# Western Tonality: Running From the Devil



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Our Western classical music is tonal, and can be subsumed under the larger umbrella of "harmonic music." All harmonically-based music has an effect on us, because we have ears, a brain, and a nervous system. Some harmonic music makes us want to dance; some makes us cry, or relax, or become anxious. There are a plethora of "New Age" books which discuss this effect music has on us, including the little book which accompanied the best-selling "Chant" album. This spiritual aspect of music seems to be a sustainable trend.

The North Indian classical tradition is basically an expression of religion and spirituality. It is based on the elaboration of scales called "ragas" which are played over a "drone" of the root note and its fifth. This creates a very harmonic, resonant effect, even physical in nature, not unlike our early Gregorian chant.
Many folk musics are drone-based; lots of Irish jigs and airs have a mono-tonic feel, seeming to revolve around a root note.

I can remember my introduction to "the drone" when I heard The Beatles album "Revolver," with songs like "She Said," "Tomorrow Never Knows," George Harrison's Indian-sounding "Love You To," and from the same period, the single "Rain" B/W "Paperback Writer." The Beatles had obviously tapped into some sort of "drone" which made them even more "heavy" and profound than before.

Western tonality is based on harmonic function of chords within a key area, in relation to a main home-key chord, numbered 1-7, using Roman numeral "I" to denote the root chord, followed by ii, iii, IV, V, vi, and vii.

The importance ranking of the chords in this Hierarchy is not numerical in order, but goes by fifths; therefore, I, V, and IV are most important, since they represent the root and its most audible harmonic, the fifth, and its inversion, the fourth, followed by the less-important small-numeral chords: vi, ii, iii, and vii.

So Western classical music, as it developed this "harmonic function in time" aspect, became less centered, less "droney," and more varied and moving. In contrast to Hildegard von Bingen's exquisite drone-chants, notice how Beethoven is quite the opposite, always having a "thrust" or forward-momentum in his music. Bach, too: his sequences of V-I-V-Is fly by so fast, always in constant harmonic motion.

Yet, something had been lost: Bach is religious music, but where had the spiritual centeredness of Gregorian chant gone? What happened to make this music go from static roots, with no movement, to a restless, constantly shifting progression of chords away from, and returning to, a key center? It was "developing," becoming more elaborate, but to what end? What did this development and elaboration of music reflect, if not a change in Man and his outlook?

The Baroque, and the Age of Enlightenment are perhaps the answer. As science developed, and we learned that our Earth was not the center of the universe, and thinking developed, a new emphasis on the "nobility of Man" emerged, leading to the gradual loss of power by The Church, then Kings and nobility, then finally, Democracy, and the Rise of the Common Man.

Man was more conscious now, more cerebral. He did not need to submit to the drone's power like he used to; he wanted to actually do God's work, and dominate and conquer his world, in the name of God.

Besides that, the "drone" had always been associated with "primitive" Eastern and foreign musics. Western Man was an active, moving, conscious man, and his developed harmonically restless and moving music reflected this. There was no need to sit in front of a candle, sing droney chants, and "lose one's ego in submission to God." We had bigger fish to fry, and our new harmonic juggernaut would aid us in spreading the glory. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Onward, Christian soldiers!

The drone was now seen as what it always was: a dark, sombre vision bordering on nothingness: the cessation of will, stillness, quiet, meditative, lacking movement. Perhaps a little too close to the heretical, forbidden "nothingness" of Eastern religions and rogue, uncontrolled "spirituality." Too close to the Devil!

Now, Western music had become elaborate, full of detail, magnificent in form. Quite a bit of conscious cerebral effort was needed to follow these long developments; not a task for the zoned-out monks who chanted their way to ecstacy.

So here we are in the 21st century. What has happened since Gregorian chant appeared? A lot of harmonic development, that's what, finally culminating in the late-Romantic chromatic wanderings of Schoenberg, Strauss, and Mahler.

So, as in my other blog about the "universes" of music, we see that Man's attitude toward his world, himself, and his God, have shaped his expressions of it, through his art.

All of this still holds true today. The same listeners who complain bitterly about Serial music, almost always reject Minimalism as well, even though Minimalism is _very _harmonically rooted, almost simplistic. Perhaps it is too much a return to the old "drone" of chant; not enough movement, too "boring" for today's developed Western man. Also, too repetitious, too "primitive," too likely to induce trance-states (in the case of early Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley), and too closely associated with Eastern thought, and its associated drone, evoking ego-death, leaving a black void in the center of its listeners' being, leaving room for _*The Devil*_ to jump in!

_*Heresy!*_


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## Guest (Oct 27, 2012)

I love the use of drone - especially in Scottish pipe and drum bands, where it is prominent. I like to hum the drone and hear the melody move around me, and, even in simple music, make sure that i shift the drone in the right place.

This is the one piece of music I'd rescue for my desert island.


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