perspective on a piece may change and give me greater or lesser insight, but I can't change what's actually there by looking at it differently.


As I said, at bottom it's a world-view difference. "What's actually there" - whether we're talking about music or anything else - is to me more correctly worded as "what's perceived to be there". Often they're effectively the same thing, but where there are differences among observers then this similarity can decrease, perhaps drastically.

For any individual observer, their perceptions are their reality. If they don't perceive a melody, then in their reality that melody doesn't exist. Now, it's reasonable to say that the composer's reality gets to trump the listener's reality as regards what is or isn't in the music, and listeners will probably allow that. If they are shown where the melody is, then their reality can change so that the melody now exists. But still, they might nevertheless reject such a reality ("well, OK, _technically_ it's a melody, but it's not what _I_ want from a melody, so it doesn't count...").

So when you say "I can't change what's actually there by looking at it differently", I half-agree. You can't change what's there for other people, but by perceiving the music differently you're effectively changing your reality.


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## Richannes Wrahms

Earth's mantle is mostly solid but is talked about in fluid terms because of the behaviour that arises at such massive scales.


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## Mahlerian

Nereffid said:


> As I said, at bottom it's a world-view difference. "What's actually there" - whether we're talking about music or anything else - is to me more correctly worded as "what's perceived to be there". Often they're effectively the same thing, but where there are differences among observers then this similarity can decrease, perhaps drastically.
> 
> For any individual observer, their perceptions are their reality. If they don't perceive a melody, then in their reality that melody doesn't exist. Now, it's reasonable to say that the composer's reality gets to trump the listener's reality as regards what is or isn't in the music, and listeners will probably allow that. If they are shown where the melody is, then their reality can change so that the melody now exists. But still, they might nevertheless reject such a reality ("well, OK, _technically_ it's a melody, but it's not what _I_ want from a melody, so it doesn't count...").
> 
> So when you say "I can't change what's actually there by looking at it differently", I half-agree. You can't change what's there for other people, but by perceiving the music differently you're effectively changing your reality.


I still don't understand what, in your view, music consists of, nor how under your arch-subjectivist view you can make any claims about what is or isn't a melody.

If I don't perceive a melody, but it's there, I am wrong in my perception. Surely you agree that things like optical illusions are not "real" even for the observer. Or that perceptions can be flawed. Why is it surprising or in any way contrary to your worldview to think that our perception of music can be incorrect as well?

I disagree that I can change my reality, or that anyone can change their own reality. I can only change the way I perceive it. A piece of music can give rise to a multiplicity of interpretations, but they all arise from one and the same object, and the object itself does not change.

The idea that a C major chord only exists when it's heard by an observer *as a C major chord* is absurd to me. It consists of the relationships among tones, which have universal psychological reality in all properly functioning human brains.


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## mmsbls

Adam Weber said:


> Probably not super relevant to the thread, but that's a myth.
> 
> http://www.df.unipi.it/~leporini/DFWebSite/ReviewsTg/florin.html
> 
> http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-glass-is-a-liquid-myth-has-finally-been-destroyed-496190894


Thanks for the articles. It was never a myth as physicists and materials scientists are still doing related research. Glass behaves like a solid but looks like a liquid under high magnification. In general glass does flow but absurdly slowly and under certain conditions may eventually cease to flow. I think it's generally referred to as an amorphous solid. Anyway, it probably shouldn't be called a liquid and the analogy for this issue is perhaps less useful.


----------



## Guest

Million said



millionrainbows said:


> Except for this one fact: *Schubert's melodies have tonal meanings, and Schoenberg's 12-tone melodies do not*. You are correct, though; in all other respects they are the same.


I asked



MacLeod said:


> *Can you point to an example of a piece of Schoenberg where the 12-tone melody does not have a tonal meaning?* I'd like to hear what it sounds like.


If anyone else can help, that would be great.


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## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> I disagree that I can change my reality, or that anyone can change their own reality. I can only change the way I perceive it.


Well, this is the fundamental difference. I'm simply saying that the way you perceive reality _is_ your reality.

Dinosaurs were a real thing, even for that long stretch of history when nobody knew they once existed; but for the people who lived before we knew dinosaurs once existed, dinosaurs were not real - they weren't even a thing.

ETA: Actually, the fundamental difference, going back to why this discussion even started, is the difference between "you're wrong" and "technically you're wrong, but I know what you mean".


----------



## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> That's what people are hearing: the difference between tonal and atonal melody. To say that this is totally "subjective" is somewhat misleading.
> 
> Chromatic melodies, derived from totally chromatic tonal music with constantly shifting root movement, even if the context is tonal, have little advantage over 12-tone melodies in this regard. Tonal music with this degree of chromaticism has such a weakened or virtually nonexistent sense of tonality that comparisons like this are essentially meaningless.


Tonality is the elephant in the room. Tonal relationships implied by a melody are not incidental to it or mere "context." They are actually part of the melody. Melody contains and articulates tonal relationships. They are heard as being at the heart of melody by the listener; they give melody coherence, meaning, and memorability. The more clearly a melody traces and defines a comprehensible and meaningful tonal progression, all else being equal, the stronger and more perceptible and memorable the melody will be.

There are innumerable passages in tonal music which, because they're tonally ambiguous, are melodically ambiguous; the melodic line by itself makes no sense because we don't know what harmonies it outlines. We can hear this happen in Bach, in Mozart, in Beethoven, in Chopin, in Berlioz, in Wagner, et al. It's a consequence of chromaticism. People complained that Wagner's music lacked melody because the melody, by itself, didn't tell them what the harmony was. Singers had a hard time learning his vocal lines until they learned to hear the ambiguous, shifting harmony the melody outlined; they had to sense where the harmony was going to understand where the melody was going. Is that sort of melody "really" melody? Technically, yes; by "definition," yes. But is it melodious? Only if you sense the harmonic principles - the tonality - from which it derives its meaning. And it isn't wrong to say that _Tristan,_ a score overflowing with melody, is less melodious or tuneful than _Aida._ Nor is any value judgment entailed; there are expressive purposes served by being less tuneful.

You can say that Schoenberg went farther in this direction than _Tristan_. But Wagner was still emphatically tonal; the relationship of melody to harmonic root was still there and strong, however frequently those roots shifted (and certainly they weren't always unstable or ambiguous). Without that relationship of melody to a root, without the predictability of understood tonal progressions - of a tonal syntax - melody has a problem. If people can't sense why the harmony goes the way it does, they can't sense why the melody goes the way it does; the melody isn't following an understood path, listeners don't know what to expect, and so neither the fulfillment nor the frustration of expectation - the thing that makes tonality a conveyor of meaning - happens. There can be compensation for this loss of tonal expectation; melody in atonal music can still have shape, pattern, and gesture, just as abstract painting can. There are sources of coherence other than tonality. But a lack of tonal expectation goes right to the heart of melody as it has been understood over the centuries of tonal music's development. The loss of it is not insignificant. The elephant called tonality takes up a lot of space in the room.


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## Pat Fairlea

Pat Fairlea said:


> ...That's the sort of solipsism that leads some proponents of serialist music to treat those of us who don't appreciate it as dunderheads who simply lack the knowledge or refined cognitive sensibilities to recognise the technical and innovative genius of the music...


As this thread has focussed in on a debate around Schoenberg's (a)tonality, I have been feeling guilty about the above comment. It was not a thinly-disguised dig at Schoenberg, nor at serialism in general. However, I have often been lectured along the lines of "So, you have listened to the music of Von Blott yet say it does nothing for you. Clearly you do not understand the music or the composer's intentions". Invariably, such remarks have been in the context of 20th century, usually serialist, music. As a one-time research scientist (retired hurt), I strongly dislike even a whiff of deliberate obscurantism. I listen to Schoenberg from time to time and can appreciate that he was a skilled exponent of a particular genre, a particular musical language. However, no amount of listening to it makes that genre more appealing or that language more understandable. If a particular genre of music fails to connect with me, it is not because I have a tin ear but because the composer and I are on quite different wavelengths. That is nobody's fault, nobody's failing, nobody's lack of technical understanding. It is simply a consequence of the complexity of the human brain and of the extraordinary thing that we call music.


----------



## Mahlerian

Pat Fairlea said:


> As this thread has focussed in on a debate around Schoenberg's (a)tonality, I have been feeling guilty about the above comment. It was not a thinly-disguised dig at Schoenberg, nor at serialism in general. However, I have often been lectured along the lines of "So, you have listened to the music of Von Blott yet say it does nothing for you. Clearly you do not understand the music or the composer's intentions". Invariably, such remarks have been in the context of 20th century, usually serialist, music. As a one-time research scientist (retired hurt), I strongly dislike even a whiff of deliberate obscurantism. I listen to Schoenberg from time to time and can appreciate that he was a skilled exponent of a particular genre, a particular musical language. However, no amount of listening to it makes that genre more appealing or that language more understandable. If a particular genre of music fails to connect with me, it is not because I have a tin ear but because the composer and I are on quite different wavelengths. That is nobody's fault, nobody's failing, nobody's lack of technical understanding. It is simply a consequence of the complexity of the human brain and of the extraordinary thing that we call music.


There's nothing intentionally obscurantist about Schoenberg. He considered his music to be difficult because of its compression more than anything else. That is, he was saying musical things directly that a late romantic composer would have taken far longer to say.

Serialism, as always in these discussions, is a red herring. People who dislike it can't hear when it is or isn't being used. People who like it can't always hear when it is or isn't being used. It's really as irrelevant to the average listener as something like the supposed golden mean ratios in Bartok and Debussy. An interesting side note, perhaps, but not related to one's experience of the music as sound.

If you don't like it, that's fine. If you don't feel that you get it, that's fine too. But rest assured, Schoenberg was by no means trying to fool you or anyone else. He was entirely serious.

At any rate, I've seen remarks like the one you mentioned very often for lots of common practice composers, including Beethoven (remember the discussion of the Eroica, in which people piled onto anyone who expressed dislike with a chorus of incomprehension and abuse?), Mozart, and Wagner. It's by no means restricted to the 20th century, it's just that that's the only time when people find it offensive. The rest of the time, they're encouraging it.


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## Mahlerian

Nereffid said:


> Well, this is the fundamental difference. I'm simply saying that the way you perceive reality _is_ your reality.
> 
> Dinosaurs were a real thing, even for that long stretch of history when nobody knew they once existed; but for the people who lived before we knew dinosaurs once existed, dinosaurs were not real - they weren't even a thing.
> 
> ETA: Actually, the fundamental difference, going back to why this discussion even started, is the difference between "you're wrong" and "technically you're wrong, but I know what you mean".


So, what would be your justification for disagreeing with, say, a solipsist who is a murderous psychopath and believes that when he kills someone, he is only destroying part of himself? There's nothing wrong with it from his point of view. In fact, his point of view is his only reality, and according to you, there can be no other possible reality for him. How can we say that he is in any way unjustified or that there is something that should be done to stop him?

What right do we, as people with completely separate subjective realities, have to force our reality onto him?

You also still have yet to explain what, in your subjectivism, music consists of. How can we say that a piece holds its identity over time?


----------



## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> So, what would be your justification for disagreeing with, say, a solipsist who is a murderous psychopath and believes that when he kills someone, he is only destroying part of himself? There's nothing wrong with it from his point of view. In fact, his point of view is his only reality, and according to you, there can be no other possible reality for him. How can we say that he is in any way unjustified or that there is something that should be done to stop him?
> 
> You also still have yet to explain what, in your subjectivism, music consists of. How can we say that a piece holds its identity over time?


A piece can hold its identity over time because so many people perceive it the same way. Being a subjectivist doesn't mean believing that everyone sees everything differently.

As for my opinions on murderous psychopaths, I suppose I could make the effort to give an answer, but we've moved so far from the original issue of you being annoyed over some people not hearing the melodies in Schoenberg's music that I think I'd be wasting my time.


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## Mahlerian

Nereffid said:


> A piece can hold its identity over time because so many people perceive it the same way. Being a subjectivist doesn't mean believing that everyone sees everything differently.


So a piece like Schubert's Ninth that was unknown and unperformed didn't exist until many years after Schubert's death, is that right? He was the only one who had perceived it (aside from maybe a few friends), and no one heard it played by an orchestra at all.

But you still didn't answer the main question. *What is a piece of music?*



Nereffid said:


> As for my opinions on murderous psychopaths, I suppose I could make the effort to give an answer, but we've moved so far from the original issue of you being annoyed over some people not hearing the melodies in Schoenberg's music that I think I'd be wasting my time.


It's an important point, because I don't understand your worldview. I think that if you can't answer these kinds of contradictions or at least accept them, then you shouldn't espouse it.

I'm not annoyed with some people not hearing the melodies in Schoenberg's music. I'm annoyed with people who say that there are no melodies there to be heard, and that's a crucial distinction. I wouldn't say that something's not there just because I don't perceive it.


----------



## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> It's an important point, because I don't understand your worldview.


But at this stage I no longer care whether you understand my worldview. If I thought you were genuinely interested in it, we could have a pleasant discussion about it, but it seems obvious to me that the only reason you want me to explicate my worldview in detail is so that you can reject it in equal detail. Seeing as I don't need to explicate it to myself any more, and now don't think you deserve any further explication, I'm wasting my time.


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## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> The idea that a C major chord only exists when it's heard by an observer *as a C major chord* is absurd to me. It consists of the relationships among tones, which have universal psychological reality in all properly functioning human brains.


So, by this argument, Gioseffo Zarlino must have heard the notes C-E-G and E-G-C as C major chords, right?


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## Mahlerian

EdwardBast said:


> So, by this argument, Gioseffo Zarlino must have heard the notes C-E-G and E-G-C as C major chords, right?


Um, no. You have misunderstood what I said. That is in fact the exact opposite of what I said.


----------



## millionrainbows

MacLeod said:


> Can you point to an example of a piece of Schoenberg where the 12-tone melody does not have a tonal meaning? I'd like to hear what it sounds like.


I can't remember if the Serenade is 12-tone or not; it's transitional. But I think the Petrarch Sonnet is 12-tone. Regardless, I don't hear any melody here with any tonal meaning, as Woodduck so eloquently explained in post #172.

If you did hear it as tonal, you'd be able to relate it to a chord, or chord progression, wouldn't you?


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## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> I can't remember if the Serenade is 12-tone or not; it's transitional. But I think the Petrarch Sonnet is 12-tone. Regardless, I don't hear any melody here with any tonal meaning, as Woodduck so eloquently explained in post #172.


It's transitional. It uses a combination of rows and freely composed sections. The rows are not always strictly 12 notes long, either.



millionrainbows said:


> If you did hear it as tonal, you'd be able to relate it to a chord, or chord progression, wouldn't you?


Beautiful arrangement. I think I might even prefer it to the original movement, because the baritone always comes off as too heavy for the words in my experience.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> Um, no. You have misunderstood what I said. That is in fact the exact opposite of what I said.


Boy, you guys are getting into some hair-splitting subtleties here. Why don't y'all consider simplifying your stances, or giving each other some slack? I'd really like to know the answers to some of these issues, like, is a triad really a triad, regardless of how we consider it or call it? It would seem so, according to the laws of physics.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> It's transitional. It uses a combination of rows and freely composed sections. The rows are not always strictly 12 notes long, either.
> 
> Beautiful arrangement. I think I might even prefer it to the original movement, because the baritone always comes off as too heavy for the words in my experience.


If I find a recording of that version, I'll post it, but you're probably already on the case. It is good, isn't it?


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> Boy, you guys are getting into some hair-splitting subtleties here. Why don't y'all consider simplifying your stances, or giving each other some slack? I'd really like to know the answers to some of these issues, like, is a triad really a triad, regardless of how we consider it or call it? It would seem so, according to the laws of physics.


Of course. My point was not that a triad isn't a triad, but that the Renaissance didn't have any concept equivalent to what we call a triad.


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## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> So, what would be your justification for disagreeing with, say, a solipsist who is a murderous psychopath and believes that when he kills someone, he is only destroying part of himself? There's nothing wrong with it from his point of view.


This example is aimed at Nereffid's comments, and I don't want to directly respond to that. But this definition may have helped me understand why you do not see how melody can have a definition that does not include Schoenberg's music.

When I say the definition I am talking about is subjective, I do not mean it applies to one mind. It cannot apply to one mind. Definitions don't work if they apply to one person, and the more people they apply to, the better they work. So when the solipsist murders someone, the _rest of us_ put her in jail for breaking the law.

Those who view Schoenberg's music without melodies have a definition that makes sense to them. The definition would not make sense if only one person thought that way. In fact, presumably the definition ought to apply to a fairly large interacting group. Thinking of the people who view Schoenberg's music as having no melodies, they all agree. And to them, saying that Schoenberg's music is devoid of melodies makes sense to them because they all hear it that way. When someone comes into their group and says, "Listen to the melody," they will not understand since they hear no melody. If one of them comes to TC and says they love Schubert's melodies but they don't like Schoenberg because his music has no melodies, most of us will disagree thinking there are melodies there.

It's important to realize (as Nereffid said) that the group probably could not write down their definition perfectly because there are many subtle parts. What exactly is different about Schoenberg's and others' music that prevents that group from hearing what we call a melody. None of us know because it has to do with very complex issues in the perception of sound. But if we knew, we could add that part to their definition, and it would be reasonably consistent. Incidentally you can't write down your definition perfectly, as you said, since there are borderline cases.

So maybe what's happening here is that you view this as a philosophical problem, but Nereffid and I are looking at it as a linguistics problem. There is a group who uses the word melody in a reasonably consistent way to designate things they hear as melodies. They then have a consistent definition of melody that _works for them_. And that's what words are for - not be philosophically consistent but to communicate.


----------



## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> When I say the definition I am talking about is subjective, I do not mean it applies to one mind. It cannot apply to one mind. Definitions don't work if they apply to one person, and the more people they apply to, the better they work. So when the solipsist murders someone, the rest of us put her in jail for breaking the law.


Yes, but what is the justification for enforcing the law? If reality is utterly individual and there are only such things as individual realities, you seem to be saying that the majority always has the right to force its view on a minority.

How, then, do we talk about racism? What is the justification, in communities where the majority of people consider it true and real that those of other colors of skin are inherently inferior, for saying that they should not treat them as such?



mmsbls said:


> So maybe what's happening here is that you view this as a philosophical problem, but Nereffid and I are looking at it as a linguistics problem. There is a group who uses the word melody in a reasonably consistent way to designate things they hear as melodies. They then have a consistent definition of melody that works for them. And that's what words are for - not be philosophically consistent but to communicate.


But how can anyone communicate if there is a refusal to even apply one's own definitions consistently? We go down the road of special pleading and ad hoc reasoning and just about anything can be justified.

Words like atonality and tuneless as applied to Schoenberg hinder communication and understanding about his music. They say nothing about his endless stream of melodies, his sensitive handling of harmonic weight, his carefully constructed counterpoint, and so forth. As I have said before, I have been involved in many discussions about Schoenberg on TalkClassical and elsewhere, but almost NONE about his *music*!


----------



## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, but what is the justification for enforcing the law? If reality is utterly individual and there are only such things as individual realities, you seem to be saying that the majority always has the right to force its view on a minority.
> 
> How, then, do we talk about racism? What is the justification, in communities where the majority of people consider it true and real that those of other colors of skin are inherently inferior, for saying that they should not treat them as such?


You're talking about philosophy and jurisprudence - not linguistics. Those topics may be interesting but are way, way outside this discussion (at least for me).



Mahlerian said:


> But how can anyone communicate if there is a refusal to even apply one's own definitions consistently? We go down the road of special pleading and ad hoc reasoning and just about anything can be justified.


Maybe I don't understand. People in the groups I'm talking about do apply their definitions of melody reasonably consistently. Of course there may be cases where one member of the group thinks something is a melody and others don't, but that happens all the time. Is it raining or drizzling? Is he tall or not? The problem would exist if the members of the group could not communicate with the words they chose. As long as they generally agree about what are melodies, then they do not have that problem.



Mahlerian said:


> Words like atonality and tuneless as applied to Schoenberg hinder communication and understanding about his music.


I would agree with this on TC. Based on my discussions with people I know, in music schools words like atonality in no way hinders communication.



Mahlerian said:


> They say nothing about his endless stream of melodies, his sensitive handling of harmonic weight, his carefully constructed counterpoint, and so forth. As I have said before, I have been involved in many discussions about Schoenberg on TalkClassical and elsewhere, but almost NONE about his *music*!


I would prefer discussions on his music. Or at least how his music makes me feel since I can't easily talk the theory. Incidentally, when I talk to my daughter about Schoenberg we talk about the beautiful music, and sometimes even atonality, but that doesn't hinder my understanding probably because we both view it as a characteristic that has little to do with other aspects like enjoyment or Romanticism.


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## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> You're talking about philosophy and jurisprudence - not linguistics. Those topics may be interesting but are way, way outside this discussion (at least for me).


We were talking about the nature of reality. About whether or not one can conclusively say things like melodies exist in fact outside of the perceptions of individuals. With your last response and with your earlier discussion of how Schubert's melodies are more truly melodies than Schoenberg's melodies, you appear to be saying that the majority defines reality and truth.

I am asking whether or not you agree that racism is therefore completely justified within a community if it is the majority view.



mmsbls said:


> Maybe I don't understand. People in the groups I'm talking about do apply their definitions of melody reasonably consistently. Of course there may be cases where one member of the group thinks something is a melody and others don't, but that happens all the time. Is it raining or drizzling? Is he tall or not? The problem would exist if the members of the group could not communicate with the words they chose. As long as they generally agree about what are melodies, then they do not have that problem


If they say that Schubert's melodies are melodies, but not Schoenberg's, then they are already contradicting their own definitions. As I said before, there is no single characteristic of them that is outside of the conventional definition of melody.



mmsbls said:


> I would agree with this on TC. Based on my discussions with people I know, in music schools words like atonality in no way hinders communication.


Well, in my experience, they don't use it the way people on TC use it. Look at the definition in New Grove or some other scholarly music dictionary, and you'll find that the application is not nearly so simple as people make it out to be here, nor does atonality mean that something lacks tonal relationships.


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## Merl

Florestan said:


> I can't comprehend the concept of understanding a piece of music as a combination of various sounds into a unified whole. To me, either I like it or I don't.
> 
> But I do appreciate the kind of understanding that comes from reading about a composer's life and learning some of the things that inspired that composer to write the work. For example, I just read that visiting the ruins of Holyrood Palace and saw the room where Rizzio was murdered in front of the pregnant Mary Stuart (Queen of Scots) at a dinner party and so the Scottish symphony was written in memory of Mary Queen of Scotts.


Much how I feel. Why do I have to understand a piece of music to like it? I don't apply 'understanding' to any other music I like so why to CM? Can't I simplistically say "I like that piece of music because it makes me feel good / has a great melody"?


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## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> We were talking about the nature of reality. About whether or not one can conclusively say things like melodies exist in fact outside of the perceptions of individuals. With your last response and with your earlier discussion of how Schubert's melodies are more truly melodies than Schoenberg's melodies, you appear to be saying that the majority defines reality and truth.


I was never talking about the nature of reality. I was always trying to discuss how people use the word melody. If it somehow appeared otherwise, let me be clear here. I am talking about how people define words and how those definitions can vary depending on how the words are used (i.e. linguistics or semantics).

I don't ever remember saying Schubert's melodies are more truly melodies than Schoenberg's melodies. Since I don't believe that, I'd be rather surprised if I said anything close, but perhaps I was not as clear as I intended.

As far as the majority defining reality and truth, how could I possibly believe anything remotely like that? I'm a physicist and strict materialist. Reality and truth are simply not defined for physicists; they are discovered. I think you have read much to much into some of my posts. I believe I've understood your views on this thread, but it seems rather clear that you haven't really understood mine at all. I'm not sure why it's been so difficult to communicate.



Mahlerian said:


> I am asking whether or not you agree that racism is therefore completely justified within a community if it is the majority view.


This question is simply far outside the topic for the discussion.



Mahlerian said:


> If they say that Schubert's melodies are melodies, but not Schoenberg's, then they are already contradicting their own definitions. As I said before, there is no single characteristic of them that is outside of the conventional definition of melody.


I think they are not contradicting their definitions. There is obviously at least one characteristic of Schoenberg's melodies that differs from Schubert's because some people hear melodies in Schubert and not Schoenberg. That means there is not only something different but also at least one difference directly affects people's perception of melody. I think I understand why you say there are no differences because in a simple sense related to melody that's correct. In a more complicated sense it is clearly not correct.



Mahlerian said:


> Well, in my experience, they don't use it the way people on TC use it. Look at the definition in New Grove or some other scholarly music dictionary, and you'll find that the application is not nearly so simple as people make it out to be here, nor does atonality mean that something lacks tonal relationships.


I've talked for a long time to my daughter (music master's student). She would generally agree with the above. She also disagrees that atonality has anything to do with _not hearing tonal centers_. She tells me musicians define it along the lines of "music with the absence of functional harmony as a primary structural element." Determining whether a work is atonal involves analyzing the work and seeing if analyses using functional harmony make less sense than those which do not involve functional harmony. Obviously most TC members have never analyzed works, and others may not have analyzed many tonal and atonal works.


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## violadude

Merl said:


> Much how I feel. Why do I have to understand a piece of music to like it? I don't apply 'understanding' to any other music I like so why to CM? Can't I simplistically say "I like that piece of music because it makes me feel good / has a great melody"?


You can listen to music however you want. But I think the bulk of the tension regarding this issue is between super-nerds and casual fans. All the super-nerds want the casual fans to become super nerds like them, because nerds are lonely and we want more people to understand that Classical Music is much more than good melodies. So when we see casual fans, we tend to see potential fellow super nerds and, in our excitement and zeal for our passion, we aggressively pounce on them like a hunting lion. And then, ya know, the casual fan doesn't like that sometimes, I suppose. :O

I guess that's how I would put it.


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## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> I was never talking about the nature of reality. I was always trying to discuss how people use the word melody. If it somehow appeared otherwise, let me be clear here. I am talking about how people define words and how those definitions can vary depending on how the words are used (i.e. linguistics or semantics).
> 
> I don't ever remember saying Schubert's melodies are more truly melodies than Schoenberg's melodies. Since I don't believe that, I'd be rather surprised if I said anything close, but perhaps I was not as clear as I intended.
> 
> As far as the majority defining reality and truth, how could I possibly believe anything remotely like that? I'm a physicist and strict materialist. Reality and truth are simply not defined for physicists; they are discovered. I think you have read much to much into some of my posts. I believe I've understood your views on this thread, but it seems rather clear that you haven't really understood mine at all. I'm not sure why it's been so difficult to communicate.


Well, your views seem to have a different basis from Nereffid's then, and the comment you responded to was directed at the things which he said. He did say specifically that reality is nothing more than a subjective perception of the world. You did not, it is true.



mmsbls said:


> I think they are not contradicting their definitions. There is obviously at least one characteristic of Schoenberg's melodies that differs from Schubert's because some people hear melodies in Schubert and not Schoenberg. That means there is not only something different but also at least one difference directly affects people's perception of melody. I think I understand why you say there are no differences because in a simple sense related to melody that's correct. In a more complicated sense it is clearly not correct.


As I explained before, it's the context and the chromaticism that differs, not anything else.



mmsbls said:


> I've talked for a long time to my daughter (music master's student). She would generally agree with the above. She also disagrees that atonality has anything to do with _not hearing tonal centers_. She tells me musicians define it along the lines of "music with the absence of functional harmony as a primary structural element." Determining whether a work is atonal involves analyzing the work and seeing if analyses using functional harmony make less sense than those which do not involve functional harmony. Obviously most TC members have never analyzed works, and others may not have analyzed many tonal and atonal works.


See, that's exactly what I mean too, and that usage doesn't offend me at all.


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## JosefinaHW

Mandryka said:


> But what happens where someone listens too Art of Fugue, say, or the Machaut Mass, or the Schoenberg string teio, and doesn't like them? Knowing that people who have devoted much time and thought to Bach and Machaut and Schoenberg rate them as masterpieces. I think it's a bit glib to just say to yourself "oh well, not for me, let's move on", just as you might do with, for example, a ride in a theme park.
> 
> (think of someone taking the same approach to Shakespeare or Aristotle)
> 
> Another approach would be to rise to the challenge: listen harder, to different interpretations, read books, talk to people who do appreciate it. . . .


:Mandryka: Thank you for putting into words many of my thoughts to music (and literature and painting). When I listen to a piece of CM that doesn't resonate with me at all during the first two listens--I don't have an exact method--yet I know that many experienced listeners have great respect or praise for the piece, I am almost never willing to describe the piece in a negative way. My reason/response for MANY years has been--OK, there is some life experience that I have not had yet that the composer has had and I'll keep on living and try the piece again at some future date. I still think that is true, but after a certain age/amount of life experience has been accumulated then it's really time to ask a knowledgeable listener for assistance.


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## Merl

violadude said:


> You can listen to music however you want. But I think the bulk of the tension regarding this issue is between super-nerds and casual fans. All the super-nerds want the casual fans to become super nerds like them, because nerds are lonely and we want more people to understand that Classical Music is much more than good melodies. So when we see casual fans, we tend to see potential fellow super nerds and, in our excitement and zeal for our passion, we aggressively pounce on them like a hunting lion. And then, ya know, the casual fan doesn't like that sometimes, I suppose. :O
> 
> I guess that's how I would put it.


Oooh, I must be a casual fan then cos I like the Beethoven tune that goes da-da-da-da and that symphony with the bloke and the bird singing. Oh and that Ravel choon that Torvill and Dean skated around to.


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## Guest

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, but what is the justification for enforcing the law? If reality is utterly individual and there are only such things as individual realities, you seem to be saying that the majority always has the right to force its view on a minority.


I can't speak for nereffid or mmsbls, but yes, that just about sums it up. The law 'works' because the majority's say prevails. In more sophisticated societies, the law goes some way to protect the minority. For some within the majority, they will claim an absolute source for their authority and convince many of the 'justification', but it doesn't require everyone to accept that absolute authority for a community to function.

And yes, in a society where the majority prevails, attitudes and consequences may lead to what you and I would deem utterly unacceptable, such as racism and then ethnic cleansing.

Back to the music, I asked for an example of the absence of 'tonal meaning' and million gave me one. So, I listened. I hear melodies, though not of the 'shallow' kind currently being dismissed in another thread - but am I hearing 'tonal meaning'? You might have to help me out here as I'm not sure what 'tonal meaning' means, never mind whether I'm hearing it!


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## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> He did say specifically that reality is nothing more than a subjective perception of the world.


Sigh.

I feel obliged to set the record straight for anyone who may have read that without reading what I actually said, because I have said no such thing.



Nereffid said:


> "What's actually there" - whether we're talking about music or anything else - is to me more correctly worded as "what's perceived to be there". Often they're effectively the same thing, but where there are differences among observers then this similarity can decrease, perhaps drastically.
> 
> For any individual observer, their perceptions are their reality.


Is this really so hard to understand?
I make a distinction between "What's actually there" and "what's perceived to be there" and note that _often they're effectively the same thing_ but sometimes not. So quite clearly from what I've said, I believe that there is indeed something that's "actually there", which can be, but isn't necessarily, distinct from what any individual perceives to be there. If I believed that reality was nothing more than subjective perception, I would have said something like 'to speak of "what's actually there" is incorrect'.

And then I say this:


Nereffid said:


> Dinosaurs were a real thing, even for that long stretch of history when nobody knew they once existed; but for the people who lived before we knew dinosaurs once existed, dinosaurs were not real - they weren't even a thing.


Again, quite clearly from what I've said, I believe that the actual reality of dinosaurs is distinct from their apparent non-reality to people who were never aware that they existed. If I believed that reality was nothing more than subjective perception, I would have said something like 'dinosaurs only became real once people knew they existed'.

I have been talking about _the individual's perception of reality_ and arguing that this effectively means _the individual's reality_. Think of the concept of individual realities as a metaphor or a linguistic sleight-of-hand if it makes you feel better. Everyone lives in what is effectively their own version of reality, but this doesn't mean there's not an _actual_ reality outside of those versions, or that these myriad versions aren't very similar (or identical) in most ways. Aesthetic judgement is one area where these versions can differ quite a bit (one person perceives "beautiful music" while another perceives "horrible noise"; the reality is simply a set of notes).

I didn't want to come back to this thread, especially after a crucial post that got to the heart of the matter was deleted, but I'm a little concerned that labels like "doesn't believe in reality" or "condones racism and ritual murder" may become attached to me; I've seen it happen to others.


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## Mahlerian

Nereffid said:


> Sigh.
> 
> I feel obliged to set the record straight for anyone who may have read that without reading what I actually said, because I have said no such thing.
> 
> Is this really so hard to understand?
> I make a distinction between "What's actually there" and "what's perceived to be there" and note that _often they're effectively the same thing_ but sometimes not. So quite clearly from what I've said, I believe that there is indeed something that's "actually there", which can be, but isn't necessarily, distinct from what any individual perceives to be there. If I believed that reality was nothing more than subjective perception, I would have said something like 'to speak of "what's actually there" is incorrect'.


Because you said that a person's subjective perception is the only reality for them. A person can be simultaneously aware of their own perceptions and the fact that they do not correspond to reality. Most people (who have thought about such things) accept that there is such a thing as a reality outside of themselves and outside of their own perceptions.



Nereffid said:


> And then I say this:
> 
> Again, quite clearly from what I've said, I believe that the actual reality of dinosaurs is distinct from their apparent non-reality to people who were never aware that they existed. If I believed that reality was nothing more than subjective perception, I would have said something like 'dinosaurs only became real once people knew they existed'.
> 
> I have been talking about _the individual's perception of reality_ and arguing that this effectively means _the individual's reality_. Think of the concept of individual realities as a metaphor or a linguistic sleight-of-hand if it makes you feel better. Everyone lives in what is effectively their own version of reality, but this doesn't mean there's not an _actual_ reality outside of those versions, or that these myriad versions aren't very similar (or identical) in most ways. Aesthetic judgement is one area where these versions can differ quite a bit (one person perceives "beautiful music" while another perceives "horrible noise"; the reality is simply a set of notes).


So why don't you accept the idea that a melody can be something that does or doesn't exist in reality?

I am saying that, like the existence of the dinosaurs, an individual's reality is completely irrelevant to the question of whether or not melodies exist in a piece of music.



Nereffid said:


> I didn't want to come back to this thread, especially after a crucial post that got to the heart of the matter was deleted, but I'm a little concerned that labels like "doesn't believe in reality" or "condones racism and ritual murder" may become attached to me; I've seen it happen to others.


I never believed you condoned racism or slaughter. I was using them as examples that I knew you, as a non-sociopath, would not accept as moral. You did say that a person could change their reality, though, and I think that saying that changing one's perspective is equivalent to changing reality for a person is assuming that they do not have a wider concept of a reality that exists outside of themselves.


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## millionrainbows

mmsbls said:


> ...I've talked for a long time to my daughter (music master's student). She would generally agree with the above. She also disagrees that atonality has anything to do with _not hearing tonal centers_.


In other words, "atonality" has nothing to do with "hearing tonality?" I must disagree, and ask you to consider the logic of that statement.

"Atonality" or "free atonality" (which preceded and necessitated the invention of 12-tone) is a state of total chromaticism which involves the continuous circulation of all 12 notes. This in itself is a state of weakened to non-existent tonality. In such states of chromaticism, "function" no longer functions. "Function" is something that happens in tonality. and, as well, this music would not be perceived as tonal, or as having a tonal center.



> ...She tells me musicians define it along the lines of "music with the absence of functional harmony as a primary structural element." Determining whether a work is atonal involves analyzing the work and seeing if analyses using functional harmony make less sense than those which do not involve functional harmony. Obviously most TC members have never analyzed works, and others may not have analyzed many tonal and atonal works.


While it is true that upon analysis, "function" is not found, or is found to be too ambiguous to the point of meaninglessness, the very nature of tonality is "a perceived tonal center." So "atonal" music is not going to have a perceived tonal center, or sense of tonality; that is why it is called "atonal."

"Music with the absence of functional harmony as a primary structural element" would certainly be apparent to the ear as "atonal," since "harmony" is based on harmonic principles which are audible as sound to the ear.

The reply seems to be an attempt to take the issue of "tonal or atonal" OUT of the realm of the ear, and make it an issue of analysis only, for the "experts" to figure out. This is academic hogwash.


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## Guest

Mahlerian said:


> Because [nereffid] said that a person's subjective perception is the only reality for them.


I don't think he did, actually.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> ...I never believed you condoned racism or slaughter. I was using them as examples that I knew you, as a non-sociopath, would not accept as moral.


Congratulations, Nereffid! You are a non-sociopath! I know that Dr. Phil would be so proud! :lol:


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## Mahlerian

MacLeod said:


> I don't think he did, actually.





Nereffid said:


> Mahlerian said:
> 
> 
> 
> I disagree that I can change my reality, or that anyone can change their own reality. I can only change the way I perceive it.
> 
> 
> 
> Well, this is the fundamental difference. I'm simply saying that the way you perceive reality _is_ your reality.
Click to expand...

He created no distinction between objective reality and a person's individual reality, for a given individual. In fact he responded to tell me that for an individual, changing perception is identical to changing their reality.


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## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> In other words, "atonality" has nothing to do with "hearing tonality?" I must disagree, and ask you to consider the logic of that statement.


Yeah, because the term is stupid. That's what I've been saying all along. The way people in the world of academia use it, it doesn't mean "not tonal."


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## Guest

Mahlerian said:


> He created no distinction between objective reality and a person's individual reality, for a given individual. In fact he responded to tell me that for an individual, changing perception is identical to changing their reality.


Odd, I thought he did...



> I make a distinction between "What's actually there" and "what's perceived to be there" and note that _often they're effectively the same thing_ but sometimes not. So quite clearly from what I've said, I believe that there is indeed something that's "actually there", which can be, but isn't necessarily, distinct from what any individual perceives to be there.


http://www.talkclassical.com/45032-classical-music-understanding-versus-post1115565.html#post1115565


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> Yeah, because the term is stupid. That's what I've been saying all along. The way people in the world of academia use it, it doesn't mean "not tonal."


So "atonal" means "music with the absence of functional harmony as a primary structural element" determined by analysis only, without hearing it?

By that logic, "tonality" has nothing to do with hearing tonality, but only on analysis without hearing it. That is just as stupid.

*We all know that music is based on hearing sound.*


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## Mahlerian

MacLeod said:


> Odd, I thought he did...
> 
> http://www.talkclassical.com/45032-classical-music-understanding-versus-post1115565.html#post1115565


Yes, in reference to this:



nereffid said:


> "What's actually there" - whether we're talking about music or anything else - is to me more correctly worded as "what's perceived to be there". Often they're effectively the same thing, but where there are differences among observers then this similarity can decrease, perhaps drastically.
> 
> *For any individual observer, their perceptions are their reality.*


He was telling me that I shouldn't talk about what's actually there as something separate from perception. From an individual perspective, we can still distrust our perceptions or accept them only on a provisional basis, so I don't understand how one can justify saying that our perceptions are necessarily equivalent to our reality.


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## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> So "atonal" means "music with the absence of functional harmony as a primary structural element" determined by analysis only, without hearing it?
> 
> By that logic, "tonality" has nothing to do with hearing tonality, but only on analysis without hearing it. That is just as stupid.
> 
> *We all know that music is based on hearing sound.*


But I *DO* hear functional harmony or a lack thereof. It's one of the most obvious differences between, say, Bach and Palestrina or Debussy and Wagner.


----------



## mmsbls

millionrainbows said:


> In other words, "atonality" has nothing to do with "hearing tonality?" I must disagree, and ask you to consider the logic of that statement.


I don't think we necessarily disagree. I used a shortcut. My daughter's statement would be clearer if written, "Musicologists will analyze a work and look for the absence of functional harmony as a primary structural element to determine whether a work is atonal. They might also not hear tonality in the work, but they make their determination based on the analysis."



millionrainbows said:


> The reply seems to be an attempt to take the issue of "tonal or atonal" OUT of the realm of the ear, and make it an issue of analysis only, for the "experts" to figure out. This is academic hogwash.


Atonality is not _just_ for experts to figure out. I think they do determine atonality through analysis. I also think that the vast majority of non-experts would often get issues of atonal versus tonal wrong because neither their ears nor their analysis would allow them to determine the absence of functional harmony.


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## millionrainbows

I think the argument as to whether melody actually exists objectively is flawed, because "melody" is something that has meaning to us. If it has meaning, it is a "transmitter" or symbol of that meaning, and affects us internally and subjectively, like a word.

The way this symbol transmits this meaning is because it is based on a field of common meanings, and agreed-upon meanings. These agreements are context-dependent. To mean what it does, the word or melody must be within a meaningful "field" of context, or other supporting meaning.

Therefore, the "meaning" of melody depends on what context it is in. It does not exist "objectively" as meaning without an observer, or receiver of that meaning.

Meaning is being. Meaning cannot be objective; it must be part of being, and that requires a subject of being.

If a melody is meaningless to one person, and meaningful to another, it is also because of context differences, not solely because of the melody itself. 

Tonality is one context; atonality is another. Atonal melodies are meaningless in a tonal context, but meaningful in an atonal context. But an atonal melody cannot be said to be "melodious" in both contexts.

There is no provision or context of meaning for melody which includes Schoenberg and Schubert. Atonal melodies operate under different principles than tonal melodies, namely, the facts of atonality and tonality. Those are two different things.


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## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> Because you said that a person's subjective perception is the only reality for them. A person can be simultaneously aware of their own perceptions and the fact that they do not correspond to reality. Most people (who have thought about such things) accept that there is such a thing as a reality outside of themselves and outside of their own perceptions.


I agree with the second and third sentences, but the first needs further discussion because you seem to think it contradicts the others, whereas I don't.

You seem to think I'm saying that because I can't personally perceive atoms, they're not real for me. That's not it. The knowledge that there's something that others have perceived but that I can't perceive _is also part of my perception_. I can't perceive atoms, but I can read about the work of people who have used instruments to perceive them, so I can say not just "atoms are real for me" but also "atoms are real".

But if I not only lack the ability to perceive atoms, but _also_ have zero awareness of atomic theory and have never even given any thought to the possibility that there might be anything smaller than the smallest thing anyone could see with the naked eye, how could atoms be real for me? Why, in that situation, would I think that my belief doesn't correspond to reality?


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> There is no provision or context of meaning for melody which includes Schoenberg and Schubert. Atonal melodies operate under different principles than tonal melodies, namely, the facts of atonality and tonality. Those are two different things.


No they aren't. They're two manifestations of the same thing. "Atonality" is nothing more than tonal music using unfamiliar harmonic relationships rather than the familiar ones of common practice.


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## millionrainbows

mmsbls said:


> ...I also think that the vast majority of non-experts would often get issues of atonal versus tonal wrong because neither their ears nor their analysis would allow them to determine the absence of functional harmony.




But the definition is flawed. if atonality is "music with the absence of functional harmony as a primary structural element," then only CP tonality is "tonal," and North Indian raga is not.

"Tonal" is being used here in an academic sense, to mean only CP tonality. This is an artificial, incomplete definition which excludes the ear. The ear hears Indian raga as being tone-centered music. It has no "function," but it is tone-centric, or tonal.

Students of Western music need to be exposed to Indian raga and other forms of tonal music, in order to expand their concept of tonality to include a general sense of the term.


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> But the definition is flawed. if atonality is "music with the absence of functional harmony as a primary structural element," then only CP tonality is "tonal," and North Indian raga is not.


But that's the only situation in which the term "atonal" has any meaning at all. Otherwise it's useless and self-contradictory.


----------



## Magnum Miserium

millionrainbows said:


> Students of Western music need to be exposed to Indian raga and other forms of tonal music, in order to expand their concept of tonality to include a general sense of the term.


But... tonality is a Western term...


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## millionrainbows

_So "atonal" means_ _"music with the absence of functional harmony as a primary structural element" determined by analysis only, without hearing it?_

_By that logic, "tonality" has nothing to do with hearing tonality, but only on analysis without hearing it. That is just as stupid. _

*We all know that music is based on hearing sound.*



Mahlerian said:


> But I *DO* hear functional harmony or a lack thereof. It's one of the most obvious differences between, say, Bach and Palestrina or Debussy and Wagner.


Mmsbls's daughter is using "functional harmony" as if it were the only way music can be tonal, but "functional" pertains only to CP tonal practices in the way she is using it.

North Indian rage has no "functional harmony," but it is tonal music. Shouldn't you clear this point up before you use it as your criteria for defining "tonal vs. atonal?"


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> Mmsbls's daughter is using "functional harmony" as if it were the only way music can be tonal, but "functional" pertains only to CP tonal practices in the way she is using it.
> 
> North Indian rage has no "functional harmony," but it is tonal music. Shouldn't you clear this point up before you use it as your criteria for defining "tonal vs. atonal?"


Sure.

If there is such a thing as "atonality" in our terminology, Indian Raga is not tonal (though also not atonal, because that term only applies to music within the western tradition). There, happy?


----------



## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> No they aren't. They're two manifestations of the same thing. "Atonality" is nothing more than tonal music using unfamiliar harmonic relationships rather than the familiar ones of common practice.


North Indian raga has no harmonic function, but it is tonal (Harvard Dictionary of Music). I don't call it "atonal."


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## Dim7




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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> But that's the only situation in which the term "atonal" has any meaning at all. Otherwise it's useless and self-contradictory.


That's true. But Mmsbls's daughter is using the term "atonal" to include other forms of non-functional tonality, such as North Indian raga, and that's an incorrect use of the term. Tonal can be used in a general sense; atonality cannot in this context.

But I think "atonality" has a general definition as well, and I think that's the way most people use it.

BTW, there is a super-specific use of the term atonal, which I have not revealed, until Sept. 30 (clue)


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## millionrainbows

Magnum Miserium said:


> But... tonality is a Western term...


 If you separate it from its meaning, then yes, as a term, it was developed by the West. We're using terms here for their meaning, though. As soon as you're ready to get on the "meaning" bandwagon, let us know.

If we wish to consider what "tonal" means, then it means generally tone-centered, which includes most of the world's music. See Harvard Dictionary of Music for the general meaning.


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## Magnum Miserium

millionrainbows said:


> Tonal can be used in a general sense; atonality cannot.


I dunno, I've heard people complain about Stephen Sondheim's awful atonal music. If "tonality" can colloquially mean "relatively consonant," then it seems like "atonality" should be allowed to mean "relatively dissonant," and anyway it already kind of does.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> Sure.
> 
> If there is such a thing as "atonality" in our terminology, Indian Raga is not tonal (though also not atonal, because that term only applies to music within the western tradition). There, happy?


I don't need to go incircles like that, because I have the general definition of tonality.

"Atonality" can be used in a general way as well, to mean "not tonal" in the general sense.


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## millionrainbows

Magnum Miserium said:


> I dunno, I've heard people complain about Stephen Sondheim's awful atonal music. If "tonality" can colloquially mean "relatively consonant," then it seems like "atonality" should be allowed to mean "relatively dissonant," and anyway it already kind of does.


Okay. Atonality can have a general meaning; but the way it was used by Mmsbls's daughter is using the term "atonal" to include other forms of non-functional tonality, such as North Indian raga, and that's an incorrect use of the term. Indian music is very consonant.


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## millionrainbows

CP tonality's "harmonic function" does not determine whether a music is tonal or not.

"Harmonic function" was developed extensively by CP tonality, but it is not a primary definer of what we mean by tone-centered music.


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## millionrainbows

Tell us all about "atonality," Mahlerian; or you can wait until after Sept. 30th when I reveal it in the music theory thread, unless somebody guesses it before then. I really did think you'd have the answer by now. tsk, tsk.


----------



## mmsbls

millionrainbows said:


> But Mmsbls's daughter is using the term "atonal" to include other forms of non-functional tonality, such as North Indian raga, and that's an incorrect use of the term. Tonal can be used in a general sense; atonality cannot in this context.


My understanding is that my daughter was using atonal to differentiate specific music (some post 1900 Western music) from CP tonal music. I thought that the term is used in that sense in academic circles.

Basically I thought the reason it is used is because musicians analyze music's harmony to understand the content better (to play, to compose, and maybe other reasons). The amount of analysis of CP tonal music in Western academic circles seems vastly larger than all other analysis. "New" music came along after 1900 so people started to analyze that music. They did so relative to the dominant music they had studied - CP tonal music. So the atonal aspect is relative to CP tonal music.

I certainly could be wrong. But then the question would be, "Why do academics use the term in a way that apparently is consistent to them?" And they are the ones that spend by far the most time thinking about this issue.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> ...If there is such a thing as "atonality" in our terminology…


Oh, there is. Not in the sense you are trying to get rid of it, though. It's very specific. (clue)



> ...Indian Raga is not tonal (though also not atonal, because that term only applies to music within the western tradition). There, happy?


No. Indian raga IS tonal. You are just using the term in a CP way.


----------



## millionrainbows

mmsbls said:


> My understanding is that my daughter was using atonal to differentiate specific music (some post 1900 Western music) from CP tonal music. I thought that the term is used in that sense in academic circles.


"Atonal" is used that way in academic circles, but it is also being paired with "tonal" in a restricted CP tonal sense, to mean only functional CP tonality.

Also, on face reading, "atonal" is being used as a blanket term to exclude all music without CP function, and this is not flexible or general enough to allow us to make any progress in this discussion. If the term "atonal" is being used in a very specific manner, then we need to be apprised of that, or we will question it.

Mahlerian is objecting to the term itself, but accepts it if used specifically to exclude music without non-functional CP tonality. If this meaning were to be accepted, then Debussy and Bartok would have to be under the umbrella of "atonality," and this is incorrect as far as the general meaning of "tonal" is understood. See Harvard Dictionary of Music for the general definition of "tonality."



> Basically I thought the reason it is used is because musicians analyze music's harmony to understand the content better (to play, to compose, and maybe other reasons). The amount of analysis of CP tonal music in Western academic circles seems vastly larger than all other analysis. "New" music came along after 1900 so people started to analyze that music. They did so relative to the dominant music they had studied - CP tonal music. So the atonal aspect is relative to CP tonal music.


I agree, but the term "atonality" has a more comprehensive meaning, to denote "music which is not composed according to the principles of tonality," or "not tonal" in a general sense. This zeroes-in on 12-tone and serialism, and excludes most of Stravinsky and Debussy, as it should. These composers used "expanded" tonal ideas, and _harmonic thought._

12-tone and serialism use _non-harmonic principles of organization, _and are alone in this. That's why they are fundamentally different from Debussy to other forms of modernism.

"Atonal" is a term which excludes general tonality. It means "music which is not tonal" in that it does not use a tonal hierarchy, and uses tone-rows or set theory.



> I certainly could be wrong. But then the question would be, "Why do academics use the term in a way that apparently is consistent to them?" And they are the ones that spend by far the most time thinking about this issue.


The term is still used extensively, in music theory textbook titles (John Rahn, "Atonal Theory"). These books concentrate on 12-tone and serial principle which grew out of that. Debussy is usually classified as "20th century modernism" and is not included in books on set theory.

The only person who is objecting to the term is Mahlerian, when the term is used to denote Second Viennese School music, but they are the progenitors of "atonal" music.


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> The only person who is objecting to the term is Mahlerian, when the term is used to denote Second Viennese School music, but they are the progenitors of "atonal" music.


Yes, just me and almost every other composer whose music has been lumped under the term, including the Second Viennese School themselves.

http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/music/berg/interview.pdf


----------



## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, just me and almost every other composer whose music has been lumped under the term, including the Second Viennese School themselves.




George Perle doesn't use the term pejoratively; and _it refers specifically to the Second Viennese School. _The book is called "Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern."

"Atonal" refers to a conception of music which started with Schoenberg, and gave rise to serialism and set theory. It's called "atonal" because it is founded on principles which are very different than traditional CP tonality.


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## mmsbls

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, just me and almost every other composer whose music has been lumped under the term, including the Second Viennese School themselves.
> 
> http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/music/berg/interview.pdf


Definitions of things are made by those speaking or writing about those things. If the vast majority of musicologists define atonality a particular way, that is its meaning. So if Berg and Schoenberg objected even today, that would really be immaterial.

But...after reading the article you linked, I would say Berg agrees that atonal music has a new harmonic function. His main complaints are that people use the term disparagingly and to say that atonal music is not real music. In response to:

"atonal music surely does follows a new path. There is certainly something in it that has never been heard before..."

He responds:

"Only as concerns harmony: on that we agree."

He seems to agree with the academic definition as far as I can tell. I also thought Schoenberg's complaint was not so much that "his" music was not different but rather that he didn't like the term used. I thought he preferred pan-tonal.


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## Mahlerian

mmsbls said:


> Definitions of things are made by those speaking or writing about those things. If the vast majority of musicologists define atonality a particular way, that is its meaning. So if Berg and Schoenberg objected even today, that would really be immaterial.
> 
> But...after reading the article you linked, I would say Berg agrees that atonal music has a new harmonic function. His main complaints are that people use the term disparagingly and to say that atonal music is not real music. In response to:
> 
> "atonal music surely does follows a new path. There is certainly something in it that has never been heard before..."
> 
> He responds:
> 
> "Only as concerns harmony: on that we agree."
> 
> He seems to agree with the academic definition as far as I can tell. I also thought Schoenberg's complaint was not so much that "his" music was not different but rather that he didn't like the term used. I thought he preferred pan-tonal.


I'm not saying that the music is not different, nor have I ever meant to imply that. I am saying that the _way in which it is different_ is not in terms of Millionrainbows' and others conceptions of "general tonality." You will notice that Berg says that there is nothing in this new harmony that exempts it from having harmonic centers.

The definition I and Schoenberg object to is one in which atonality is defined as an absence or negation of the principles of traditional harmony. It is, as Berg says above, an _expansion_ of traditional harmony. As the term "pantonal" implies, it is music that embraces the relationships of all keys into a single unity.

Berg agrees. He says that the definition I mentioned above would be one in which the term were taken literally, and it is this that he objects to, just as I do.

A quote from Schoenberg:

"l do not consider my music as atonal, but rather as non-tonal. I feel the unity of all keys. *Atonal music by modern composers admits of no key at all, no feeling of any definite center.*"

Citation

You can see that he specifically distinguishes himself from the idea of having "no feeling of any definite center," and it is this in particular which he objects to in the idea of atonality.


----------



## mstar

Mahlerian said:


> A quote from Schoenberg:
> 
> "l do not consider my music as atonal, but rather as non-tonal. I feel the unity of all keys. *Atonal music by modern composers admits of no key at all, no feeling of any definite center.*"
> 
> Citation
> 
> You can see that he specifically distinguishes himself from the idea of having "no feeling of any definite center," and it is this in particular which he objects to in the idea of atonality.


I agree, but it's unlikely people will stop referring to nontonal/pantonal music as "atonal" simply because the latter term is so commonly used. It's like arguing that "classical music" should only refer to music from the Classical Era. Technically, that is correct, but it's simply unlikely to change.

The term "atonal" has come to mean nontonal/polytonal, whether or not this is justified technically. Perhaps unfortunately, it seems that it'll remain this way, but this doesn't detract from the value of the music or change the music itself.

But again, I think it's more concerning that "classical music" is a genre/term that lumps together all the music written across several eras over the span of centuries.


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## Mahlerian

mstar said:


> I agree, but it's unlikely people will stop referring to nontonal/pantonal music as "atonal" simply because the latter term is so commonly used. It's like arguing that "classical music" should only refer to music from the Classical Era. Technically, that is correct, but it's simply unlikely to change.
> 
> The term "atonal" has come to mean nontonal/polytonal, whether or not this is justified technically. Perhaps unfortunately, it seems that it'll remain this way, but this doesn't detract from the value of the music or change the music itself.
> 
> But again, I think it's more concerning that "classical music" is a genre/term that lumps together all the music written across several eras over the span of centuries.


If the use of the term were primarily neutral, I would agree with you. Like I've said, I don't really have a problem with the term as it's used in academic circles.

But in general parlance, as understood, it means "a kind of music which is contrary to the natural organization of music that has always existed in all cultures and all places," which is not only wrong, it's damaging to understanding of the music itself.


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## millionrainbows

mmsbls said:


> ...I would say Berg agrees that atonal music has a new harmonic function...
> "Atonal music surely does follows a new path. There is certainly something in it that has never been heard before…" He responds: "Only as concerns harmony: on that we agree."...He seems to agree with the academic definition as far as I can tell.


I think the statement means more than just "lack of harmonic function." But who knows?



> ...I also thought Schoenberg's complaint was not so much that "his" music was not different but rather that he didn't like the term used. I thought he preferred pan-tonal.


There is a specific reason that Schoenberg did not like the term, and I will reveal it after Sept. 30.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> I'm not saying that the music is not different, nor have I ever meant to imply that. I am saying that the _way in which it is different_ is not in terms of Millionrainbows' and others conceptions of "general tonality." You will notice that Berg says that there is nothing in this new harmony that exempts it from having harmonic centers.


You must be inferring that. I read the article, and nowhere does Berg say that. Show me the direct quote you are paraphrasing.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> ...The definition I and Schoenberg object to is one in which atonality is defined as an absence or negation of the principles of traditional harmony…


The "principles" may be the same, as in voice-leading or melodic construction, but there is still no tonic.



> It is, as Berg says above, an _expansion_ of traditional harmony. As the term "pantonal" implies, it is music that embraces the relationships of all keys into a single unity.


What exactly does that mean? How can all 12 key areas be a single unity? That's not tonality. That's total chromaticism.



> Berg agrees. He says that the definition I mentioned above would be one in which the term were taken literally, and it is this that he objects to, just as I do.


Where does he say this? You are inferring. Give me a direct quote from Berg.



> A quote from Schoenberg:
> 
> "l do not consider my music as atonal, but rather as non-tonal. I feel the unity of all keys. *Atonal music by modern composers admits of no key at all, no feeling of any definite center.*"


He was trying to hold on to his tonal credentials. He wanted it both ways. He alluded to tonality in his music, but it was not truly tonal. He liked the suggestion of a key, so he kept it. But the 12-tone method itself is not inherently tonal, and music produced with the method will sound "tonal" only by direct intention and manipulation. There is nothing inherently tonal about the 12-tone method, whether it is a comprehensive system or not.

Schoenberg: "...it is It is not, however, a matter of mathematics, for in music as in painting and in architecture it is a thing one feels rather than something one understands."

So he admits right there that his 12-tone 'tonality' is not a matter of of anything except 'feeling' as if it is tonal. Of course, he could offer no 'mathematical' or logical proof of this.



> You can see that he specifically distinguishes himself from the idea of having "no feeling of any definite center," and it is this in particular which he objects to in the idea of atonality.


Well of course; Schoenberg wants to be a part go the great Viennese tonal tradition, not just another modernist. He also wants to disassociate himself from the term "atonal" for another reason (clue, Sept 30).


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## millionrainbows

mstar said:


> The term "atonal" has come to mean nontonal/polytonal, whether or not this is justified technically.


The term is used technically, not pejoratively, and is justified by Allen Forte, the founder of music theory at Yale, among others.



As the term "atonal" is used in composition textbooks, it refers to a musical system of composition which uses set theory, and not traditional CP tonal methods. It is also called "post-tonal" composition.



> But again, I think it's more concerning that "classical music" is a genre/term that lumps together all the music written across several eras over the span of centuries.


That's what Schoenberg was hoping for, before they kicked him out of Vienna.


----------



## Magnum Miserium

millionrainbows said:


> He was trying to hold on to his tonal credentials. He wanted it both ways.


Seems to me he was differentiating between his music plus that of his acolytes - "unity of all keys" - and neoclassical music that superficially resembles "tonal" music but isn't really - "no feeling of any definite center."


----------



## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> If the use of the term were primarily neutral, I would agree with you. Like I've said, I don't really have a problem with the term as it's used in academic circles.


You do have a problem with the term, even academically, if you don't accept that "atonal" refers to a way of composing music using set theory, i.e., ordered and unordered sets of notes, which is distinguished and differentiated from tonal composing methods and the system of tonality upon which it is based.

i.e., you should not use Allen Forte's Atonal Theory book as a guide to composing music that is tonal and sounds tonal.

It will not produce tonal music.



> But in general parlance, as understood, it means "a kind of music which is contrary to the natural organization of music that has always existed in all cultures and all places…"


I don't agree with the wording of that; it's a distortion. But it is true to the extent that 12-tone music is not tonal, even in the general sense. Most of the world music IS tone-centric, or tonal.

Ironically, the way Schoenberg and Berg used "the method" has more in common with CP tonality! That's a hoot! Only Webern was forward-looking, and accepted the non-harmonic implications of the method.


> ...which is not only wrong, it's damaging to understanding of the music itself.


12-tone music is not tonal music, and in that regard it is different to most of the world's other mostly tonal music. Tonality is a natural phenomenon of hearing, and physics. Schoenberg's 12-tone method is an invention.


----------



## millionrainbows

Magnum Miserium said:


> Seems to me he was differentiating between his music plus that of his acolytes - "unity of all keys" - and neoclassical music that superficially resembles "tonal" music but isn't really - "no feeling of any definite center."


If Schoenberg was accusing Stravinsky (neoclassical) of being not tonal, that's a laugh. Stravinsky is much more tonal in every way, except when he himself used the method.

I don't know who he was referring to, but it may be revealed Sept. 30 (clue).


----------



## millionrainbows

Magnum Miserium said:


> Seems to me he was differentiating between his music plus that of his acolytes - "unity of all keys" - and neoclassical music that superficially resembles "tonal" music but isn't really - "no feeling of any definite center."


Will somebody please explain to everyone what "unity of all keys" means? Does it involve the forearm?


----------



## musicrom

Sorry if this was already covered, might have missed some of the discussion. It's possible that we have already moved on from this, I'm not sure.

Is there any objective way to decide what is or what is not a melody? Looking just at a score, which contains all of the information relevant to a piece, can you (theoretically) come up with a formula or algorithm to find the melodies in any piece of music, without actually listening to the music? 

I think this is an important question, because if the answer is "no", then we're defining melody based not by facts, but by intuition. If we're defining melody by intuition, then anybody can decide what is or is not a melody by themselves and there is no correct answer. On the other hand, if the answer is "yes", then we can say for a fact whether something is a melody or not.

I don't know the answer to this question, but personally, I feel that melody is so ill-defined that this discussion is probably moot. I'm no expert on music theory though, so maybe someone disagrees.


----------



## millionrainbows

Magnum Miserium said:


> Seems to me he was differentiating between his music plus that of his acolytes - "unity of all keys" - and neoclassical music that superficially resembles "tonal" music but isn't really - "no feeling of any definite center."


Remember that Schoenberg's 12-tone music was totally chromatic. In this regard, it was not tonal. Even chromatic music produced by 'tonal' methods, without ordered rows, has such a weakened sense of tonality that it becomes meaningless to call it tonal. So the feeling of a "definite key center" was already out the window. There was no tonal gravity, so Schoenberg made the 12-tone method to control this morass of constantly shifting roots and notes.

Within a totally chromatic, non-tonal situation like this, whether tonal or 12-tone, it's just as easy to suggest tonality as it is to negate it. 
Use a tritone to destroy tonal associations; use a tonal triad to suggest tonality. At this point, it doesn't matter, because everything is chromatic. There is no "automatic" way of producing either tonality or atonality; it is all based on intention. The constant circulation of all 12 notes is kind of a "chromatic chaos" out of which anything could emerge.


----------



## millionrainbows

musicrom said:


> Sorry if this was already covered, might have missed some of the discussion.
> 
> Is there any objective way to decide what is or what is not a melody? Looking just at a score, which contains all of the information relevant to a piece, can you (theoretically) come up with a formula or algorithm to find the melodies in any piece of music, without actually listening to the music?
> 
> I think this is an important question, because if the answer is "no", then we're defining melody based not by facts, but by intuition. If we're defining melody by intuition, then anybody can decide what is or is not a melody by themselves and there is no correct answer. On the other hand, if the answer is "yes", then we can say for a fact whether something is a melody or not.


Yes, but musical meaning, within the tonal system, is not arbitrary; according to the dictates of the system, if a melody in C major emphasizes C-E-G, that has tonal meaning and strong implications which override subjective opinions which might refute this.

Just as we all agree that a G is a G, regardless of octave; this is called "octave equivalence" and is due to the physics of sound itself, and the way we hear. 2:1 is an octave, and this is a physical fact.

A=440 and A=880 are both heard as A.



> I don't know the answer to this question, but personally, I feel that melody is so ill-defined that this discussion is probably moot. I'm no expert on music theory though, so maybe someone disagrees.


I think Woodduck has already explained it, in post #172, which I have excerpted here for your edification:



Woodduck said:


> ...Tonal relationships implied by a melody are not incidental to it or mere "context." They are actually part of the melody. Melody contains and articulates tonal relationships. They are heard as being at the heart of melody by the listener; they give melody coherence, meaning, and memorability. The more clearly a melody traces and defines a comprehensible and meaningful tonal progression, all else being equal, the stronger and more perceptible and memorable the melody will be.
> 
> There are innumerable passages in tonal music which, because they're tonally ambiguous, are melodically ambiguous; the melodic line by itself makes no sense because we don't know what harmonies it outlines. We can hear this happen in Bach, in Mozart, in Beethoven, in Chopin, in Berlioz, in Wagner, et al. It's a consequence of chromaticism. People complained that Wagner's music lacked melody because the melody, by itself, didn't tell them what the harmony was. Singers had a hard time learning his vocal lines until they learned to hear the ambiguous, shifting harmony the melody outlined; they had to sense where the harmony was going to understand where the melody was going. Is that sort of melody "really" melody? Technically, yes; by "definition," yes. But is it melodious? Only if you sense the harmonic principles - the tonality - from which it derives its meaning.


In other words, a melody has to "mean something" musically, not just subjectively, for it to pass as a complete melody in every sense of the term.

If I play a beautiful version of the Schindler's List theme on the violin, but play it a tritone away from the other music, it's going to sound like crap. Most people would concur that it was not a melody, at least in the sense of it sounding pleasant. It would still have the same phrasing, etc, but it would be terribly "off" if it did not perform that most musical of melody's tasks: to sound good and have musical meaning.

Schoenberg's melodies, in a 12-tone work as cited earlier, cannot perform this function, since they are heard in a non-tonal context. The only way a 12-tone melody can approach this is to leap to a higher note. This provides contrast, change, and variety, but the notes themselves do not have any specific meaning or import as pitches. Specific pitches do not matter in 12-tone; only relationships (intervals) do. C-G is the same as D-A. Both are fifths. There is no "key" for them to have any other meaning as single notes.


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> You must be inferring that. I read the article, and nowhere does Berg say that. Show me the direct quote you are paraphrasing.





Alban Berg said:


> Even if this so-called atonal music cannot, harmonically speaking, be brought into relation with a major/minor harmonic system-still, surely, there was music even before that system in its turn came into existence....so it doesn't follow that there may not (at least considering the chromatic scale and the new chord-forms arising out of it) be discovered in the "atonal" compositions of the last quarter-century a harmonic center which would naturally not be identical with the old tonic.


So you see he is distinguishing it from only the old major/minor system of tonality. That is the sense in which it is different harmonically, and no one here is disagreeing that that constitutes a significant departure.


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> If Schoenberg was accusing Stravinsky (neoclassical) of being not tonal, that's a laugh. Stravinsky is much more tonal in every way, except when he himself used the method.
> 
> I don't know who he was referring to, but it may be revealed Sept. 30 (clue).


Stravinsky's neoclassical music is in a very real sense antithetical to tonality as Schoenberg understood it. It undermines tonal function even while using the harmonies that were traditionally considered to give rise to it.


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## Mahlerian

musicrom said:


> I don't know the answer to this question, but personally, I feel that melody is so ill-defined that this discussion is probably moot. I'm no expert on music theory though, so maybe someone disagrees.


I think that melody is any closed musical shape, with a definite contour and defined starting and ending points.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> Stravinsky's neoclassical music is in a very real sense antithetical to *tonality as Schoenberg understood it.* (CP tonal function)...It undermines (CP) tonal function even while using the harmonies that were traditionally considered to give rise to it.


You mean CP tonal function. So what? CP tonal function is only a superficial aspect of general tonality, which was developed by CP tonal practices. It's a style. It's a mannerism. It's a way of doing things.
It's not essential to a sense of tone-centricity. Debussy used non-functional triads all the time, and it's still tonal music. Probably more so to most average listeners with good common sense and two ears.


----------



## starthrower

Mahlerian said:


> Stravinsky's neoclassical music is in a very real sense antithetical to tonality as Schoenberg understood it. It undermines tonal function even while using the harmonies that were traditionally considered to give rise to it.


Can you elaborate a bit more so I can try to get a clearer understanding of how Stravinsky's music did this?


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> I think that melody is any closed musical shape, with a definite contour and defined starting and ending points.


Okay. You know, you can be very flexible when you want to. :lol:


----------



## millionrainbows

starthrower said:


> Can you elaborate a bit more so I can try to get a clearer understanding of how Stravinsky's music did this?


Sorry to butt in. He's talking about parallel major chords. That's a no-no. And the "Rite" chord of C maj/F#maj. Those do not exist in CP tonality. Even Debussy's "Claire de Lune," which my grandmother declared was beautiful, was not CP tonal.

"Play some more of that atonal music, Granny!"

:lol:


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## Mahlerian

starthrower said:


> Can you elaborate a bit more so I can try to get a clearer understanding of how Stravinsky's music did this?


Well, take a piece like this for example:





Tonality, insofar as it exists here, is by assertion and emphasis, not functional harmonic progressions. The motion of the lines takes precedence over any other consideration, and it drifts from one harmonic area to another without definitive cadences or even the implication of them. The final plagal cadence in the first movement is felt as conclusive primarily because of the stopped motion of the lines and the fact that here we reach a triad at last.

The second movement is perhaps easier to discern this in. Try to listen for any functional relationship that would identify a key. We have definition of harmonic area primarily by the movement of the bass and by which notes are emphasized at a given time.


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> You mean CP tonal function. So what? CP tonal function is only a superficial aspect of general tonality, which was developed by CP tonal practices. It's a style. It's a mannerism. It's a way of doing things.
> It's not essential to a sense of tone-centricity. Debussy used non-functional triads all the time, and it's still tonal music. Probably more so to most average listeners with good common sense and two ears.


Functional harmony is by no means a superficial aspect of common practice music. It is in fact the single most important thing about it, what distinguishes it from all other music that existed before and all music that has come since. And as for Debussy, why should we have to consider his music tonal?


----------



## Magnum Miserium

millionrainbows said:


> You mean CP tonal function. So what? CP tonal function is only a superficial aspect of general tonality, which was developed by CP tonal practices.


Other way around. CP tonal function is literally the only sense in which "tonality" refers to more than a superficial quality. (That is, the only sense in which there's any difference between "tonality" and modality.)


----------



## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> Tonality, insofar as it exists here, is by assertion and emphasis, not functional harmonic progressions.


But functional harmonic progressions don't define tonality. They are only a development of tonality in the tone-centric sense.

This only means it's not CP tonal in style and method. But it's still tonal, even tone-centric, especially by what it does in the bass. It is highly chromatic, so take that into consideration as well.



> The motion of the lines takes precedence over any other consideration, and it drifts from one harmonic area to another without definitive cadences or even the implication of them. The final plagal cadence in the first movement is felt as conclusive primarily because of the stopped motion of the lines and the fact that here we reach a triad at last.


It's highly chromatic, so that is a more important reason that it is not as tone-centric as a piece using CP tonal function. I don't think "function" is as crucial to creating tone-centricity as chromaticism and its effect.
In fact, "function" only really works when the music is not chromatic, but is limited to diatonic steps.



> The second movement is perhaps easier to discern this in. Try to listen for any functional relationship that would identify a key. We have definition of harmonic area primarily by the movement of the bass and by which notes are emphasized at a given time.


It's chromatic, but it's tonal. So Schoenberg would not accept this as being CP tonal, but would pass off his String Trio as being more acceptable? :lol:

Still, it produces a sense of tonality, but only vaguely at times. That's part of it's charm. It's definitely not 12-tone, any casual listener could tell that.


----------



## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> Functional harmony is by no means a superficial aspect of common practice music.


I didn't say that. I said "_*CP tonal function is only a superficial aspect of general tonality,* which was developed by CP tonal practices."_



> It is in fact the single most important thing about it, what distinguishes it from all other music that existed before and all music that has come since.


That's probably true, but what CP tonal music SHARES with almost all other music of the world is that it is tone-centric, meaning tonal in a general sense.



> And as for Debussy, why should we have to consider his music tonal?


It's not CP tonal if that's what you mean. It is tonal in a general sense. Is that your question?


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## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> It's chromatic, but it's tonal. So Schoenberg would not accept this as being CP tonal, but would pass off his String Trio as being more acceptable? :lol:


So? His methods and aesthetic are closer to the Romantic era than Stravinsky's. To him, that was the tradition he knew and loved, and saw violated by Neoclassicism, which ignores the "natural" constructive power of triads.



millionrainbows said:


> Still, it produces a sense of tonality, but only vaguely at times. That's part of it's charm. It's definitely not 12-tone, any casual listener could tell that.


Yeah, tell that to the guy who said that Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Winds was "a vivid reminder that serialism turned out to be nothing more than a blind-gut in the lower intestines of Western Civilisation."






And in case you're ready to imply that he mistook this work for the "Movements for Piano and Orchestra," which is serial, I have to point out that the "Movements" isn't even on that disc under review!


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> It's not CP tonal if that's what you mean. It is tonal in a general sense. Is that your question?


Yes, well, if you want to expand the definition of tonality that wide, then Schoenberg fits too. That's the point.


----------



## millionrainbows

_"You mean CP tonal function. So what? CP tonal function is only a superficial aspect of general tonality, which was developed by CP tonal practices."_



Magnum Miserium said:


> ...CP tonal function is literally the only sense in which "tonality" refers to more than a superficial quality. (That is, the only sense in which there's any difference between "tonality" and modality.)


Boy, that's a loaded statement.

CP function does not define tone-centricity, or tonality generally. That came before.

Yes, CP function might distinguish between tonality and modality, but the way you academics use the terms, who knows?

See The Harvard Dictionary of Music for the general definition of "tonality."

I don't plan on getting trapped in any more academic minefields of restricted-meaning terminology. If I step on one, I might lose the use of my general tonality. BOOM!


----------



## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> So? His methods and aesthetic are closer to the Romantic era than Stravinsky's. To him, that was the tradition he knew and loved, and saw violated by Neoclassicism, which ignores the "natural" constructive power of triads.


I think Schoenberg was just saying a lot of this to preserve his "tonal cred." He was just putting-down Stravinsky; it's well known that the two had a big competition (See Joan Peyser's The New Music). Also, he had another possible reason, similar to this, coming around Sept. 30 (clue).



> Yeah, tell that to the guy who said that Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Winds was "a vivid reminder that serialism turned out to be nothing more than a blind-gut in the lower intestines of Western Civilisation."


I of course do not agree with that, and do not take such exaggerated reviews seriously, for obvious reasons. Amazon customer reviews? Come on, Mahlerian, if you get offended by tripe like that, you need some time in the Riviera. It's only some guy on the internet.

I love Schoenberg's music, and serialism by Babbitt, Perle, Davidovsky, Dallapiccola, Skalkottas, Barraque, and Boulez.

[/QUOTE]And in case you're ready to imply that he mistook this work for the "Movements for Piano and Orchestra," which is serial, I have to point out that the "Movements" isn't even on that disc under review![/QUOTE]

I have that by Richter on Yedang, it's great.


----------



## millionrainbows

_


Mahlerian said:



And as for Debussy, why should we have to consider his music tonal?

Click to expand...

_
_


millions said:



It's not CP tonal if that's what you mean. It is tonal in a general sense. Is that your question?

Click to expand...

_


Mahlerian said:


> Yes, well, if you want to expand the definition of tonality that wide, then Schoenberg fits too. That's the point.


You mean that a perfectly valid definition of tonal, as supported by the Harvard Dictionary of Music, is "too wide" if it falls outside your restricted, inflexible CP definition?

No. Schoenberg is not "generally tonal." He only used the trappings of it. The 12-tone method is to "blame" for this; it is an inherently chromatic, non-tonal way of approaching music. I love it. I think it's great. It's just not tonal in that sense. Neither is the music he produced using it. It doesn't sound tonal to me, CP or otherwise, except in ways that have nothing to do with tone-centricity.


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## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> I think Schoenberg was just saying a lot of this to preserve his "tonal cred." He was just putting-down Stravinsky; it's well known that the two had a big competition (See Joan Peyser's The New Music). Also, he had another possible reason, similar to this, coming around Sept. 30 (clue).


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_motive

Nope, you have to back that assumption up. Don't just say that he _could_ have had a reason to do that other than actually believing it, prove that it's more likely that he didn't actually believe it.

In any case, I agree with Schoenberg that Stravinsky's neoclassical music is less "tonal" in the sense of closeness to common practice.



millionrainbows said:


> I of course do not agree with that. I love Schoenberg's music, and serialism by Babbitt, Perle, Davidovsky, Dallapiccola, Skalkottas, Barraque, and Boulez.


Umm, yeah, that's not the point. The point is that he couldn't tell the difference between Stravinsky's Neoclassicism and 12-tone music.


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> You mean that a perfectly valid definition of tonal, as supported by the Harvard Dictionary of Music, is "too wide" if it falls outside your restricted, inflexible CP definition?
> 
> No. Schoenberg is not "generally tonal." He only used the trappings of it. The 12-tone method is to "blame" for this; it is an inherently chromatic, non-tonal way of approaching music. I love it. I think it's great. It's just not tonal in that sense. Neither is the music he produced using it. It doesn't sound tonal to me, CP or otherwise, except in ways that have nothing to do with tone-centricity.


I didn't say "too wide." If you want to expand the definition of tonality to encompass all music, that's fine with me. What irks me is the attempt to say all music in the history of the universe ever was tonal until Schoenberg came along and messed with nature. That's just inane.

If Schoenberg's music uses "only the trappings" of tonality, how is this different from the Stravinsky which we were pointing to before? You're running in circles here and creating special ad hoc exemptions just to preserve atonal as a term which means "something different from all other music."


----------



## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_motive
> 
> Nope, you have to back that assumption up. Don't just say that he _could_ have had a reason to do that other than actually believing it, prove that it's more likely that he didn't actually believe it.


I did back it up, by citing Joan Peyser. Plus, there will be more supporting evidence when I reveal Schoenberg's reason, along these same lines (clue) about Sept. 30.



> In any case, I agree with Schoenberg that Stravinsky's neoclassical music is less "tonal" in the sense of closeness to common practice.


 Less tonal than his own? Perhaps in many ways except the most crucial: Stravinsky's music here is more "tone centric" and tonal than Schoenberg's which only has surface and gestural similarities to CP tradition. It misses the crucial ingredient: it is atonal.



> Umm, yeah, that's not the point. The point is that he couldn't tell the difference between Stravinsky's Neoclassicism and 12-tone music.


He didn't have to; all he knew was that he hated it. Which is irrelevant to me. I was listening to these pieces just recently, played by the female Marcel Meyer, and was struck by the rhythmic vitality of it. I really like his piano music, and wish there was more of it.


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> I did back it up, by citing Joan Peyser. Plus, there will be more supporting evidence when I reveal Schoenberg's reason, along these same lines (clue) about Sept. 30.


Yes, they had a kind of feud between them, and a very cool relationship. No, this does not prove that Schoenberg's dislike motivated his bafflement at Neoclassicism. You have to show specifically that this was likely to have been the thing which motivated it, contrary to the face value of his assertions.



millionrainbows said:


> Less tonal than his own? Perhaps in many ways except the most crucial: Stravinsky's music here is more "tone centric" and tonal than Schoenberg's which only has surface and gestural similarities to CP tradition. It misses the crucial ingredient: it is atonal.


Yeah, except it isn't. You're forgetting that atonality is a red herring and a misnomer. I don't consider Schoenberg's music atonal, or anyone else's, in the sense that you mean that term.



millionrainbows said:


> He didn't have to; all he knew was that he hated it. Which is irrelevant to me. I was listening to these pieces just recently, played by the female Marcel Meyer, and was struck by the rhythmic vitality of it. I really like his piano music, and wish there was more of it.


Have you forgotten the chain of this conversation? It started with you saying that "any casual listener" could tell that Stravinsky's neoclassical music isn't 12-tone. I produce an example of a casual listener who can't tell the difference, and you brush it off. Why?


----------



## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> I didn't say "too wide." If you want to expand the definition of tonality to encompass all music, that's fine with me.


Ok, "too expansive." Satisfied?



> What irks me is the attempt to say all music in the history of the universe ever was tonal until Schoenberg came along and messed with nature. That's just inane.


That's the wrong context to make such statements, because Schoenberg developed his method to specifically continue in the direction of total chromaticism. Chromaticism is inherently a weakened state of tonality, so the comparison is not really a question of general tonality, but whether such a method could even produce tonal music; and tonal music is produced by using a harmonic model, not a linear one. Chromaticism is the factor which lends itself to linear treatment. Tonaliy is vertical and takes some time. Linear chromaticism is constantly shifting, so no sense of tonality is easy to achieve under those conditions.



> If Schoenberg's music uses "only the trappings" of tonality, how is this different from the Stravinsky which we were pointing to before?


Because the Stravinsky has one thing which 12-tone music lacks; it can create a sense of tonality, even if it is vague. Total chromaticism, guaranteed by 12-tone's constant circulation of all 12 notes, is guaranteed not to.



> You're running in circles here and creating special ad hoc exemptions just to preserve atonal as a term which means "something different from all other music."


"Running in Circles"…ha haa. Is that a reference to the Curly clip in "Stupid Thread Ideas"? :lol:

No. Any average listener could tell you that the Stravinsky piano music is "more tonal sounding" than Schoenberg's String Trio, or Pierot Lunaire.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, they had a kind of feud between them, and a very cool relationship. No, this does not prove that Schoenberg's dislike motivated his bafflement at Neoclassicism. You have to show specifically that this was likely to have been the thing which motivated it, contrary to the face value of his assertions.


No, I don't have to prove anything to you.



> Yeah, except it isn't. You're forgetting that atonality is a red herring and a misnomer. I don't consider Schoenberg's music atonal, or anyone else's, in the sense that you mean that term.


I don't mean it pejoratively, because I love the music. I mean it in its accepted sense: music composed without using the tonal system, but using set theory.



> Have you forgotten the chain of this conversation? It started with you saying that "any casual listener" could tell that Stravinsky's neoclassical music isn't 12-tone. I produce an example of a casual listener who can't tell the difference, and you brush it off. Why?


That is a poor defense. That guy had an axe to grind. Besides, it's just a figure of speech, but I think it's at least 99% true, unless the guy is on drugs.


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> Ok, "too expansive." Satisfied?


Nope, didn't say that either. You're trying to give a negative connotation to what I said which wasn't there.



millionrainbows said:


> That's the wrong context to make such statements, because Schoenberg developed his method to specifically continue in the direction of total chromaticism. Chromaticism is inherently a weakened state of tonality, so the comparison is not really a question of general tonality, but whether such a method could even produce tonal music; and tonal music is produced by using a harmonic model, not a linear one. Chromaticism is the factor which lends itself to linear treatment. Tonaliy is vertical and takes some time. Linear chromaticism is constantly shifting, so no sense of tonality is easy to achieve under those conditions.
> 
> Because the Stravinsky has one thing which 12-tone music lacks; it can create a sense of tonality, even if it is vague. Total chromaticism, guaranteed by 12-tone's constant circulation of all 12 notes, is guaranteed not to.


I hear it as sounding at least as tonal as the Stravinsky, if not more.



millionrainbows said:


> No. Any average listener could tell you that the Stravinsky piano music is "more tonal sounding" than Schoenberg's String Trio, or Pierot Lunaire.


Except that he didn't. That's my point. You're ignoring an exception to the rule you've stated without giving any reason why you should.

For that matter, I hear Schoenberg's String Trio as "more tonal" than Stravinsky's neoclassical works. Granted, I'm not the casual listener of your earlier post, or the average listener of this one.


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> I don't mean it pejoratively, because I love the music. I mean it in its accepted sense: music composed without using the tonal system, but using set theory.


This whole discussion has taken place because you are NOT willing to use the term in its accepted sense: music in the western tradition that is outside of the common practice system of harmony.


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## starthrower

Thanks for answering my question, Mahlerian. But I'm afraid these things will remain a mystery short of taking a semester or two at a music school.


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## Mahlerian

starthrower said:


> Thanks for answering my question, Mahlerian. But I'm afraid these things will remain a mystery short of taking a semester or two at a music school.


Well, so long as you enjoy it, that's the important thing. Theory is far less important.


----------



## Adam Weber

Mahlerian said:


> Yeah, tell that to the guy who said that Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Winds was "a vivid reminder that serialism turned out to be nothing more than a blind-gut in the lower intestines of Western Civilisation."


Huh, normally I expect more from O'Hanlon. He is a bit... odd, but I thought he knew better than to say something like Stravinsky's Capriccio has "nary a melody in sight." It's really a very charming work.


----------



## starthrower

I get the gist of your explanation, but I don't know enough mechanics to understand how these harmonic components you described are being manipulated by the composer. And thanks for the Stravinsky sonata. I hadn't listened to this before.


----------



## Mahlerian

Adam Weber said:


> Huh, normally I expect more from O'Hanlon. He is a bit... odd, but I thought he knew better than to say something like Stravinsky's Capriccio has "nary a melody in sight." It's really a very charming work.


He can be funny at times, but his blind spots are large (and no, I'm not just saying that because he hates Mahler).


----------



## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> This whole discussion has taken place because you are NOT willing to use the term in its accepted sense: music in the western tradition that is outside of the common practice system of harmony.


I don't call Stravinsky or Debussy "atonal." That would be misleading. And as you said, Stravinsky lies outside CP functional harmony. In this sense, I find your definition of atonal to be useless.

"Atonal" refers to an approach to composition that uses set theory; i.e., it is not tonality. That is more accurate, because it refers to the system of composition, not the music of modern composers like Stravinsky, Bartok, or Debussy.

Since the Second Viennese School are the ones that started "set theory" and all the serialism which followed, the academic composition textbook definition is perfect; it identifies Schoenberg specifically.

You see, for all the talk Schoenberg gave about his being a "traditionalist," his 12-tone method had a meaning and impact that he did not foresee; thus Boulez' pronouncement, "Schoenberg est morte!"

Schoenberg wanted to ensure his place in history, so he tried frantically to "cover up" the damage he had done, but it was too late: the music produced by this method is unlike any other variety of modernism, and sounds unlike any of the rest. Therefore, it rightfully earns the monicker of "atonal" by listeners. The textbook definition backs this up: the music and the method are the antithesis of tonality.

I love atonality and serialism, though, even Schoenberg's curious retro-version of it.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> He can be funny at times, but his blind spots are large (and no, I'm not just saying that because he hates Mahler).


I was quite frankly surprised that Mahlerian used O'Hanlon as an example. I had to finally figure this out from his response. I didn't get it. Who cares about off-the-wall statements from the likes of him? Not I.


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> I was quite frankly surprised that Mahlerian used O'Hanlon as an example. I had to finally figure this out from his response. I didn't get it. Who cares about off-the-wall statements from the likes of him? Not I.


You said that any listener could tell the difference between serial and Neoclassical music. Logically, this takes the following form:

All A (listeners) are B (able to tell serialism apart from Neoclassical music)

The ONLY thing it takes to disprove this statement is a single example of a listener who can't tell the difference. The fact that he's a biased observer is actually entirely irrelevant, and does nothing to this syllogism. If anyone is unable to tell the difference, that's enough to show that your statement cannot be true.


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> I don't call Stravinsky or Debussy "atonal." That would be misleading.


Why? I really don't get why it would be misleading. I think it's misleading and entirely wrong to say the opposite.

Your entire argument has been that Schoenberg is atonal because his music is atonal, while Debussy and Stravinsky are not atonal because they're not atonal. You can forgive me for being more convinced by the way I actually hear music, which tells me that whatever Schoenberg is, he's AT LEAST as tonal as Debussy and Stravinsky, and likely more so.


----------



## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> You said that any listener could tell the difference between serial and Neoclassical music. Logically, this takes the following form:
> 
> All A (listeners) are B (able to tell serialism apart from Neoclassical music)
> 
> The ONLY thing it takes to disprove this statement is a single example of a listener who can't tell the difference. The fact that he's a biased observer is actually entirely irrelevant, and does nothing to this syllogism. If anyone is unable to tell the difference, that's enough to show that your statement cannot be true.


I was just off-the-wall generalizing and speculating about those "average listeners." I'd rather use other methods to support my case, not involving "average listeners." How can anything like that be proved anyway? 
Besides, if that O'Hanlon guy was any indication of what your counter-evidence would be along those lines, that is a horrific experience I can do without. I don't like reading drivel.

The Stravinsky piano piece you posted is an easy example to tell the difference. 
1. It doesn't use all 12 notes all the time, like 12-tone. This is audible. 
2. It travels through different harmonic areas, but they are at least identifiable as such. 
3. Lots of thirds, and sequencing. You can tell it's not 12-tone easily; it sounds much freer. 
4. Plus, the texture of the music is rhythmic figurations which seem designed for the piano; they are little units that ascend and descend within the scope of the hand. Not so with Schoenberg's un-idiomatic piano works, with leaps all over. 
5.The Stravinsky is more rhythmically regular, which aids in its comprehension. The obscure rhythms of Schoenberg & Co. are deliberately obscure.

The issue of tone-centricity, or functional harmony, is irrelevant to all the above. Schoenberg was by this time composing totally chromatically, so "key areas" were non-existent in such a chromatic cycling. It's no wonder that he pursued a more linear, contrapuntal path.

With free atonality, or 12-tone, the constant circulation of all 12 notes gives one the impression of kaleidoscopic, chaotic shifts which sound more like single notes or lines. Nothing stays stable enough to be identified as a key area. It's chromatic, so much so that it really lends itself to linear treatment, not harmony.


----------



## millionrainbows

_



millions: I don't call Stravinsky or Debussy "atonal." That would be misleading.

Click to expand...

_


Mahlerian said:


> Why? I really don't get why it would be misleading. I think it's misleading and entirely wrong to say the opposite.


You said Stravinsky and Debussy were "atonal" in a CP context; that's why it's misleading.

BTW, I'm finally beginning to see how your mind works with all this CP tonality academic thinking. Unfortunately, you use it in a "bait-and-switch" manner, to obscure the general meaning of tonality.



> Your entire argument has been that Schoenberg is atonal because his music is atonal, while Debussy and Stravinsky are not atonal because they're not atonal. You can forgive me for being more convinced by the way I actually hear music, which tells me that whatever Schoenberg is, he's AT LEAST as tonal as Debussy and Stravinsky, and likely more so.


My argument has been that Schoenberg is atonal because his music is composed using 12-tone and set theory, which are not tonal ways of composing, and his 12-tone music sounds that way, however many devices he uses to allude to CP tonality...while Debussy and Stravinsky are not atonal because they did not compose using those methods, and their music is not as chromatic, and sounds more tonal.



> You can forgive me for being more convinced by the way I actually hear music, which tells me that whatever Schoenberg is, he's AT LEAST as tonal as Debussy and Stravinsky, and likely more so.


_You must mean it sounds more CP tonal,_ because Schoenberg retreated into a form of neo-classicism which emulated CP tonal stylings.

So on a surface level of style, _yes, Schoenberg does sound traditional in a classic sort of way._

I think many listeners, as well as myself, are attracted to these classical trappings. I still delight in the bouncy humor of the Serenade, and its dance movements.

_But as far as actually sounding tone-centered, no. I can spot it a mile away._


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> _I don't call Stravinsky or Debussy "atonal." That would be misleading._
> 
> You said Stravinsky and Debussy were "atonal" in a CP context; that's why it's misleading.
> 
> BTW, I'm finally beginning to see how your mind works with all this CP tonality academic thinking. Unfortunately, you use it in a "bait-and-switch" manner, to obscure the general meaning of tonality.


You're the one accusing me of bad faith tactics. I'm not trying to obscure the general meaning of tonality, I'm trying to show you that it also includes Schoenberg, or would if you didn't rely on circular arguments like this:



millionrainbows said:


> My argument has been that Schoenberg is atonal because his music is composed using 12-tone and set theory, which are not tonal ways of composing, and his 12-tone music sounds that way, however many devices he uses to allude to CP tonality...


So...once again. It's atonal because it's atonal. And...



millionrainbows said:


> while Debussy and Stravinsky are not atonal because they did not compose using those methods, and their music is not as chromatic, and sounds more tonal.


It's not atonal because it's not atonal.

It's wrong, anyway, because Schoenberg didn't use set theory to compose. He used his ear, and set theory was later developed in order to explain what he was doing intuitively. It's also just about the best way of explaining later Debussy and early Stravinsky, too, neither of whom respond at all to traditional analysis.



millionrainbows said:


> You must mean it sounds more CP tonal, because Schoenberg retreated into a form of neo-classicism which emulated CP tonal stylings.


No, I mean it's closer in terms of harmonic treatment to common practice. It doesn't merely sound that way, it really is very similar in terms of the way it treats harmony, motives, and phrases.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> ...I'm not trying to obscure the general meaning of tonality, I'm trying to show you that it also includes Schoenberg…


Schoenberg's music was composed using a non-harmonic, non-scale methodology which made no provision whatsoever for harmony. There is no tone-centricity which results from the actual nuts and bolts of the method. This is well known; 12-tone was not a comprehensive method, and it could not, on its own terms, produce harmonically-derived tone centricity.



> It's wrong, anyway, because Schoenberg didn't use set theory to compose. He used his ear, and set theory was later developed in order to explain what he was doing intuitively.


That's somewhat misleading, because Schoenberg, as in the Fourth Quartet, was dividing the row into hexads, which are subsets of the row, and was using combinatoriality, all of which is "set theory" thinking.

The only story I ever heard about his ear was that a string quartet player pointed out that one note deviated from the row, and Schoenberg got incensed, and said "of course I meant that note." So he might have made little compromises here and there, but nothing major. He was composing using a method, and I wish to emphasize that.



> It's also just about the best way of explaining later Debussy and early Stravinsky, too, neither of whom respond at all to traditional analysis.


You're still trying to put everything into CP terms. Harmonic analysis assumes that harmonic functions are present and definable. Just because they don't doesn't mean that the music is not basically tonal.



> No, I mean it's closer in terms of harmonic treatment to common practice. It doesn't merely sound that way, it really is very similar in terms of the way it treats harmony, motives, and phrases.


Those are just CP devices. They have no ground in being tonal, and derived from a tonal hierarchy.

It sounds to me like you conveniently "forget" what tonality means in its general sense, and you keep retreating into these CP tonal ideas.

I wonder if you are able to think in terms of "general tonality." Have you listened to much world music, or music from India? What a strange and confusing dilemma that "a functionless drone" from a tamboura must present for you! Do you even consider Ravi Shankar to be a musician?


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## Pat Fairlea

Mahlerian said:


> There's nothing intentionally obscurantist about Schoenberg. He considered his music to be difficult because of its compression more than anything else. That is, he was saying musical things directly that a late romantic composer would have taken far longer to say.
> 
> Serialism, as always in these discussions, is a red herring. People who dislike it can't hear when it is or isn't being used. People who like it can't always hear when it is or isn't being used. It's really as irrelevant to the average listener as something like the supposed golden mean ratios in Bartok and Debussy. An interesting side note, perhaps, but not related to one's experience of the music as sound.
> 
> If you don't like it, that's fine. If you don't feel that you get it, that's fine too. But rest assured, Schoenberg was by no means trying to fool you or anyone else. He was entirely serious.
> 
> At any rate, I've seen remarks like the one you mentioned very often for lots of common practice composers, including Beethoven (remember the discussion of the Eroica, in which people piled onto anyone who expressed dislike with a chorus of incomprehension and abuse?), Mozart, and Wagner. It's by no means restricted to the 20th century, it's just that that's the only time when people find it offensive. The rest of the time, they're encouraging it.


For the record, I wasn't accusing Schoenberg of being obscurantist and gladly accept your reassurance that he wasn't. I was having a snipe at nerds who insist that thorough technical understanding is a pre-requisite of properly appreciating music that might not otherwise appeal to the listener.

Right, I'm off to hide behind the sofa.


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## millionrainbows

Pat Fairlea said:


> For the record, I wasn't accusing Schoenberg of being obscurantist and gladly accept your reassurance that he wasn't. I was having a snipe at nerds who insist that thorough technical understanding is a pre-requisite of properly appreciating music that might not otherwise appeal to the listener.
> 
> Right, I'm off to hide behind the sofa.


Just the constant chromaticism which Schoenberg never backed-off of is a stubborn, uncompromising stance, which could be called "obscurantist" since it was relentlessly "pushing forward" into a totally chromatic sound-world.

Regarding this statement:
_


Mahlerian said:



Serialism, as always in these discussions, is a red herring. People who dislike it can't hear when it is or isn't being used. People who like it can't always hear when it is or isn't being used.

Click to expand...

_
So you are speaking for others' subjective experience, and expecting us to believe that?

I can hear serial music a mile away, instantly._



It's really as irrelevant to the average listener as something like the supposed golden mean ratios in Bartok and Debussy. An interesting side note, perhaps, but not related to one's experience of the music as sound.

Click to expand...

_That's a flawed comparison. Yes, the golden mean ratio in Bartok is a "hidden" aspect of the music's structure which is not audible, but I can easily also hear that Bartok is not serial.

Serial methods, which are likewise hidden, are clearly audible because of their non-harmonic nature. Aside from that, a dead giveaway is the relentless chromaticism. This will identify "free atonality" as well; the music immediately preceding 12-tone.

Conversely, I can easily hear that Elliott Carter's music is very similar, if not another form of, serialism, because he uses set theory and his music is always totally chromatic. I can easily hear that he is using all 12 notes. His music is easily identified as being atonal, just by ear alone.

Ditto with Roger sessions: I can hear how his music, although not strictly 12-tone, is nonetheless totally chromatic. He was "free atonal" before he was told that he might as well be 12-tone.

*TOTAL CHROMATICISM EQUALS ATONALITY*

Total chromaticism, with 12 notes always in circulation: this is what I am hearing, and it is very easy to spot.

This is also what makes these examples "atonal," because tonality is established by leaving notes out, not using all 12 all the time.


----------



## Mahlerian

But Carter's music isn't serial. How is it that you can identify it by a mile away if you make such mistakes?

Unless, like "tonality," you think that it's alright to redefine "serial" too in the interest of propping up your non-existent argument.

Anyway, it's wrong to say that serialism is "non-harmonic" simply because the 12-tone method does not in itself define exactly how to use a row harmonically. All music is harmonic, simply by the nature of using complex sounds.


----------



## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> Well, take a piece like this for example:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tonality, insofar as it exists here, is by assertion and emphasis, not functional harmonic progressions. The motion of the lines takes precedence over any other consideration, and it drifts from one harmonic area to another without definitive cadences or even the implication of them. The final plagal cadence in the first movement is felt as conclusive primarily because of the stopped motion of the lines and the fact that here we reach a triad at last.


A few corrections: The final cadence in the first movement is not plagal. It is dominant or vii6/5 to I depending on how one parses the nonharmonic tones. (The C in the penultimate measure is an anticipation.) There are other obvious cadences as well, like in measure five of the principal theme (and its repetitions), where we have V/V-V7-I. The fact that the I is not represented by a triad is irrelevant.


----------



## Mahlerian

EdwardBast said:


> A few corrections: The final cadence in the first movement is not plagal. It is dominant or vii6/5 to I depending on how one parses the nonharmonic tones. (The C in the penultimate measure is an anticipation.) There are other obvious cadences as well, like in measure five of the principal theme (and its repetitions), where we have V/V-V7-I. The fact that the I is not represented by a triad is irrelevant.


The cadences you point to are still not heard as functional, even if they can be shown to have a relationship to function. The "I" of the principal theme you point out would be immediately nullified by the appearance of B-flat and F. As for the ending, you can only call the A-flat "non-harmonic" if you ignore the fact that it's not resolved in any direction. It can't be called a passing tone. It's a part of the chord, which is not classifiable and works only on the basis of its voice leading. (On the contrary, the G is a passing tone which goes to another voicing of that chord.)

I was thinking of a definition of plagal cadence that includes any non-perfect cadence, but perhaps that was a little sloppy.


----------



## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> But Carter's music isn't serial. (ad hominem removed)


He doesn't call himself a serialist, but his music is atonal in the same way serialism is, and it is clearly audible. He is interested in all-interval sets, like Babbitt and Perle. His music is totally chromatic. All 12 notes are used all the time. His musical syntax is easily characterized as atonal.



> Anyway, it's wrong to say that serialism is "non-harmonic" simply because the 12-tone method does not in itself define exactly how to use a row harmonically.


Because it does not specify how to use a row harmonically, it is harmonic? That makes little sense.



> All music is harmonic, simply by the nature of using complex sounds.


But atonal music is not harmonically-based.


----------



## millionrainbows

EdwardBast said:


> A few corrections: The final cadence in the first movement is not plagal. It is dominant or vii6/5 to I depending on how one parses the nonharmonic tones. (The C in the penultimate measure is an anticipation.) There are other obvious cadences as well, like in measure five of the principal theme (and its repetitions), where we have V/V-V7-I. The fact that the I is not represented by a triad is irrelevant.


So here we are doing a CP harmonic analysis of music which has no CP harmonic function.


----------



## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> The cadences you point to are still not heard as functional, even if they can be shown to have a relationship to function. The "I" of the principal theme you point out would be immediately nullified by the appearance of B-flat and F. As for the ending, you can only call the A-flat "non-harmonic" if you ignore the fact that it's not resolved in any direction. It can't be called a passing tone. It's a part of the chord, which is not classifiable and works only on the basis of its voice leading. (On the contrary, the G is a passing tone which goes to another voicing of that chord.)
> 
> I was thinking of a definition of plagal cadence that includes any non-perfect cadence, but perhaps that was a little sloppy.


The final cadence is fully, boringly functional. The Ab is the seventh of the vii7 chord, or b9 if you want to call it dominant. It is resolved out of register to G. The leading tone is there for two measures before the final tonic chord! Not only that, but the preceding chord (four measures from the end) functions as dominant of the dominant. The final cadence in fact simply expands the internal cadence within the theme (m. 5), and that is obviously intentional. The cadence in m. 5 isn't nullified, the music simply moves on after a firm cadence.


----------



## Mahlerian

EdwardBast said:


> The final cadence is fully, boringly functional. The Ab is the seventh of the vii7 chord, or b9 if you want to call it dominant. It is resolved out of register to G. The leading tone is there for two measures before the final tonic chord! Not only that, but the preceding chord (four measures from the end) functions as dominant of the dominant. The final cadence in fact simply expands the internal cadence within the theme (m. 5), and that is obviously intentional. The cadence in m. 5 isn't nullified, the music simply moves on after a firm cadence.


In what sense is the final resolution functional, rather than merely a product of voice leading?

The way it expands is quite different from the implied motion in the first few measures.

In reference to the Symphony in C, Jonathan Cross writes:

"'Tonics' and 'dominants' exist here insofar as smaller-scale voice leadings suggest motion from one to the other; but even these occur in the context of elements that do not belong in tonal terms....As in so much of neoclassical Stravinsky, such connections serve to disguise more fundamental oppositions..."


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## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> So here we are doing a CP harmonic analysis of music which has no CP harmonic function.


Hey, it's been done with Debussy and Schoenberg too. Why not Stravinsky?


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## Ralfy

I like both options. Sometimes, I find myself appreciating a work from various media only after reading helpful commentaries about it.


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## Woodduck

Mahlerian said:


> Well, take a piece like this for example:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tonality, insofar as it exists here, is by assertion and emphasis, not functional harmonic progressions. The motion of the lines takes precedence over any other consideration, and it drifts from one harmonic area to another without definitive cadences or even the implication of them. The final plagal cadence in the first movement is felt as conclusive primarily because of the stopped motion of the lines and the fact that here we reach a triad at last.


I'm listening to this piece for the first time. To my ear, the final cadence is conclusive, not because the lines have just happened to stop on a major triad, but because it's a functional progression that would be functional in any common practice piece. I hear it as a mix of dominant and subdominant - "authentic/plagal," but because of the persistent leading tone and the bass descending stepwise to the tonic, mainly authentic: V-I. I also hear plenty of cadences and other recognizable CP progressions elsewhere, even though they are often fugitive and complicated by overlapping tonal levels and free dissonances (just how free, I'd have to study the piece to know). Another performance might be worth hearing:






Yudina articulates some of the tonally significant features better with dynamics and rhythm, especially heading toward the finish, and that final cadence, the way she lingers expressively on it, could be right out of Prokofiev.

We can argue, if we wish, that Stravinsky is "playing with" tonality here - maybe we can call his neoclassicism "neotonal" or something - but one of his feet is still firmly planted in common practice. Perhaps a work like the Sonata is _using_ tonal relationships rather than evolving out of a tonal idiom. But to me this seems purely academic. My ear doesn't know or care how and why tonality ended up being a conspicuous feature of this piece, which spends a lot of time referring to, and being in, C-major.

It's interesting to set beside the Stravinsky some Schoenberg pieces which use a persistent tone - such as the "Musette" from the Piano Suite - or return to a theme at certain fixed pitches - the first movement of the _Wind Quintet_.











These pieces, unlike the Stravinsky, don't establish even a brief sense of tonicity, and it's clear that they don't intend to. The features in question are structural, but not tonal.


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## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> In what sense is the final resolution functional, rather than merely a product of voice leading?


Last chord: tonic function.
Two measures preceding: Dominant function.
Measure before that: Dominant of dominant function!

If that alone isn't convincing enough, how about the fact that …



Mahlerian said:


> The way it expands is quite different from the implied motion in the first few measures.


… he uses the same functional sequence to articulate the phrases of the theme: V/V, V7, I. This internal cadence was heard just a few measures before the final cadence, so the parallel in progression is right there in our faces. This may be one of the reasons they call it neoclassical, don't you think?



Mahlerian said:


> In reference to the Symphony in C, Jonathan Cross writes:
> 
> "'Tonics' and 'dominants' exist here insofar as smaller-scale voice leadings suggest motion from one to the other; but even these occur in the context of elements that do not belong in tonal terms....As in so much of neoclassical Stravinsky, such connections serve to disguise more fundamental oppositions..."


I don't have time to correct the misreadings and mistaken analyses of everyone who runs afoul of the complexities of 20thc Russian harmony. It happens quite a bit. There was one fellow who thought set theory was the right approach to the slow movement of Prokofiev's Seventh Sonata. Him I corrected because it got in the way of my own analysis.


----------



## EdwardBast

millionrainbows said:


> So here we are doing a CP harmonic analysis of *music which has no CP harmonic function*.


According to one TC member who hears clear tonal tendencies in Schoenberg's 12-tone music but not fairly standard cadencial progressions in Stravinsky.

Seriously though, CP harmony and its extensions and functions pops up in the music of every major Russian composer through Schnittke. Why should music be all one thing or another? In the Sonata Stravinsky clearly found functional progressions useful for articulating key elements and points in the structure.


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## millionrainbows

EdwardBast said:


> According to one TC member who hears clear tonal tendencies in Schoenberg's 12-tone music but not fairly standard cadencial progressions in Stravinsky.
> 
> Seriously though, CP harmony and its extensions and functions pops up in the music of every major Russian composer through Schnittke. Why should music be all one thing or another? In the Sonata Stravinsky clearly found functional progressions useful for articulating key elements and points in the structure. They are audible to all whose ears are not stuffed with biases and pet agendas.


I think that "member" feels desperately compelled to classify Stravinsky's music as "just as atonal as Schoenberg," which it is clearly not. It is much more recognizable to the ear, if not analysis, as being ultimately tone-centric. As Woodduck said:

_The idea that "function" can apply only to common practice harmony is of a piece with the idea that only that sort of music can be tonal. What gives common practice a monopoly on these terms? Tonality, of any sort, is all about how tones __function in relation to each other within a hierarchical system of functions centered on a specific pitch. Those functions may be few or many, simple or complex. But their specific nature identifies what tonal system we're working with, and they are determined by conventional usage and recognized and expected by listeners._


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> It's interesting to set beside the Stravinsky some Schoenberg pieces which use a persistent tone - such as the "Musette" from the Piano Suite - or return to a theme at certain fixed pitches - the first movement of the _Wind Quintet_…...These pieces, unlike the Stravinsky, don't establish even a brief sense of tonicity, *and it's clear* that they don't intend to. The features in question are structural, but not tonal.


If Stravinsky is more tonal than Schoenberg, and this is clear (meaning you can hear it), then I hope you realize that you are justifying such a distinction, and thereby endorsing the use of the term "atonal" to apply specifically to Schoenberg & 12-tone music, but not Stravinsky.


----------



## Guest

I have done my best to follow the twists and turns of this abstruse thread, but I think I can now confidently say...

Mystery!


----------



## millionrainbows

MacLeod said:


> I have done my best to follow the twists and turns of this abstruse thread, but I think I can now confidently say...
> 
> Mystery!


Unfortunately, it is not every participant's goal to clarify anything, but only to defend their own agenda.

The short answer is, Mahlerian does not want the term "atonal" to be used to refer specifically to Second Viennese School music. If the term is used, he wants it to include Debussy and Stravinsky as well. But he'd rather the term not be used at all. Even though it is, in numerous textbooks on composition.


----------



## isorhythm

I'm late to this thread, but was interested by the discussion of melody.

This risks being reductive, but I think it's possible to draw a theoretical distinction between "tunes" and "difficult" melodies. The distinction is whether the melody can be understood as diatonic with alterations or modulations, or not. All of Schubert's melodies, for example, fall in the former category and Schoenberg's do not. There was a real shift that happened, though it happened some time before Schoenberg, in the late or maybe even middle 19th century.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> If Stravinsky is more tonal than Schoenberg, and this is clear (meaning you can hear it), then I hope you realize that you are justifying such a distinction, and thereby endorsing the use of the term "atonal" to apply specifically to Schoenberg & 12-tone music, but not Stravinsky.


Sure, endorsement made - with EdwardBast's question/observation always in mind: "Why must music be all one thing or another?" Tonality varies in the nature and extent of its occurrence in music called "tonal," and it's reasonable that different people, equally perceptive, will hear it as more or less important in a given piece of music. To me the tonal elements in the Stravinsky Piano Sonata (and in most other Stravinsky) are sufficiently strong to classify it as tonal - distinctly tonal. The hierarchies are recognizable, however "neoclassically" they're used, and if someone wants to say that they're less than "fundamental" to the style because they hear it that way, I don't want to argue about it.

No one has described in Schoenberg's serial music the presence of a tonic or hierarchy of scale degrees - "emphasizing" certain notes in a passage doesn't constitute systematic hierarchy - and since those elements constitute, technically, what tonality _is,_ I have to call the music atonal. The idea that it was only common practice that he was trying to avoid, and that his music is tonal in terms of some "instinctive" system which has never been identified or described (?), needs better arguments than any I've seen. If someone is hearing "tonal centers," they might at least show us what tones are being called that, where they occur, and how the surrounding harmony functions so as to confer upon them that status. It has to function somehow in relation to a tonic, whether or not that tonic is actually stated; the hallmark of even the most chromatic tonal harmony is the way it plays with, and depends for its effect on, the listener's sense of a harmonic hierarchy, and his expectation that the stability of a tonic, whether or not it ever materializes, is at least possible. Without at least an implied tonic - which in harmonic music means a tonic _harmony_ - there is no tonality. It's my understanding that a tonic harmony, and related harmonies whose functions make the identity of that tonic harmony known, are what Schoenberg was trying to avoid. His music certainly sounds that way to me.

On the matter of Debussy: often tonally suggestive rather than explicit, often non-functional in common practice terms, modal, even completely ambiguous at times - but some sense of a tonal hierarchy is rarely imperceptible for long, serving at least to "anchor" his flights of harmonic fancy. His harmony is mostly triadic, and triadic harmony used "non-functionally" wasn't his invention; _Parsifal_ is full of startling harmonic events (as is much music of Liszt) and that score certainly inspired Debussy, although Wagner more typically moves by way of chromatic voice movements which create "intermediate" steps, the sense of moving through tonal areas which exist but don't establish themselves. Debussy's discontinuites -the parallel triads and abrupt jumps from one tonal area to another, with no modulatory steps or even common tones between them - certainly make his harmony less tonal than Wagner's typically is; even the implication of a tonic may disappear for a time, which happens in Wagner only in moments when extreme emotional states need to be expressed. In Debussy it seems to be somewhat the other way around: he is most fully tonal (most "Romantic," maybe) in moments of pathos, and harmonically freer when he wants to float on ethereal clouds of sound.

Again, if someone wants to say that Stravinsky, Debussy, and Bartok (or even Liszt and Wagner) can be "atonal" at times, I see no objection. But "atonalty" as a specific term is most logically applied to styles of music which more or less consistently eliminate familiar tonal relationships which might otherwise be present and expected. The fact that Schoenberg's 12-tone music emerges from a powerful, rich tonal tradition, and retains many structural features of music from that tradition, is precisely what makes its exclusion of a tonal harmonic hierarchy more conspicuous and important: more _defining_ of a style reasonably called "atonal."


----------



## Woodduck

isorhythm said:


> I'm late to this thread, but was interested by the discussion of melody.
> 
> This risks being reductive, but I think it's possible to draw a theoretical distinction between "tunes" and "difficult" melodies. The distinction is whether the melody can be understood as diatonic with alterations or modulations, or not. All of Schubert's melodies, for example, fall in the former category and Schoenberg's do not. There was a real shift that happened, though it happened some time before Schoenberg, in the late or maybe even middle 19th century.


As he was with harmony, but maybe even more so, Wagner was a (or the) key figure in changing the concept of melody. I discussed this from the standpoint of tonality (which, in line with what you're saying, rests on a diatonic foundation) in post #172:

http://www.talkclassical.com/45032-classical-music-understanding-versus-12.html

Melody of unclear tonal shape had occurred before Wagner, who was probably influenced by Berlioz, but really came into its own when the composer of _Lohengrin_ morphed into the composer of _Tristan._ Wagner called his new style "endless melody"; Stravinsky, in his inimitable way, sniffed "Endless melody is no melody at all." I guess he was one of those antimodernists who pester us here on TC. :devil:


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> No one has described in Schoenberg's serial music the presence of a tonic or hierarchy of scale degrees - "emphasizing" certain notes in a passage doesn't constitute systematic hierarchy - and since those elements constitute, technically, what tonality _is,_ I have to call the music atonal.


I'm going to play Devil's advocate for a moment (apologies to Mahlerian for the oblique metaphor):

But "emphasis" or "assertion" is the very thing that Stravinsky used to create tonal anchor-points, as Mahlerian pointed out in the piano music; and I don't call him, or hear him, as "atonal," because there are too many other tonal factors in play.

To me, if it is perceived as a 'tonic' or 'focal point of tone-centricity,' then it has accomplished what my ear hears it to be, functional or not, hierarchy or not.

You said that "...the presence of a tonic or hierarchy of scale degrees...constitute, technically, what tonality _is__…_"

But as we know, a tonic can be implied, or expected, even if not materialized. The hierarchy that constitutes this is made up of a certain number of notes: in diatonicism, this is seven, in chromaticism, this is twelve. With twelve notes, the hierarchy could be formed on any note, in any 'direction' around the chromatic circle.

Schoenberg is doing the same thing that Stravinsky did, by "emphasis" or "assertion" at "boundary points"; cadencing or ending a phrase or section on an emphasized note or triadic structure. The real difference here is chromaticism vs. a more limited diatonicism.

This can be tricky, because chromaticism "weakens" tonality, by the addition of notes; but should we be looking at this in terms of "tonality," since Schoenberg's music is in the realm of chromaticism? Why can't he simply "materialize" a tonic at whatever point he wishes, and why not consider that to be tonality, even if for a moment?

After all, tonality depends on a systematic relation between all components, in a holistic way, as you have said many times; but when the conditions are chromatic, there are too many cross-references possible, too many possible functions with multiple meanings; i.e., tonality's hierarchy has weakened (or expanded) beyond the point of its once-simple relevancy or application.

So why can't, under these chromatic conditions, a single tone in the bass, or a triadic structure, or an "anchor point of tonal centricity," even if fleeting, be considered as a "tonic" or "root" or "key note"? Of course, all these terms are losing their former limited meaning, in a chromatic context. We could call it a "point of focus."

But my point is, we may be applying an impossibly simplistic set of criteria to a situation which is naturally in a state of chromatic flux. This may be what Schoenberg was getting at when he said "unity of all keys." Perhaps the notion of "tonality" is not up to the challenge of the imagination of a great artist.

What thinkest thou, o noble Woodduck? Am I just whistling in the dark?



> The idea that it was only common practice that he was trying to avoid, and that his music is tonal in terms of some "instinctive" system which has never been identified or described (?), needs better arguments than any I've seen.


…or fails identification and description by the simplistic application of the term 'tonal,' and conception of the word tonal…?



> ...If someone is hearing "tonal centers," they might at least show us what tones are being called that, where they occur, and how the surrounding harmony functions so as to confer upon them that status. *It has to function somehow in relation to a tonic, whether or not that tonic is actually stated; *the hallmark of even the most chromatic tonal harmony is the way it plays with, and depends for its effect on, the listener's sense of a harmonic hierarchy, and his *expectation that the stability of a tonic, whether or not it ever materializes, *is at least possible. Without at least an *implied tonic *- which in harmonic music means a tonic _harmony_ - there is no tonality. It's my understanding that a tonic harmony, and related harmonies whose functions make the identity of that tonic harmony known, are what Schoenberg was trying to avoid. His music certainly sounds that way to me.


But those are all criteria which are being applied to a chromatic situation. There are 12 notes now, constantly in flux, and all the inter-system relations have broken down, or rather, have been given so many new possible meanings, meanings which might apply to this key, or that key…that they are so "loaded" with possible meanings that they no longer present a "simple" solution. This "expansion" theory is plausible, because Schoenberg came from tonality...

…and, as you say, by this time the tonic is only implied; who's to say when it completely disappears, and who's to say it can't "materialize" suddenly, without the normal baggage of tonality, which by this time has disappeared into a seething chromatic mass of ambiguity?

How can a "centricity" or a "pitch singularity" function in relation to a tonic, if all other notes are possible tonics? This is chromaticism, and such reduction is not applicable now; it has been expanded into 12 possibilities.



> Again, if someone wants to say that Stravinsky, Debussy, and Bartok (or even Liszt and Wagner) can be "atonal" at times, I see no objection. But "atonalty" as a specific term is most logically applied to styles of music which more or less consistently eliminate familiar tonal relationships which might otherwise be present and expected.


I disagree, because there are different reasons that music sounds different, is not tonal, or less tonal, or a modification of tonal, or an expansion or diminution of tonal. I think a better distinction, which is readily audible, is chromaticism. Which music is more chromatic-sounding? I'm beginning to be irritated about the concept and term of "atonality" and "tonality," and their application to actual music (less so with its application to compositional methods).

The more obvious and audible difference between Debussy and Schoenberg is chromaticism. Yes, chromaticism seems to eliminate tonal relations and weaken it as an identifiable entity, but Schoenberg's chromaticism did this additively and with accumulation of possible meanings and relations, not by reduction. This is something to consider.



> The fact that Schoenberg's 12-tone music emerges from a powerful, rich tonal tradition, and retains many structural features of music from that tradition, is precisely what makes its exclusion of a tonal harmonic hierarchy more conspicuous and important: more _defining_ of a style reasonably called "atonal."


My point again, is that this "elimination" of tonality was in reality accomplished by pushing the 'idea' of tonal flux, manifest in Richard Strauss' Metamorphosen, for example, to a greater limit, by addition, not reduction.


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## Woodduck

Your post is long, million, and I can't quite bring it into focus. You appear to be saying that you'd prefer not to look at Schoenberg in terms of tonality, but of chromaticism, and you might be saying - but I'm not sure - that the clarity of music's tonality is proportional to its degree of chromaticism. All else being equal, I suppose that's true, but all else is never equal. 

To begin with, I don't much care (as I said) with how "tonal" or "atonal" we want to say a piece is. I'm interested in why we seek tonality, how we perceive it, and how a work's melodic/harmonic idiom, and the composer's handling of it, play to our expectations when we do perceive it. Tonality exists in kinds of music to which the concept of chromaticism can't even apply; and in Western music, where it does apply, I don't see the sense of tonality as satisfied or frustrated merely by the number of tones crowded into the octave, even though this is certainly a factor. Its obvious that if all the notes of the chromatic scale are circulated equally all the time, tonality will be nonexistent, but since that never happens in real music, at the very least because of unequal rhythmic distribution, the ear has to judge whether the particular use, including rhythmic placement, of the notes in circulation creates, preserves, weakens, or intensifies a sense of harmonic direction and tension, and ultimately whether there's a tonic which possesses the function of ultimate rest and resolution. Two equally diatonic pieces (using only the seven notes of a major scale) may be very different in their ability to convince us of their tonal identity and potency, depending on their extent to which they call upon the notes of the scale to express their tonal possibilities (a piece using a lot of fourths, for example, or one that cadenced in odd ways and places, could be tonally quite vague and inert). The same, obviously, could be said of two similarly chromatic pieces. Set some Wagner alongside some Reger.

As for establishing tonicity, we appear to agree that a tonic doesn't have to be physically sounded to exist. But it's equally true that physically sounding a note in a conspicuous way won't by itself make it a tonic. "Tonality by assertion" may be a real thing in some music, but it needn't be in all; an emphasized or repeated note tends to make us hear other notes in relation to it and look for a tonal hierarchy, yet the music may contradict or undermine that tendency, as I think it does in the "Musette" from the Piano Suite, which is not for a moment in G. Schoenberg can hammer away at that note for as long as he wishes, but doing so won't force the other notes to relate to it in specific ways that a listener will recognize as constituting a tonal system, any more than a pedal point on F# in a piece in C-major will make that piece into anything but a piece in C-major played against a "wrong note." Of course, in the right musical context, that F# pedal might well be the keynote of a piece in F# in which some C-major harmony takes its place in a progression which will resolve itself to, or imply, an F# tonic. It's all a matter of context.

In the Stravinsky, the context of the Piano Sonata causes me to perceive C as a tonic and to hear other notes (though not all the other notes, obviously by Stravinsky's intention) in relation to it. In the Schoenberg "Musette" the harmonic context doesn't lead me to perceive G as a tonic. But this isn't solely because Schoenberg is "more chromatic" than Stravinsky. Stravinsky, with no increase of chromaticism, could have hammered away on C without attaining as much sense of C-major as he did.

I don't know whether this is a satisfactory response to your post or not. But it does put a few more thoughts out there.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Your post is long, million, and I can't quite bring it into focus. You appear to be saying that you'd prefer not to look at Schoenberg in terms of tonality, but of chromaticism, and you might be saying - but I'm not sure - that the clarity of music's tonality is proportional to its degree of chromaticism.


Yes, generally I think that increasing the number of notes used makes tonality less distinct. On a purely theoretical level, this can be demonstrated by charting the cross-relations within any-note-numbered scale, and seeing the intervals which result, giving you a 'harmonic field of possibilities.' In Howard Hanson's book "Harmonic Materials of Modern Music" he demonstrates this with charts, which I have posted in blogs. He concludes, and the charts verify this, that the most intervallic variety arises with 6-notes scales. As you add more notes, redundancy sets in with the repetition of intervals. Subtract notes, and you go toward stronger tonality with less variety (finally arriving at Lamont Young's "one note").



> All else being equal, I suppose that's true, but all else is never equal.


Yes, and you go on to cite specific examples of music, or situations in which tonality can be enhanced or weakened, regardless of the theoretical conditions. That's all well and good...



> To begin with, I don't much care (as I said) with how "tonal" or "atonal" we want to say a piece is.


I understand.



> I'm interested in why we seek tonality, how we perceive it, and *how a work's melodic/harmonic idiom,* and the composer's handling of it, play to our expectations when we do perceive it.





> Tonality exists in kinds of music to which the concept of chromaticism can't even apply…


That's true, if the music in question has only 5 notes to work with, etc. But I think the idea of chromaticism is very important to this discussion, as it pertains to 12-tone and serial music, and the way we perceive it as being supposedly "atonal," which is a term not needed if we take the chromatic approach.



> ///and in Western music, where it (chromaticism) does apply, I don't see the sense of tonality as satisfied or frustrated merely by the number of tones crowded into the octave, even though this is certainly a factor.


That may be true if you simply put a single bass note under it all; but this does not invalidate chromaticism as a determining factor in tonality. After all, CP tonality is a 7-note system at its clearest and simplest.



> It's obvious that if all the notes of the chromatic scale are circulated equally all the time, tonality will be nonexistent, but since that never happens in real music, at the very least because of unequal rhythmic distribution, the ear has to judge whether the particular use, including rhythmic placement, of the notes in circulation creates, preserves, weakens, or intensifies a sense of harmonic direction and tension, and ultimately whether there's a tonic which possesses the function of ultimate rest and resolution.


I think this is an over-simplification and degradation of the general statement that "12-tone music has all 12 notes in circulation at all times." Of course this is not a literal description of actual music. What is meant is the 12-tone, serialism, and set-theory musics are inherently chromatic, using all 12 notes. This is true of Elliott Carter, Roger Sessions, and all the boys from Vienna.

As to the "particular use" of the 12 notes, if there is a lot of chromatic root movement going on, this is a big factor.



> Two equally diatonic pieces (using only the seven notes of a major scale) may be very different in their ability to convince us of their tonal identity and potency, depending on their extent to which they call upon the notes of the scale to express their tonal possibilities (a piece using a lot of fourths, for example, or one that cadenced in odd ways and places, could be tonally quite vague and inert). The same, obviously, could be said of two similarly chromatic pieces. Set some Wagner alongside some Reger.


Yes, you have made the point that merely the number of notes does not definitively decide the degree of tonality, if the _numbers are equal_, because of _different treatments _of the material.

Conversely, I could make the case that, if the treatment is _similar,_ that the _differences in number of notes_ does show up as a major contributing factor in convincing us of tonal identity and potency. A 5-note pentatonic major scale (C-D-E-G-A) exhibits much more stability than a 7-note major scale (C-D-E-F-G-A-B) because of what it leaves out: the F and B, which create a tritone.



> As for establishing tonicity, we appear to agree that a tonic doesn't have to be physically sounded to exist. But it's equally true that physically sounding a note in a conspicuous way won't by itself make it a tonic. "Tonality by assertion" may be a real thing in some music, but it needn't be in all; *an emphasized or repeated note tends to make us hear other notes in relation to it and look for a tonal hierarchy,* yet the music may contradict or undermine that tendency, as I think it does in the "Musette" from the Piano Suite, which is not for a moment in G.


You are speaking as if the tonal hierarchy was a thing that exists as an entity unto itself. A tonal (or harmonic) hierarchy is dependent on note number as well; it is created by a _discrete number of notes or a scale _which have functions (ratios of sonance) to the tonic. If the situation is 12-note chromaticism, with constant root movement, then the hierarchy is obscured, as a natural consequence of having 12 notes. Therefore, the "tonic by assertion" or a tonic which "materializes" in such a chromatic field can be an anchor point, and whether or not this is perceived as a "tonic" supported by its surroundings is becoming increasingly irrelevant, because this is chromaticism.



> Schoenberg can hammer away at that note for as long as he wishes, but doing so won't force the other notes to relate to it in specific ways that a listener will recognize as constituting a tonal system…


I listen often to the Piano Suite op. 25. The "g" you refer to is not in the bass, so that degrades its perception as a "tonic." If he wanted it to be a tonic, he would have put it in the bass. As it is, a pedal point as a part of of a rhythmic pattern, I see the whole thing as just a floating harmonic entity, with no root.



> ...any more than a pedal point on F# in a piece in C-major will make that piece into anything but a piece in C-major played against a "wrong note." Of course, in the right musical context, that F# pedal might well be the keynote of a piece in F# in which some C-major harmony takes its place in a progression which will resolve itself to, or imply, an F# tonic. It's all a matter of context.


Yes, but you are assuming with all this that it was Schoenberg's goal to create a tonic, or that we should be obliged to hear a tonic; but this is chromatic music, using all 12 notes, so that goal becomes more irrelevant.



> In the Stravinsky, the context of the Piano Sonata causes me to perceive C as a tonic and to hear other notes (though not all the other notes, obviously by Stravinsky's intention) in relation to it. In the Schoenberg "Musette" the harmonic context doesn't lead me to perceive G as a tonic.


That's why Stravinsky is more tonal than Schoenberg.



> But this isn't solely because Schoenberg is "more chromatic" than Stravinsky.


In a crucial way, it is, because a totally chromatic field of sound changes the goals which the artist might want to achieve, and in the case of Schoenberg, his concern was not, apparently, to establish tonality, in the case of the Musette.



> Stravinsky, with no increase of chromaticism, could have hammered away on C without attaining as much sense of C-major as he did.


It just demonstrates to me that Stravinsky had a more "tonal goal" than Schoenberg did. I think that Schoenberg's was a chromatic language, and that tonality was not as likely to emerge as a major factor. It changes all sorts of things, including the way I look at this music now.


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## Woodduck

With the basic idea that increased chromaticism tends, speaking empirically, to obscure tonal orientation, I do not disagree. All I'm saying is that it's not a simple one-to-one sort of correspondence but depends on the nature of the individual composition with respect to all its elements. If you'd rather talk about chromaticism than about atonality in Schoenberg, fine, but to me that feels mechanical and reductionist.

As a lifelong Wagnerian, I'd have to say that chromatic harmony has always always gripped my imagination like no other element in music. What I've experienced in Wagner's music is that chromaticism is most importantly not a destroyer of tonality but an enhancement of it, and that chromaticism's expressive power - its major justification, as even Monteverdi certainly realized - derives precisely from the way in which it heightens our awareness of the harmonic relationships we call tonal. While everyone talks about Wagner's chromaticism as breaking tonality down, what excites me is how it can enrich and actually _intensify_ my sense of tonal dynamics, forbidding me to take them for granted. If articulating degrees of expectation, frustration, suspension, tension, release and resolution within an interlocking structure of time spans is what tonal harmony is for, Wagner's unprecedented exploitation of virtually the full range of the diatonic-to-chromatic possibilities of common practice is the greatest demonstration and celebration of tonality in all music.

That full range of harmonic - tonal - possibilities characterizes an art of gigantic scope. Making music _fully_ chromatic, and eliminating tonality's diatonic substructure, doesn't enlarge music's potential for meaning, any more than eliminating chromaticism would. It merely extends it in one direction at the expense of another. A tonal language can possess almost limitless expressive possibilities, as Wagner demonstrated; a "pantonal" language is a language of shrunken possibilities. I think Schoenberg's historic "problem" was not that "harmony" was "evolving" to become fully chromatic (there's no such entity as "harmony") and that God had burdened him with the task of finding a way to make the inevitable actually happen. I think his historic problem was that he was a German composer living in the aftermath of _Tristan_ and _Parsifal._


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> With the basic idea that increased chromaticism tends, speaking empirically, to obscure tonal orientation, I do not disagree. All I'm saying is that it's not a simple one-to-one sort of correspondence but depends on the nature of the individual composition with respect to all its elements. If you'd rather talk about chromaticism than about atonality in Schoenberg, fine, but to me that feels mechanical and reductionist.


If this approach to chromaticism and tonality seems mechanical to you because of the empirical data, then I will explain how the two really can't be separated, because they are aspects of the same thing (in another thread).



> As a lifelong Wagnerian, I'd have to say that chromatic harmony has always always gripped my imagination like no other element in music. What I've experienced in Wagner's music is that chromaticism is most importantly not a destroyer of tonality but an enhancement of it, and that chromaticism's expressive power - its major justification, as even Monteverdi certainly realized - derives precisely from the way in which it heightens our awareness of the harmonic relationships we call tonal. While everyone talks about Wagner's chromaticism as breaking tonality down, what excites me is how it can enrich and actually _intensify_ my sense of tonal dynamics, forbidding me to take them for granted. If articulating degrees of expectation, frustration, suspension, tension, release and resolution within an interlocking structure of time spans is what tonal harmony is for, *Wagner's *unprecedented exploitation of virtually the full range of the diatonic-to-chromatic possibilities of common practice *is the greatest demonstration and celebration of tonality in all music*.


You seem to have substituted Wagner for your representative of the ultimate in the limits of tonality, for my Schoenberg.



> That full range of *harmonic - tonal* - possibilities characterizes an art of gigantic scope.





> Making music _fully_ chromatic, and eliminating tonality's diatonic substructure, doesn't enlarge music's potential for meaning…


It could be argued that it _expands_ it. With 12 notes, each pitch can be considered in functional relation to 12 key areas. For example, C could function as I in C, viiº in C#, b7 in D, vi in Eb, etc.
More on this on the other thread.



> ...any more than eliminating chromaticism would. It merely extends it in one direction at the expense of another.


Maybe that simply means that it loses its meaning for _you,_ beyond your capacity to hear and perceive; a perception that is so open-ended that it defies description or analysis.



> ...A tonal language can possess almost limitless expressive possibilities, as Wagner demonstrated; a "pantonal" language is a language of shrunken possibilities.


You are unclear as to what exactly determines the difference in "expanded" to "shrunken," since both Wagner and Schoenberg were going in the same direction: more notes, more chromaticism. 
For me, "expansion" implies addition: of notes, and of harmonic possibilities.



> I think Schoenberg's historic "problem" was not that "harmony" was "evolving" to become fully chromatic, and that God had burdened him with the task of finding a way to make the inevitable actually happen.


I'm not surprised that you think that, and I'm not referring to Schoenberg, but to God. It does seem obvious, however, that tonality was becoming more fraught with increasing cross-relations, only possible with addition of more notes, not less…again, empiricism raises its ugly head...



> I think his historic problem was that he was a German composer living in the aftermath of _Tristan_ and _Parsifal._


What exactly is the nature of this "problem"? Apparently, you consider Wagner to be the end of tonal possibilities. For me, Berg took it further with his op.1 Piano Sonata.

As far as addition of notes being "mere empiricism," you seen to fall back on such empiricisms in post #303 when you say:




> ...the presence of a tonic or hierarchy of scale degrees…and...those elements constitute, technically, what tonality is…



It would seem to me that the number of pitches/scale degrees is crucial, since they constitute the hierarchy and functions of tonality, and are, as you say, literally what tonality _is._


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> If this approach to chromaticism and tonality seems mechanical to you because of the empirical data, then I will explain how the two really can't be separated, because they are aspects of the same thing (in another thread).
> 
> You seem to have substituted Wagner for your representative of the ultimate in the limits of tonality, for my Schoenberg.
> 
> Maybe that simply means that it loses its meaning for _you,_ beyond your capacity to hear and perceive; a perception that is so open-ended that it defies description or analysis.
> 
> You are unclear as to what exactly determines the difference in "expanded" to "shrunken," since both Wagner and Schoenberg were going in the same direction: more notes, more chromaticism.
> For me, "expansion" implies addition: of notes, and of harmonic possibilities.
> 
> What exactly is the nature of this "problem"? Apparently, you consider Wagner to be the end of tonal possibilities. For me, Berg took it further with his op.1 Piano Sonata.
> 
> It would seem to me that the number of pitches/scale degrees is crucial, since they constitute the hierarchy and functions of tonality, and are, as you say, literally what tonality _is._[/COLOR]


The crux of my point about Wagner's tonality being more "expansive" in its expressive possibilities than Schoenberg's atonality is that the latter eliminates something fundamental to musical meaning - the most fundamental vehicle of musical meaning in existence - while tonal music (potentially) can embrace even atonality as a special effect in context, and in fact can intensify the effect of tonality's absence in a tonal context (Wagner actually verges on this in isolated, and very powerful, moments). I'd agree that atonal music has its own peculiar expressive possibilities, but its limitations are not only theoretically explicable but pretty obvious (to me, and I think to a majority of listeners) in practice.

Schoenberg himself knew what an immense thing he'd given up, despite his (largely fallacious) historical-theoretical rationalizations, and it was only to try to compensate for his loss that he felt he had to invent serialism. A lot of people (me included) find his "free atonal," expressionist manner more compelling than his attempts to discipline an atonal idiom into traditional abstract forms, which for me go against the intrinsic expressive qualities of the idiom and, his hopes notwithstanding, simply affirm by its absence the organizing and expressive (the two are not separable) power of tonality.

Of course I don't expect everyone to agree with these observations. But I don't think there's anything wrong with my "capacity to hear and perceive" (thanks ). And no, I don't think Wagner was the end of tonal possibilities, but I do think his achievement in revealing the expressive range of tonal harmony dwarfs everyone else's. I agree that Berg was brilliant in his ability to walk the edge of the tonal abyss and to take us to where losing our footing is a thrill, and it's a pity he died young.


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## Luchesi

If the music is the type in which we focus on notes as melody over the chords of harmony then I understand a work when I can determine how the harmony is logically moving under or above the notes of melodic interest.

The fascination becomes how do these notes in harmony with the accompaniment guide the human brain to think about ideas and experiences and concepts etc.? I think this is the big mystery.

We don't need to be able to talk about the terms or define a work in words using those terms but I think our brains are doing that for us. So therefore, many people can skip over the definitions and the traditional descriptions using the phraseology - and get right at the enjoyment. This is one of those additional minor mysteries.


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