# Was serialism a move forward or backward?



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

I have actually always been under the impression that Schoenberg's concept of 12 note technique, music based on developing the various permutations of a 12 note row, was really something quite old hat. As in, Bach had already been writing music in a similar way:






But recently I have begun to wonder if this was actually something quite novel in itself......the notion of developing a motif in this way had been around for centuries but it had never before been used to actually provide guidelines for harmonic unity and structure. In the past, CP harmony was in some ways a separate deal from motific development even though they were used simultaneously for different purposes. Schoenberg in some ways re-introduced this way of composing but applied it to a pitch-based motif-the 12 note row and its many permutations-which solves the problem of finding order and structure in post-tonal music, thus establishing a fully developed and almost entirely new world of composition separate from CP harmony, separate from Renaissance polyphony, separate from Mediaeval polyphony and separate from plainchant.

But is it truly a move forward if it is essentially using the same tools of motific development which had been used for centuries? What about other methods of working with the 12 notes of the chromatic scale which were becoming abundant in the 20th century? Why even focus on pitch in this way anyway if that was what was most prominent in music of the bygone eras?

I hope this proves for an interesting discussion if one like this is not going on at the moment anyway. :tiphat:


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## Dim7

First poll in the music theory subforum... History has been made!


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## Art Rock

As a listener, I could not care less what techniques a composer uses, as long as I am captivated by the result. And that happens both with serialism and non-serialism - just like there are pieces in both rechniques that I don't like.


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## Guest

I voted "Neither"


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## Guest

I'm saying this in utter ignorance: Atonality and Serialism have separate entries in Wikipedia (albeit they make references to each other)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serialism


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## Pantheon

Looks like I'm the first one to vote... 
I laughed at the "atonal $hit" option


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## Guest

What is the opposite of atonal? Is it aatonal?


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

dogen said:


> What is the opposite of atonal? Is it aatonal?


Maybe you're right, but sometimes I just prefer using the terms aaatonal and aaaatonal. Of course, these aren't widely accepted terms; the ones used in academic circles have a number of As which can only be determined by multiplying all possible combinations of the 12 pitches of the chromatic scale by 12....and then adding 1 to that.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

dogen said:


> I voted "Neither"


I already have an option for that!


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## Guest

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> I already have an option for that!


Not on the screen I'm looking at!


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## Weston

Yes, I wanted a "neither" option as well. It expanded music more than moved it.


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## Nereffid

I also vote for "neither".
The idea of "progress" in music and the other arts is an unhelpful one, I think. Sure, music is always changing, and that's a good thing, but the change doesn't occur along some imaginary straight line in which movement can only go forward or backward.


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## Ukko

Yet another procedure mislabeled "ism". Without that 'ism' stuck on the end, the acolytes would faint - and wake up being practitioners. A great mass of posts here would wither and disappear in a cloud of phantasmagorical smoke. I would

Praise The Day


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## EdwardBast

Nereffid said:


> I also vote for "neither".
> The idea of "progress" in music and the other arts is an unhelpful one, I think. Sure, music is always changing, and that's a good thing, but the change doesn't occur along some imaginary straight line in which movement can only go forward or backward.


Add my vote to the neither camp. The notion of linear stylistic evolution was a largely 20thc fairytale insecure people told themselves when they doubted their place in the grand historical drama. ("No, I am the true prince of the magical kingdom foreordained and anointed by the gods Ludwig and Richard and Anton, whereas you are a dybbuk as yet uniformed of your own demise!") If one wants to invoke evolution, I think the notion of ecological niches is more apt because it captures a central truth: Eventually, all niches get filled. All that could conceivably be called music eventually is. All that can be - and a good deal that can't - inevitably must be. Serialism was inevitable. Minimalism was inevitable. Aleatory was inevitable. It's all inevitable. A billion years ago on a dismal gray planet in galaxy M38, all of it has already happened. And there, as here, the inevitable regression to the mean kept millions of concert goers listening happily ever after.


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## Albert7

Neither.... Progress is a social construct so this question doesn't add anything because atonality is what it is. This is all relative to one's viewpoint.


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## isorhythm

Joining the "neither" chorus - like the others I don't believe there's such a thing as "forward" or "backward" in art.


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## millionrainbows

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> I have actually always been under the impression that Schoenberg's concept of 12 note technique, music based on developing the various permutations of a 12 note row, was really something quite old hat. As in, Bach had already been writing music in a similar way:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> But recently I have begun to wonder if this was actually something quite novel in itself......the notion of developing a motif in this way had been around for centuries but it had never before been used to actually provide guidelines for harmonic unity and structure. In the past, CP harmony was in some ways a separate deal from motific development even though they were used simultaneously for different purposes. Schoenberg in some ways re-introduced this way of composing but applied it to a pitch-based motif-the 12 note row and its many permutations-which solves the problem of finding order and structure in post-tonal music, thus establishing a fully developed and almost entirely new world of composition separate from CP harmony, separate from Renaissance polyphony, separate from Mediaeval polyphony and separate from plainchant.
> 
> But is it truly a move forward if it is essentially using the same tools of motific development which had been used for centuries? What about other methods of working with the 12 notes of the chromatic scale which were becoming abundant in the 20th century? Why even focus on pitch in this way anyway if that was what was most prominent in music of the bygone eras?
> 
> I hope this proves for an interesting discussion if one like this is not going on at the moment anyway. :tiphat:


Yes, I hope it produces fruitful, informative response at some time in the future. :lol:

Meanwhile, that's a good path of inquiry. The way I see it presently, Schoenberg's method was an extension of his own aims, and was not fully-formed, that is, it had no general principles set into place, and was intuitive and unique for each situation.

As you put it, "...(the) other methods of working with the 12 notes of the chromatic scale which were becoming abundant in the 20th century" is part of the new method which led to the 12-tone and serial approaches, that is, a geometric way using the 12 notes as a starting point, rather than tonality's harmonic approach, using triads and the diatonic 7-note scale as starting points. As music became more chromatic, the two approaches began to overlap, thus all the confusion which arises when trying to separate the two or discuss them as different ways. There is plenty of overlap and grey area.

As far as "old hat" goes. there are still only 12 notes; if you really want to be new, then go to microtonality.

Schoenberg was a motivic composer (Wagner, Brahms) so it's no surprise he ordered the tone row. This allowed him to fragment and transform it in all those ways: retrograde, inversion, etc.

Still, there is the problem of the harmonic dimension, the vertical. While motivic cells provide structure and identity, they are fragmentary; they govern small areas within the chromatic space. This aspect is not explicitly covered by an ordered row, and there must be unordered "indexes" of sets in order to do this. So, they 'cheated,' by using combinatorial sets. Thus, it seems to me a more cumbersome, less elegant solution to the harmonic dimension than tonality's which is self-contained by comparison.

Later set theory has perhaps solved this. Fractal composition? Peter Schat's Tone Clock? Perhaps these are the ways forward.


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## Morimur

Serialism was and continues to be responsible for a lot of great and interesting music. Schoenberg's a boss.


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## ptr

I cant really see that there is a valid answer, hence I had to be the sod that voted "i hate atonal $hit".. It is the most fun option of any TC poll for the years I've frequented this site!

It is a typical "side branch", a place for some to hang and a dead end for others, there is no back or forward with compositional methods, there's an ever expanding cloud where You can find ideas to learn from and apply with in your craft of creating music, some of the methods You may find are more fashionable at certain moments in time and some will undoubtedly be regarded as antiquated! 
..antiquated, is a term I believe that the notion of progress and/or regress is in any craft, if You learn a craft well and apply yourself in all its available methods Your "products" will be interesting, live by short cuts and what ever You produce will be "atonal $hit" with no merit!

/ptr


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## arpeggio

I really do not know how to respond to threads like this.

All I know is that all of my music theory and history professors in college telling my the that Schoenberg and his methods were a natural extension of tonal music from Wagner and _Tristan and Isoude_.

I come here and I have members tell me that my professors were all wrong.


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## Ukko

arpeggio said:


> I really do not know how to respond to threads like this.
> 
> All I know is that all of my music theory and history professors in college telling my the that Schoenberg and his methods were a natural extension of tonal music from Wagner and _Tristan and Isoude_.
> 
> I come here and I have members tell me that my professors were all wrong.


That "*a* natural extension" is really just saying that it wasn't an _un_natural extension. Doesn't say his methods were the cats' pajamas.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

I agree that it was neither a move forward or backward like most people here do, but I am not inclined to call it an 'expansion' of compositional technique.....

I have created threads before about Schoenberg's approach to composition being rooted in the past (http://www.talkclassical.com/33479-cage-stravinsky-schoenberg-schoenberg.html and http://www.talkclassical.com/26311-can-schoenberg-considered-neoclassicist.html) and I think his description of himself as a 'conservative forced to become a radical' sums that up nicely. The conception of Schoenberg's serial technique and the development of it over time is a move forward in his development of a composer whilst also rooted in the earlier techniques in the Austro-German tradition. It's 'that old Brahms' stuff as well as 'that old Bach stuff' _as well as_ a new way of structuring pitch to give a general harmonic coherence in a piece of music. That's why I voted both.

I also don't think that serialism is an 'extension' per se, it is just a more focussed and mathematical technique rather than composing any note whenever the hell you want.

*I probably should have mentioned that I am speaking specifically about Schoenberg's development as a composer here and the difference between his pre-serial pantonal works and his serial compositions rather than 'progress' in overall music.*


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## arpeggio

Ukko said:


> That "*a* natural extension" is really just saying that it wasn't an _un_natural extension. Doesn't say his methods were the cats' pajamas.


I really do not know what to say.

This was forty years ago.

They might of said it was a ogfijr ee transposition of demented fourths in regro jfodowitrism.

I am not going to find my old college textbook trunk and rummage through it to find the exact semantics that they used.

Of course there were some who hated it.


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## KenOC

isorhythm said:


> Joining the "neither" chorus - like the others I don't believe there's such a thing as "forward" or "backward" in art.


Hear, hear! If music "moved forward," surely we'd have a lot of composers better than Bach by now. Well, maybe I just wasn't paying attention and missed them! :lol:


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## Ukko

arpeggio said:


> I really do not know what to say.
> 
> This was forty years ago.
> 
> They might of said it was a ogfijr ee transposition of demented fourths in regro jfodowitrism.
> 
> I am not going to find my old college textbook trunk and rummage through it to find the exact semantics that they used.
> 
> Of course there were some who hated it.


Sorry guy, I wasn't trying to twist your britches.


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## arpeggio

Ukko said:


> Sorry guy, I wasn't trying to twist your britches.


I apologize as well. I overreacted.


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## Albert7




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## ArtMusic

As I wrote before, I think it was a forward development from a musical theory point of view. But from a musical enjoyment point of view, much less so to me. So I voted "both".


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## arpeggio

^^^^^^^^^^

Good answer.

As I wrote before I did not get Schoenberg until I was in my fifties.

A person has a right to listen to whatever he enjoys.

As I wrote before if I only performed music I enjoyed, I would be home polishing the keys on my bassoon.


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## Albert7

ArtMusic said:


> As I wrote before, I think it was a forward development from a musical theory point of view. But from a musical enjoyment point of view, much less so to me. So I voted "both".


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## SimonNZ

[deleted reply to a Visitor Message I just got]

...and I'll join the people voting "neither"


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## elgar's ghost

I'd say it can be a move backward as well as forward - isn't that what's known as retrograde?


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## Albert7

I think that twelve tone approaches is both radical and conservative at the same time. It respects tradition while breaking with it at the same time.


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## millionrainbows

Serialism is not solely responsible for the perceived "move forward" in music. Modernism itself is what we are looking at here, whether we see it as forward or back, or just different.

If we truly understand the principles behind modern music thought, we have no need to use the terms "good" or "bad" or "forward" or "back." We simply see that it is a different approach which uses different methods.

The approach? Use of all 12 notes, a geometric division of those 12 notes (rather than being based on the 7-note diatonic "harmonic" model using the IV-V or 5/7 fourth/fifth division based on consonant triads), escape from the use of diatonic triads, free root movement, etc.

Free atonality was already using many of these methods, just before Schoenberg revealed his 12-tone method, and 12-tone and serialism still use elements of this, especially the geometric treatment of the 12-note set.


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## QuietGuy

I chose backward, but if I coulda, I'da chosen the fourth option also.


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## clavichorder

The technique itself and the music most closely bound to it, can be thought 'insular' in some ways. Its an extension of what has come before it, and though an extension can more easily be likened to a move forward, yet it also seems to enable a lot of the music written with it to be less inclusive of other styles and sounds outside classical music, hence me calling it 'insular' in some ways. 

Back in the days when I was really skeptical and prejudiced, I almost thought of it as a sort of inbred excess of classical purity. Nowadays I see it as just another interesting path that yielded many cool results, and is in no way exclusive in and of itself, though it seems to enable that exclusivity to its own stylistic boundaries, in music like Webern or Berg.


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## Richannes Wrahms

I have to admit though that I like the 'free atonal' works better, seem a lot more colourfull and ear-driven than the serial ones which got progressibly austere.


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## arpeggio

Sideways..................


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## Albert7

arpeggio said:


> Sideways..................


I suggest trying that with a nice bottle of Napa wine then.










"No, if anyone orders Merlot, I'm leaving. I am NOT drinking any f****** Merlot!"


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## norman bates

Serialism didn't existed before and it added some expressive possibilities, then to me it was definitely a move forward. The big problem was the whole idiotic idea expressed in this well known sentence: "any musician who has not experienced—I do not say understood, but truly experienced—the necessity of dodecaphonic music is USELESS. For his whole work is irrelevant to the needs of his epoch." This was truly obscurantism and dogmatism disguised as progressive mentality.


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## isorhythm

Richannes Wrahms said:


> I have to admit though that I like the 'free atonal' works better, seem a lot more colourfull and ear-driven than the serial ones which got progressibly austere.


I don't know about this. Schoenberg's piano and violin concertos are both 12-tone and are among his more Romantic pieces. Same with Berg's Lyric Suite. I think it can go either way.

I'm also told that Rautavaara's third symphony is somehow serial, though I don't understand how. It sounds like a cross between Sibelius and Bruckner.


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## millionrainbows

clavichorder said:


> The technique itself and the music most closely bound to it, can be thought 'insular' in some ways. Its an extension of what has come before it, and though an extension can more easily be likened to a move forward, yet it also seems to enable a lot of the music written with it to be less inclusive of other styles and sounds outside classical music, hence me calling it 'insular' in some ways.
> 
> Back in the days when I was really skeptical and prejudiced, I almost thought of it as a sort of inbred excess of classical purity. Nowadays I see it as just another interesting path that yielded many cool results, and is in no way exclusive in and of itself, though it seems to enable that exclusivity to its own stylistic boundaries, in music like Webern or Berg.


That's pleasant reading.

Yes, serialism is not a 'social' music; it is cloistered away, written in ivory towers. Boulez, as he is depicted in Joan Peyser's _The New Music,_ is like a monk; all the suits in his closet are exactly the same, and he was extremely dedicated and disciplined. Messiaen was his teacher, and was a very religious man. I think he would have been a monk, if not a composer.

In the same way, Webern was like this as well; his PHD was in older music, and the idea for integral serialism was influenced by the idea of medieval isorhythms.


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## Prodromides

elgars ghost said:


> I'd say it can be a move backward as well as forward - isn't that what's known as retrograde?


Yeah - "Retrograde inversion is a musical term that literally means "backwards and upside down": "The inverse of the series is sounded in reverse order."[1] This is a technique used in music, specifically in twelve-tone technique, where the inversion and retrograde techniques are performed on the same tone row successively, "[t]he inversion of the prime series in reverse order from last pitch to first."[2]"


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## Prodromides

Perhaps a move "away" more so than forwards or backwards.
The post-WWII academia sought to distance itself from expressions which could be deemed as sentimental or romantic.
They felt their music had to move away from the Romanticism of the 1800s & early 1900s. Whether this is 'forward' or 'backward' depends upon how well one's digestive system can intake syrupy sentimentalism in music.


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## Woodduck

Prodromides said:


> Perhaps a move "away" more so than forwards or backwards.
> The post-WWII academia sought to distance itself from expressions which could be deemed as sentimental or romantic.
> They felt their music had to move away from the Romanticism of the 1800s & early 1900s. Whether this is 'forward' or 'backward' depends upon how well one's digestive system can intake syrupy sentimentalism in music.


If an entire century's worth of music, including some of the greatest works of art ever created, is syrupy sentimentalism, it would appear that the human organism is very well designed for digesting sugars.

Post-WWII academia was well past concerning itself with sentimental expressions, and serialism is a technique for structuring music. It isn't about any sort of expression or the lack of it.


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## Grizzled Ghost

I vote neither neither nor not neither.

Om.


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## Prodromides

Woodduck said:


> If an entire century's worth of music, including some of the greatest works of art ever created, is syrupy sentimentalism, it would appear that the human organism is very well designed for digesting sugars.
> 
> Post-WWII academia was well past concerning itself with sentimental expressions, and serialism is a technique for structuring music. It isn't about any sort of expression or the lack of it.


I agree. I, too, can digest Romantic-era music. And yes dodecaphony is a technique not an expression.
Yet there existed a 'peer pressure' from about 1947 through 1968 that a composer should have a facility to apply mathematics within musical composition. Serial works imply that a composer was adept with maths and physics, etc.
Music was to be in the hands and minds of the scientists and no longer a product from the poets and/or literary folks. 

[In 1955, Mikis Theodorakis was a roomate with Iannis Xenakis in France. They were studying under Messiaen. While Xenakis continued to be at the vanguard of the new music, Theodorakis shifted around 1960 towards music for the people because he felt he was not good enough at math]


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## Woodduck

Prodromides said:


> I agree. I, too, can digest Romantic-era music. And yes dodecaphony is a technique not an expression.
> Yet there existed a 'peer pressure' from about 1947 through 1968 that a composer should have a facility to apply mathematics within musical composition. Serial works imply that a composer was adept with maths and physics, etc.
> Music was to be in the hands and minds of the scientists and no longer a product from the poets and/or literary folks.
> 
> [In 1955, Mikis Theodorakis was a roomate with Iannis Xenakis in France. They were studying under Messiaen. While Xenakis continued to be at the vanguard of the new music, Theodorakis shifted around 1960 towards music for the people because he felt he was not good enough at math]


I see what you mean. Theodorakis wasn't the only defector from academic orthodoxy at that time, and from my limited reading on the subject those who rejected its artificial restrictions talk about them in similar terms. A preoccupation with technique certainly can choke off natural expression, and result in a product that fails to communicate to any part of the human listener beyond the cerebral cortex. I was quite surprised to read that Messiaen, whom I had thought of more as a religious mystic, was behind such a pseudo-scientific concept as "total serialism," but it appears that once bad boy Boulez was infected with the notion, Messiaen himself couldn't tolerate its restrictions and sensibly abandoned it.


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## isorhythm

Woodduck said:


> I see what you mean. Theodorakis wasn't the only defector from academic orthodoxy at that time, and from my limited reading on the subject those who rejected its artificial restrictions talk about them in similar terms. A preoccupation with technique certainly can choke off natural expression, and result in a product that fails to communicate to any part of the human listener beyond the cerebral cortex. I was quite surprised to read that Messiaen, whom I had thought of more as a religious mystic, was behind such a pseudo-scientific concept as "total serialism," but it appears that once bad boy Boulez was infected with the notion, Messiaen himself couldn't tolerate its restrictions and sensibly abandoned it.


As far as I know Messiaen only wrote one piece that approached total serialism - _Mode de valeurs et d'intensités_. I don't see any contradiction between an idea like total serialism and religious mysticism; in fact I think such things have often gone together, even since the middle ages. But I think Messiaen, on considering the actual musical result, perceived that it was a dead end.

Boulez, of course, also abandoned total serialism before long. The concept was remarkably short-lived in practice, considering the importance attached to it by both supporters and detractors.


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## Mahlerian

Woodduck said:


> I see what you mean. Theodorakis wasn't the only defector from academic orthodoxy at that time, and from my limited reading on the subject those who rejected its artificial restrictions talk about them in similar terms. A preoccupation with technique certainly can choke off natural expression, and result in a product that fails to communicate to any part of the human listener beyond the cerebral cortex. I was quite surprised to read that Messiaen, whom I had thought of more as a religious mystic, was behind such a pseudo-scientific concept as "total serialism," but it appears that once bad boy Boulez was infected with the notion, Messiaen himself couldn't tolerate its restrictions and sensibly abandoned it.


Messiaen fully supported his student Boulez, and saw Pierre's music, which he spoke very fondly of, as the brightest hope for serial music (he didn't care much for Schoenberg, too Germanic).

It should be mentioned that Schoenberg's concept of unity in a single 12-tone series was related in his mind to a concept of the divine. It had nothing to do with mathematics, really.

It's also misleading to mention Xenakis in this context, as he never composed anything serial, to my knowledge (at least not in his mature works).


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> I was quite surprised to read that Messiaen, whom I had thought of more as a religious mystic, was behind such a pseudo-scientific concept as "total serialism," but it appears that once bad boy Boulez was infected with the notion, Messiaen himself couldn't tolerate its restrictions and sensibly abandoned it.


Whether or not Messiaen was a mystic is not central to his influence. Messiaen was influential to serialists in these ways:

1. His music was harmonic, and had color, but was not diatonically tonal. It had momentary focii of tone centers, but no harmonic function. 
2. It had no 'development' as we understand it; it was a series of statements or events.
3. It used non-Western concepts of rhythm and scales. It used rhythmic 'formulae,' and he developed his own 'mode' system.

I don't think Messiaen 'abandoned' or 'rejected' serialism; he simply had already developed his own idiosyncratic system.



isorhythm said:


> As far as I know Messiaen only wrote one piece that approached total serialism - _Mode de valeurs et d'intensités_. I don't see any contradiction between an idea like total serialism and religious mysticism; in fact I think such things have often gone together, even since the middle ages. But I think Messiaen, on considering the actual musical result, perceived that it was a dead end.
> 
> Boulez, of course, also abandoned total serialism before long. The concept was remarkably short-lived in practice, considering the importance attached to it by both supporters and detractors.


Serialism is still important to this day, because of the way it influenced musical thinking. It influenced even Ligeti, because with each composition, he sets up certain problems and solves them with unique methods from piece to piece. This is a very 'serial' way of thinking and approaching music.

Basically, serialism embodies the Greek approach to music as the Quadrivium, with geometry, arithmetic, and astronomy. It approaches the entire 12-note set, and divides it in various geometric ways, rather than in an acoustic, harmonic, or sensual way.

In other words, I see serialism not as a limited movement, but as a_ temporary_ culmination, one of many new ways of thinking about music, which all of modernism embodies. I trace this back to the Quadrivium, a way of musical thought which is more geometric and related to mathematics, rather than art or poetry as such. This puts me in a different area of thinking about music, which most people do not really grasp. To them, it seems that music is a primarily sensual thing.


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## Woodduck

isorhythm said:


> I don't see any contradiction between an idea like total serialism and religious mysticism.


I fear you may be right. I should have considered the difference between the essential mystical experience and the religion with which mysticism tends to be associated. Between the mystical experience _as such_ and a highly intellectualized musical technology like total serialism there is a profound incompatibility. The second is about rationalism and control; the first is about elementary consciousness and letting go. The experience of music is most "mystical" when it is most spontaneous; the artist is closest to "god" when he forgets his techniques, no matter how complex they may be, and simply "thinks music."

To me the very idea of total serialism is as gruesome as the idea of totalitarian government, and ultimately has the same spiritual root. But, unfortunately, totalitarianism, the antithesis of the freedom of the mystic, is all too agreeable to religion - Western religion in particular, conspicuously including Messiaen's Catholicism. So I was undoubtedly too quick to find his interest in a totalitarian musical technique surprising. It's reassuring that he soon found it disagreeable.


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## Balthazar

Woodduck said:


> To me the very idea of total serialism is as gruesome as the idea of totalitarian government, and ultimately has the same spiritual root.


Really? You see an equivalence between this:










and this?


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## Woodduck

Balthazar said:


> Really? You see an equivalence between this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> and this?


Surely that is not a serious question.

Let me put it another way. I find the idea of total serialism in music as gruesome _in the context of aesthetics_ as the idea of totalitarianism _in the context of politics._

That does not posit an "equivalence" between aesthetics and politics, or between an artistic horror and a human one.

Nor is the concept of "totalitarianism" equivalent to the concept of genocide and mass murder. Those things may also be found outside that particular political structure.

I'm not the one making false equivalences here.


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## Balthazar

Woodduck said:


> To me the very idea of total serialism is as gruesome as the idea of totalitarian government, and ultimately has the same spiritual root.





Woodduck said:


> Surely that is not a serious question.


To the extent your statement is meant to be taken seriously, the question is most certainly serious.

What exactly is the spiritual root of total serialism? And how is it identical to that of totalitarian government?

In any context, the phrase "as gruesome as" proposes an equivalence.


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## Albert7

Woodduck said:


> I fear you may be right. I should have considered the difference between the essential mystical experience and the religion with which mysticism tends to be associated. Between the mystical experience _as such_ and a highly intellectualized musical technology like total serialism there is a profound incompatibility. The second is about rationalism and control; the first is about elementary consciousness and letting go. The experience of music is most "mystical" when it is most spontaneous; the artist is closest to "god" when he forgets his techniques, no matter how complex they may be, and simply "thinks music."
> 
> To me the very idea of total serialism is as gruesome as the idea of totalitarian government, and ultimately has the same spiritual root. But, unfortunately, totalitarianism, the antithesis of the freedom of the mystic, is all too agreeable to religion - Western religion in particular, conspicuously including Messiaen's Catholicism. So I was undoubtedly too quick to find his interest in a totalitarian musical technique surprising. It's reassuring that he soon found it disagreeable.


After reading this, I think that the apropos response was:


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## Woodduck

Balthazar said:


> To the extent your statement is meant to be taken seriously, the question is most certainly serious.
> 
> What exactly is the spiritual root of total serialism? And how is it identical to that of totalitarian government?
> 
> In any context, the phrase "as gruesome as" proposes an equivalence.


You are taking the word "equivalent" to mean "equal" or "same." It doesn't. "A is B" or "A is like B" does not state an equivalence. "A is like B in a particular respect," or "A is to B as C is to D," does. If you don't know the respect in which things are being compared, you can't assume some unintended respect. That's one reason why your assuming a comparison between music and genocide is unjustified and assumes something I didn't mean.

The common root? The need for control - of men, of nature, of sexuality, of relationships, of artistic inspiration, etc., etc. - which, at an extreme, is deadly no matter what aspect of human existence we're talking about.


----------



## EDaddy

I like cereal. That's as close as I get. :lol:


----------



## Balthazar

Woodduck said:


> You are taking the word "equivalent" to mean "equal" or "same." It doesn't. "A is B" or "A is like B" does not state an equivalence. "A is like B in a particular respect," or "A is to B as C is to D," does. If you don't know the respect in which things are being compared, you can't assume some unintended respect. That's one reason why your assuming a comparison between music and genocide is unjustified and assumes something I didn't mean.


I never mentioned genocide. You did.

I questioned your statement that, "_the very idea of total serialism is as gruesome as the idea of totalitarian government, and ultimately has the same spiritual root._" Apparently, the "respect" in which you are comparing total serialism and totalitarian government is "gruesomeness." I don't see an equivalence on that front (as per the images above), but would like to know how you see they are equivalent in that regard.



Woodduck said:


> The common root? The need for control - of men, of nature, of sexuality, of relationships, of artistic inspiration, etc., etc. - which, at an extreme, is deadly no matter what aspect of human existence we're talking about.


Serialism needs to control my sexuality and relationships? And it's deadly? Really? I truly have no idea what this means.

But to the extent that you think serialism represents a "need for control," how is it intrinsically different from sonata form? Or the rondo? Or the minuet and trio? Or the sarabande?


----------



## Woodduck

Balthazar said:


> I never mentioned genocide. You did.
> 
> I questioned your statement that, "_the very idea of total serialism is as gruesome as the idea of totalitarian government, and ultimately has the same spiritual root._" Apparently, the "respect" in which you are comparing total serialism and totalitarian government is "gruesomeness." I don't see an equivalence on that front (as per the images above), but would like to know how you see they are equivalent in that regard.
> 
> Serialism needs to control my sexuality and relationships? And it's deadly? Really? I truly have no idea what this means.
> 
> But to the extent that you think serialism represents a "need for control," how is it intrinsically different from sonata form? Or the rondo? Or the minuet and trio? Or the sarabande?


I'm sorry, I just don't have the patience for all this quibbling. I can't explain every word I use. If you don't see what I'm saying after the above attempts to expand and clarify, you'll just have to think whatever you wish.


----------



## Balthazar

Woodduck said:


> I'm sorry, I just don't have the patience for all this quibbling. I can't explain every word I use. If you don't see what I'm saying after the above attempts to expand and clarify, you'll just have to think whatever you wish.


If I may quote your good self:

_If anyone feels that any of the views I offer are either an attempt to change their thinking or a personal attack, I can assure them that neither of those things is my intention. But that doesn't mean, Roscoe, that if I think I've got you pinned to the mat I'm going to let you up before the bell rings.

Another round?

:tiphat:_


----------



## Woodduck

Balthazar said:


> If I may quote your good self:
> 
> _If anyone feels that any of the views I offer are either an attempt to change their thinking or a personal attack, I can assure them that neither of those things is my intention. But that doesn't mean, Roscoe, that if I think I've got you pinned to the mat I'm going to let you up before the bell rings.
> 
> Another round?
> 
> :tiphat:_


Should I be flattered that you keep records of my posts? Are you planning to write my biography? I don't see the point of dredging up that one; I don't recall the context. Is the context relevant? In other words...


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## Albert7

Sorry but no matter how many ways I cut the pecan pie, I just don't see serialism as a form of fascism. In fact, serialism is pretty abstract without any political implications as far as I see. 12-tones is mathematical, hardly implicatory.


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## KenOC

Albert7 said:


> Sorry but no matter how many ways I cut the pecan pie, I just don't see serialism as a form of fascism. In fact, serialism is pretty abstract without any political implications as far as I see. 12-tones is mathematical, hardly implicatory.


Serialism, far from being fascist or totalitarian, is actually a powerful blow for democracy and equality. No more will one note oppress another! All will be employed equally. Dominant and tonic, up against the wall!


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## Dim7

KenOC said:


> Serialism, far from being fascist or totalitarian, is actually a powerful blow for democracy and equality. No more will one note oppress another! All will be employed equally. Dominant and tonic, up against the wall!


Just like communism....


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## Mahlerian

Luigi Nono, a devoted communist, humanist, and anti-fascist, would have been shocked to hear that serialism was akin to totalitarianism.

To him, totalitarianism was associated with the suppression of the avant-garde and thus of free artistic expression. Totalitarian societies in the 20th century were, all of them, reactionary in their artistic leanings.


----------



## KenOC

Dim7 said:


> Just like communism....


Actually serialism was developed at a specific point in time, with its own political currents. There is, IMO, a connection.


----------



## Woodduck

Mahlerian said:


> Luigi Nono, *a devoted communist*, humanist, and anti-fascist, *would have been shocked to hear that serialism was akin to totalitarianism.*
> 
> To him, totalitarianism was associated with the suppression of the avant-garde and thus of free artistic expression. Totalitarian societies in the 20th century were, all of them, reactionary in their artistic leanings.


Yes, devoted communists are frequently shocked by totalitarianism. Especially when their own unacknowledged premises land them right in the middle of it.


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## Mahlerian

Woodduck said:


> Yes, devoted communists are frequently shocked by totalitarianism. Especially when their own unacknowledged premises land them right in the middle of it.


Yes, societies calling themselves communist have been totalitarian.

That does not mean that Luigi Nono or any other person calling themselves a communist has totalitarian leanings. You still haven't justified your comparison between the forcible control of people and the controlling, chosen by an individual, of the elements of his or her composition by means of a series.


----------



## Woodduck

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, societies calling themselves communist have been totalitarian.
> 
> That does not mean that Luigi Nono or any other person calling themselves a communist has totalitarian leanings. You still haven't justified your comparison between the forcible control of people and the controlling, chosen by an individual, of the elements of his or her composition by means of a series.


_*My invention of twelve-tone music will guarantee the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years.* _- .Arnold Schoenberg

_Schoenberg was convinced that the age of tonal music was over and that the advent of twelve-tone music was a necessity in music history. In his book The Open Society and its Enemies, Sir Karl Popper explains how the concept of "historic necessity" came into being, and why it is one of the main enemies of an open society. Popper reminds us that it was the 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Hegel, who first claimed that history could be treated like a science. Hegel boasted of having discovered "the iron laws of history" and much to the delight of his employer, the archconservative Prussian king, he declared that everything that happened in history came out of "necessity." Hegel's philosophy not only justified the strict censorship and oppressiveness of the Prussian regime, it also helped to pave the way for the "closed" and totalitarian societies in Europe in the 20th century: Marx followed Hegel, predicting the "necessary" downfall of capitalism; Hitler asserted that "historic necessity" would make him overthrow Stalin, also a product of that same necessity; and "historic necessity" justified the building of the Berlin Wall._ - Erik Schaeper,composer, in "Is Serialism Still Relevant?" http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/Is-Serialism-Still-Relevant-Erik-Schaepers/

An out-of-control Rationalism - not reason, but rationali-_ism_ - spawns psychological, philosophical, political, ecological, and aesthetic atrocities. The attempt to "treat history like a science" has its parallels, in the modern world, in every area of human endeavor. What they all have in common is a denial of nature.

The fundamental goal of total order and total predictability is total control. The ultimate result is destruction: of nature, humanity, society, art.

And music?

_*Any musician who has not experienced - I do not say understood, but truly experienced - the necessity of dodecaphonic music is USELESS. For his whole work is irrelevant to the needs of his epoch.*_ - Pierre Boulez.

Apparently the epoch needed this:






To which the only answer left is 4'33."

We have seen it all happen. The only mystery about it is why anyone should still find it baffling.


----------



## Mahlerian

To begin with, the opening statement of your quote is false, and the whole quote is tendentious.

"Schoenberg was convinced that the age of tonal music was over and that the advent of twelve-tone music was a necessity in music history."

Schoenberg was NOT convinced that the age of tonal music was over, which is clear firstly because he saw his own work as being a continuation of that tradition, and secondly because he believed there was still plenty of great music in the older style left to write (he wrote some more himself, even).

More importantly, the appeal to "historic necessity," regardless of having been shared by both tyrants and Schoenberg, does not make Schoenberg a totalitarian. To justify this, one would have to show that the appeal to historical necessity is *inherently* a totalitarian move. Given that Abraham Lincoln also appealed to historical necessity in his speeches, I doubt that most would accept this premise.



Woodduck said:


> An out-of-control Rationalism - not reason, but rationali-ism - spawns psychological, philosophical, political, ecological, and aesthetic atrocities. The attempt to "treat history like a science" has its parallels, in the modern world, in every area of human endeavor. What they all have in common is a denial of nature.


But this has nothing to do with serialism. On the contrary, Schoenberg believed in an affirmation of nature and the natural properties of sound. He abhorred the idea of letting the mind take over in substitution for inspiration, and thought that music should be expressive and beautiful.



Woodduck said:


> The fundamental goal of total order and total predictability is total control. The ultimate result is destruction: of nature, humanity, society, art.


But serial music is not totally ordered or (especially) totally predictable. Even if it were, you still haven't shown anything to justify this absurdly loaded language of "destruction."

*Any musician who has not experienced - I do not say understood, but truly experienced - the necessity of dodecaphonic music is USELESS. For his whole work is irrelevant to the needs of his epoch.* - Pierre Boulez.

Okay, yes, this is an extreme statement. I'm not disagreeing with that. But you haven't shown by bringing it up that such an attitude arises directly out of serialism. Given what I said above about Schoenberg, it seems that it is not inherent at all.

Furthermore, we are bringing up a quote from Boulez when he was a young man. He has since backed away from many of his most polemical statements, including this one.



Woodduck said:


> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmErwN02fX0
> 
> To which the only answer left is 4'33."


I don't think Boulez's Structures is very successful on a musical level either. But look at the wonderful art that eventually resulted from this developmental stage!

Nono - .....Sofferte onde serene...
Boulez - Anthemes 2
Berio - O King
Babbitt - All Set

These composers all experimented with total serialism, and those may not have been their best works, but it may have helped them along the way to their masterpieces.

Edit: The first line of that article contains another glaring falsehood so blatantly wrong that I can't even imagine how it managed to get published.


----------



## millionrainbows

Serialism has not survived as a "school" of music, or a particular method, because it never was _simply_ those things. It is _a way of thinking_ about musical materials, and it is still constantly evolving and changing.

Is the argument that atonality was "inevitable" and an absolute "necessity" false?

Well, if it is not a "fact," then how can it be "false?" I happen to think that when harmonic progressions become too ambiguous to be analyzed (or heard) in tonal terms, then tonality is breaking down into chromaticism.

Subjectively speaking, chromaticism is tonality at its weakest. There is very little difference in complete chromaticism (free atonality) and serialism or 12-tone, as far as _experiencing _tone centers.


----------



## Grizzled Ghost

Woodduck said:


> The attempt to "treat history like a science" has its parallels, in the modern world, in every area of human endeavor. What they all have in common is a denial of nature.


A minor quibble:
In defense of science, these are not examples of good science; these are examples of power politics masquerading as science. Good science is never so presumptuous.

Otherwise, good post!


----------



## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> An out-of-control Rationalism - not reason, but rationali-_ism_ - spawns psychological, philosophical, political, ecological, and aesthetic atrocities. The attempt to "treat history like a science" has its parallels, in the modern world, in every area of human endeavor. What they all have in common is a denial of nature.
> 
> The fundamental goal of total order and total predictability is total control. The ultimate result is destruction: of nature, humanity, society, art.
> 
> And music?
> 
> _*Any musician who has not experienced - I do not say understood, but truly experienced - the necessity of dodecaphonic music is USELESS. For his whole work is irrelevant to the needs of his epoch.*_ - Pierre Boulez.


You left out religion as an ideology.

Just like Marxism is an ideology, it functions like a religion; it has its own lingo, it has its enemies, and one must be loyal to its cause, or be excommunicated or ostracised.

The same with modernism and serialism; they function like religions. "Total control," or the attempt, using a strict set of moral codes, is not seen as a bad thing in a religion such as Catholicism. The attempt to "treat religion like a science" has parallels in modern relgions: Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science, Scientology, EST, etc.

I think that Woodduck is _unconsciously _of a religious bent, although he may not realize it, and sees Western classical music in that light of that religious ideology, and any sort of new _rationalistic_ approach is not seen as a 'true' religion. But there* can* be new religions, and new departures from old ideologies, religious or political. This holds true of music as well, which has always functioned, as all art, in a pseudo-religious manner.


----------



## Woodduck

Grizzled Ghost said:


> A minor quibble:
> In defense of science, these are not examples of good science; these are examples of power politics masquerading as science. Good science is never so presumptuous.
> 
> Otherwise, good post!


Agreed. Of course I wasn't talking about science, a legitimate discipline, but about what might be called "scientism." The late 19th and early 20th centuries were shaped by the attempt to apply "scientistic" thinking to every area of life. Marxist regimes, Freudianism, eugenics, and "total serialism" in music all exhibit, in varying ways and degrees, the scientistic mindset, which its proponents fancied "scientific" and "progressive" and capable of assuring solutions to the inherent messiness of reality, nature and freedom.


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## Guest

First time checking this thread in a while. I see that, after Woodduck claimed that "atonality" was an entirely neutral term, he's got a rather different opinion of atonality's best friend "serialism".


----------



## clavichorder

Folks, may I pretend to be a mod for a minute and tell you that seeing this thread become what it has makes me a little bit sad. There probably isn't anyway I can diffuse the burgeoning debate here, but this is the music theory forum. Why must the typical controversies flare up here too? We're supposed to be more neutral and cool about things in this 'intellectual' pocket of our forum.


----------



## Woodduck

Mahlerian said:


> To begin with, the opening statement of your quote is false, and the whole quote is tendentious.
> 
> "Schoenberg was convinced that the age of tonal music was over and that the advent of twelve-tone music was a necessity in music history."
> 
> Schoenberg was NOT convinced that the age of tonal music was over, which is clear firstly because he saw his own work as being a continuation of that tradition, and secondly because he believed there was still plenty of great music in the older style left to write (he wrote some more himself, even).
> 
> More importantly, the appeal to "historic necessity," regardless of having been shared by both tyrants and Schoenberg, does not make Schoenberg a totalitarian. To justify this, one would have to show that the appeal to historical necessity is *inherently* a totalitarian move. Given that Abraham Lincoln also appealed to historical necessity in his speeches, I doubt that most would accept this premise.
> 
> But this has nothing to do with serialism. On the contrary, Schoenberg believed in an affirmation of nature and the natural properties of sound. He abhorred the idea of letting the mind take over in substitution for inspiration, and thought that music should be expressive and beautiful.
> 
> But serial music is not totally ordered or (especially) totally predictable. Even if it were, you still haven't shown anything to justify this absurdly loaded language of "destruction."
> 
> *Any musician who has not experienced - I do not say understood, but truly experienced - the necessity of dodecaphonic music is USELESS. For his whole work is irrelevant to the needs of his epoch.* - Pierre Boulez.
> 
> Okay, yes, this is an extreme statement. I'm not disagreeing with that. But you haven't shown by bringing it up that such an attitude arises directly out of serialism. Given what I said above about Schoenberg, it seems that it is not inherent at all.
> 
> Furthermore, we are bringing up a quote from Boulez when he was a young man. He has since backed away from many of his most polemical statements, including this one.
> 
> I don't think Boulez's Structures is very successful on a musical level either. But look at the wonderful art that eventually resulted from this developmental stage!
> 
> Nono - .....Sofferte onde serene...
> Boulez - Anthemes 2
> Berio - O King
> Babbitt - All Set
> 
> These composers all experimented with total serialism, and those may not have been their best works, but it may have helped them along the way to their masterpieces.
> 
> Edit: The first line of that article contains another glaring falsehood so blatantly wrong that I can't even imagine how it managed to get published.


*My invention of twelve-tone music will guarantee the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years. - .Arnold Schoenberg*

Mahlerian:
Schoenberg was NOT convinced that the age of tonal music was over, which is clear firstly because he saw his own work as being a continuation of that tradition, and secondly because he believed there was still plenty of great music in the older style left to write (he wrote some more himself, even).

There is no way to interpret Schoenberg's statement of belief as anything less than an expression of personal and ideological hubris. To the extent that he claimed that his new method was a logical continuation of Western musical history, he did not contradict, but rather confirmed, his belief in the historical necessity and world-changing importance of his work. The obvious fact that it was still possible to write traditionally tonal music does not contradict in the slightest the idea that, fundamentally, the _age_ of tonal music was at an end and that the advent of twelve-tone music was the great and necessary event of the moment. Schaepers' analysis is, as far as I can determine, historically accurate.

More importantly, the appeal to "historic necessity," regardless of having been shared by both tyrants and Schoenberg, does not make Schoenberg a totalitarian. To justify this, one would have to show that the appeal to historical necessity is inherently a totalitarian move.

No one has called Schoenberg "a totalitarian" in the political sense, if that's what you mean by the word. I'm not drawing simplistic connections between any individual's art and his politics. And I haven't been talking primarily about Schoenberg. I thought it useful to point to his important position as the originator of serialism and to show the presence in his thinking of "totalism" - the desire for an all-embracing system by which reality can be controlled and rationalized as "historical necessity" - along with the aspiration to power and preeminence which I consider typical of the totalist mindset. It's true that Schoenberg's own music, while varied, is less "scientific" - or, as I like to say _scientistic_ - than that of some of his successors, who were far more totalist in their approach. Hence the reference to Boulez, whose Messianic posturing reached a pitch of arrogance and stridency as repellant as that of any petty dictator, as well as extremely - and not coincidentally - similar in verbal content. The line of descent from Schoenberg's pretentious and power-intoxicated rhetoric to that of Boulez, as serialism became increasingly totalist in concept and then became literally _totalitarian_ in its virtual stranglehold on the academic politics of "serious" music in the mid-20th century, is unmistakable.

Sid James has often pointed out the disinclination of people on this forum to look at the history of music, its ideologies and power structures. I'm suggesting that not only is music rife with such, but that the peculiar forms these take should be viewed with reference to the dominant ideologies of their times. Art does not develop, and its forms do not evolve, in a cultural vacuum. The men who claimed to be freeing music and who proclaimed as necessary and inevitable a pseudo-scientific system which tried to remake the syntax of Western music in a way that sought, at its extreme, to embrace and control its every element, were true representatives of their age. It was an age when men who claimed to be freeing humanity called upon the dogmas of historical necessity and pseudo-science in order to subject their nations to economic and political systems which could only be enforced by totalitarian control.

The political totalitarians delivered humanity into horrors of mass oppression on a scale never before seen. The musical totalitarians piled up not bodies but staff paper, filled with dense, calculated, arid, and essentially identical concatenations of notes which only a handful of people can make sense of intellectually and which only a handful have any interest in listening to - mostly, I would venture, the same handful. That handful are certainly disproportionately represented on forums such as this.


----------



## KenOC

Woodduck said:


> *My invention of twelve-tone music will guarantee the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years. - .Arnold Schoenberg*


Arnold must be forgiven his youthful enthusiasms. From Wiki: In August 1914, while denouncing the music of Bizet, Stravinsky and Ravel, he wrote: _"Now comes the reckoning! Now we will throw these mediocre kitschmongers into slavery, and teach them to venerate the German spirit and to worship the German God."_


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## Mahlerian

Woodduck said:


> The political totalitarians delivered humanity into horrors of mass oppression on a scale never before seen. The musical totalitarians piled up not bodies but staff paper, filled with dense, calculated, arid, and essentially identical concatenations of notes which only a handful of people can make sense of intellectually and which only a handful have any interest in listening to - mostly, I would venture, the same handful. That handful are certainly disproportionately represented on forums such as this.


This analogy sickens me. There is nothing even remotely comparable between these two things and I do not see any reason to argue further with you.


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## Richannes Wrahms

Yay, Godwin's law. The End.


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## Woodduck

KenOC said:


> *Arnold must be forgiven his youthful enthusiasms.* From Wiki: In August 1914, while denouncing the music of Bizet, Stravinsky and Ravel, he wrote: _"Now comes the reckoning! Now we will throw these mediocre kitschmongers into slavery, and teach them to venerate the German spirit and to worship the German God."_


Young Arnold was then 40 years old.


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## KenOC

Woodduck said:


> Young Arnold was then 40 years old.


Well, um, yes. Regardless, he may have rethought his enthusiasm for the "German God" before too many years passed.


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## KenOC

On another forum we conducted a long series of games to determine the ten best works, mostly by decade, from the last thousand years. The German and German-style music pretty much ruled from 1700 through the 19th century. But from Mahler's death and about the time of Schoenberg's "for the next 100 years" announcement, Germans and Austrians pretty much disappear from the listings.

Guess whatever Schoenberg planned didn't work out too well. See the blow-by-blow here.

https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/ama/best-works-by-decade


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> On another forum we conducted a long series of games to determine the ten best works, mostly by decade, from the last thousand years. The German and German-style music pretty much ruled from 1700 through the 19th century. But from Mahler's death and about the time of Schoenberg's "for the next 100 years" announcement, Germans and Austrians pretty much disappear from the listings.
> 
> Guess whatever Schoenberg planned didn't work out too well. See the blow-by-blow here.
> 
> https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/ama/best-works-by-decade


Meh. Pretty odd list. Not a single Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Stockhausen, Zimmermann, etc? Is this Woodduck's private forum? :lol:


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## KenOC

Don't know if Herr Duck is over there...certainly not by his handle here. The members there are generally quite sound, with cleanly boiled cravats and well-starched collars.


----------



## arpeggio

clavichorder said:


> Folks, may I pretend to be a mod for a minute and tell you that seeing this thread become what it has makes me a little bit sad. There probably isn't anyway I can diffuse the burgeoning debate here, but this is the music theory forum. Why must the typical controversies flare up here too? We're supposed to be more neutral and cool about things in this 'intellectual' pocket of our forum.


As long as we have members who believe that atonality killed classical music and that there are people who do not,

*OR*​
Tonal music is natural and atonal is not

*OR*​
whatever,

we are going to have fruitless arguments like this.

These debates have been going of almost a century and they are never going to stop.


----------



## EDaddy

Realizing I am unfashionably late to this most fun-spirited, hoppin' party and, at the risk of royally pissing some people off, I have been moved by the Spirit of Mozart to weigh in on this most weighty subject matter.

Virtually anytime throughout history, when someone like an Arnold Schoenberg comes along and says something like, "Hey everyone! Check it out: I've got this new, intellectually-groovy and revolutionary thing called twelve-tone music that will guarantee the supremacy of [fill in the blank] for the next hundred years! Wu-hahahahaha!!!"...well, it's bound to cause some waves and controversy. But time has a way of illuminating the true revolutionaries from the posers. 12-tone Schoenberg IMO is a poser. His storm-the-castle, coups d'état attitude about guaranteeing "the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years" by concocting a mere math exercise is absolute balderdash and downright laughable; totally ego-maniacal and utterly unsubstantiated.

Music ia something far beyond the mere mathematical relationships of notes, theory or some novel idea of "let's throw 12 notes up in the air, pick them all up and use them all non-preferentially and then call it music" nonsense. I'm sorry. Music pre-Schoenberg _had_ and, in spite of this 12-tone hiccup, continues to this this day to _have_ that undefinable, non-mathematical thing called _soul_. Or spirit. Or Divine Inspiration. What have you. Soul is that magic little leprechaun that lives outside the realm of math and science that, unlike math and science, can literally make a person laugh, or cry, or want to dance. You name it. But tell me (and be completely honest with yourselves), does Schoenberg's 12-tone music ever bring you to tears? Or make you want to dance with shear, uncontrolled joy? I suppose it can make a person laugh because, let's face it, it's pretty "funny"... but does it ever really invoke anything deep or cathartic as far as a human emotional response?

Those things called tones and tonal relationships (intervals) are only building blocks for composers/ musicians to work with. And there is a very time-tested language loosely referred to as western musical theory. It's a starting point. It's time-tested. It has it's own "grammar" and "syntax". It's a toolbox full of tools for those who know how to use them. Then there is this mystical, ethereal component that is nameless and undefinable. Some might call it spirit... or soul... or even Divine Inspiration. It exists _outside_ of the cerebral, mathematical elements. It takes this skeletal alphabet of music and sets it ablaze. I like to think of theory as the "from the neck up" of music; admittedly an important part; but only the brain of of the beast. And like a head cannot exist without a body beneath it, music _cannot _exist without a body of its own, the part that exists "from the neck down". Music, like a human being or virtually anything in nature for that matter, is a holistic phenomenon: You can't have the head without a body to put it on. Well, I suppose you can, but then it's not music. It is something else.

Schoenberg's music is music "from the neck up". Down below, it lacks a soul. It lacks a body. Sure, it's an interesting, intellectual exercise in "note math" or to quote Wikipedia, a "technique... of ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are sounded as often as one another in a piece of music while preventing the emphasis of any one note." And hey, that's _GREAT!_ But music isn't Vector Analysis. Vector Analysis is what an MIT grad does whilst sitting on the toilet dropping a deuce (My dad actually _was_ an MIT grad who, I kid you not, used to work out vector analysis problems while taking his morning glory!) But such heady, fun, brain ************ doesn't just make it music. And why should it? Why should music, an art form that is certainly math _derrived_ but requiring something that is so much more empirically undefinable and untouchable by science, be reduced to such a novel exercise or "from the neck up" math formula like the 12-tone row? Come guys. Call it something else. Call it... 12-tone anarchy, or punk-notematics, or anti-music. But _please_, for the love of God and Mozart and Beethoven and all those beautiful geniuses who must be squirming in their collective graves, _don't call it music! _

Sorry to bust up the party! As you were.


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## arpeggio

^^^

The problem is that nothing in your post is new or original.

There is one thing that I noticed is inaccurate. I have read in several sources that Schoenberg never meant for atonal music to replace tonal. There are two famous composers that I am familiar with that approached Schoenberg for music lessons. Schoenberg refused because he thought they were already successful composers in their respective genres.

One was Gershwin. Gershwin admired Schoenberg. They were neighbors in Hollywood and very good friends. 

The other was the 20th century neoromantic David Diamond.

You are not raining on my parade. Just because Gershwin admired Schoenberg does it mean you have to. Everyone has the right to hate Schoenberg to their hearts content.


----------



## KenOC

arpeggio said:


> The problem is that nothing in your post is new or original.


Must it be "new" or "original" to be accurate?


----------



## EDaddy

arpeggio said:


> ^^^
> 
> The problem is that nothing in your post is new or original.
> 
> There is one thing that I noticed is inaccurate. I have read in several sources that Schoenberg never meant for atonal music to replace tonal. There are two famous composers that I am familiar with that approached Schoenberg for music lessons. Schoenberg refused because he thought they were already successful composers in their respective genres.
> 
> One was Gershwin. Gershwin admired Schoenberg. They were neighbors in Hollywood and very good friends.
> 
> The other was the 20th century neoromantic David Diamond.
> 
> You are not raining on my parade. Just because Gershwin admired Schoenberg does it mean you have to. Everyone has the right to hate Schoenberg to their hearts content.


 Hmmm. I thought it was at least _a little_ new and original.


----------



## Woodduck

EDaddy said:


> Hmmm. I thought it was at least _a little_ new and original.


It wouldn't gain you any points if it _were_.


----------



## Dim7

The problem with EDaddy's post is not that it is not "original", but that he denies that Schoenberg's 12-tone music is music for arbitrary and subjective reasons (it doesn't have "soul") and demands others to do so as well.


----------



## EDaddy

Dim7 said:


> The problem with EDaddy's post is not that it is not "original", but that he rejects Schoenberg's 12-tone music as music for arbitrary and subjective reasons (it doesn't have "soul") and demands others to do so as well.


Where did I ever _"demand"_ others to reject Schoenberg's music, Dim? It's just my opinion that there isn't much, if anything, musical about the 12-tone approach. Which belies the fact that you and I (and others of the serialist camp, for lack of a better word) simply have different ideas and/or terms for what we consider to be "musical". Luckily, as someone else pointed out earlier, there is no right or wrong here so it frees us up to share our different perspectives and, hopefully, have a little fun in the process. But, in all fairness, I certainly didn't _demand_ anything. I just argued my case and stated my opinions as clearly and honestly as I could... and tried to throw in some tongue and cheek humor here and there to soften up this seemingly humorless discussion up a bit.

Ok, so maybe I stepped out-of-bounds a bit at my appeal to call it something else but, hey... it's certainly no more radical of an idea than that of using all twelve notes equally... _just because._


----------



## Guest

Let's ignore the invective, and look at the substance.



EDaddy said:


> Virtually anytime throughout history, when someone like an Arnold Schoenberg comes along


Have you any more examples of this phenomenon?



EDaddy said:


> Music ia something far beyond the mere mathematical relationships of notes, theory or some novel idea of "let's throw 12 notes up in the air, pick them all up and use them all non-preferentially and then call it music" nonsense. I'm sorry. Music pre-Schoenberg _had_ and, in spite of this 12-tone hiccup, continues to this this day to _have_ that undefinable, non-mathematical thing called _soul_. Or spirit. Or Divine Inspiration.


Curious that later, you refer to music as being 'maths derived' (I'll come back to that) yet you reject a composer who, according to your analysis, took a mathematical approach to composition. You may not like the results of the approach, but it's no less valid than the CPT approach of his predecessors.

As for the idea that music has 'soul', this an entirely subjective experience. We could listen to the same pieces of CPT music and one of us be stirred and the other left unmoved.



EDaddy said:


> And there is a very time-tested language loosely referred to as western musical theory. It's a starting point. It's time-tested. It has it's own "grammar" and "syntax". It's a toolbox full of tools for those who know how to use them.


It's certainly true that the evolution of "western classical music" yielded lots of composers who made use of the toolbox, grammar and syntax in similar ways - but there were others who made changes, tried the hitherto blasphemous, bent and twisted the tools - even before the 18th century was done! It could have evolved differently, but for the stranglehold of the powerful, especially the churches, and once their power began to diminish, and deference to them declined, so composers took courage and explored composition in other ways.

There was nothing absolute or inevitable about any of this evolution. "Music" - unless you are to constrain your definition as to render the abstract idea of it meaningless - could have turned out in so many different ways - and in fact, it did. Just not in ways that everyone likes.



EDaddy said:


> Why should music, an art form that is certainly math _derrived_ but requiring something that is so much more empirically undefinable and untouchable by science, be reduced to such a novel exercise or "from the neck up" math formula like the 12-tone row? C


Music isn't maths 'derived'. Music is nothing more than "these sounds in this order". You can make a mathematical analysis of Mozart or Merzbow if you want, or use maths to construct if you want, but it is no more 'maths derived' than laughter.


----------



## Lord Lance

MacLeod said:


> Let's ignore the invective, and look at the substance.
> 
> Have you any more examples of this phenomenon?
> 
> Curious that later, you refer to music as being 'maths derived' (I'll come back to that) yet you reject a composer who, according to your analysis, took a mathematical approach to composition. You may not like the results of the approach, but it's no less valid than the CPT approach of his predecessors.
> 
> As for the idea that music has 'soul', this an entirely subjective experience. We could listen to the same pieces of CPT music and one of us be stirred and the other left unmoved.
> 
> It's certainly true that the evolution of "western classical music" yielded lots of composers who made use of the toolbox, grammar and syntax in similar ways - but there were others who made changes, tried the hitherto blasphemous, bent and twisted the tools - even before the 18th century was done! It could have evolved differently, but for the stranglehold of the powerful, especially the churches, and once their power began to diminish, and deference to them declined, so composers took courage and explored composition in other ways.
> 
> There was nothing absolute or inevitable about any of this evolution. "Music" - unless you are to constrain your definition as to render the abstract idea of it meaningless - could have turned out in so many different ways - and in fact, it did. Just not in ways that everyone likes.
> 
> Music isn't maths 'derived'. Music is nothing more than "these sounds in this order". You can make a mathematical analysis of Mozart or Merzbow if you want, or use maths to construct if you want, but it is no more 'maths derived' than laughter.


Bravo! Just take the leg one by one and see the chair made from glass shatter from its own weight.


----------



## arpeggio

It does not bother me if people hate Schoenberg. People have a right to hate Schoenberg.

There are many great musicians who admire and perform Schoenberg. For example, Hillary Hahn. In 2008 she released a fantastic performance of the _Violin Concerto_. I can not except the observations of someone who does not have the experiences of Ms. Hahn automatically trump her assessment of Schoenberg.


----------



## Guest

Dim7 said:


> music for arbitrary and subjective reasons


What are these arbitrary (not planned or chosen for a particular reason, not based on reason or evidence*) and subjective (based on feelings or opinions rather than facts*) reasons?

Are they unique to Schoenberg? Or serialism?

*Merriam-Webster.


----------



## Dim7

EDaddy said:


> Where did I ever _"demand"_ others to reject Schoenberg's music, Dim?


By "reject as music" I meant "deny that it is music". I reworded the post quickly after I posted it.



EDaddy said:


> Ok, so maybe I stepped out-of-bounds a bit at my appeal to call it something else but, hey... it's certainly no more radical of an idea than that of using all twelve notes equally... _just because._


That's what I was referring to. Can't get much clearer than this: "But please, for the love of God and Mozart and Beethoven and all those beautiful geniuses who must be squirming in their collective graves, don't call it music!" If you are willing to take that back I have nothing to argue with you I guess...


----------



## Dim7

dogen said:


> What are these arbitrary (not planned or chosen for a particular reason, not based on reason or evidence*) and subjective (based on feelings or opinions rather than facts*) reasons?
> 
> Are they unique to Schoenberg? Or serialism?
> 
> *Merriam-Webster.


Eh, it's in the post you're quoting?



Dim7 said:


> The problem with EDaddy's post is not that it is not "original", but that he denies that Schoenberg's 12-tone music is music for arbitrary and subjective reasons (*it doesn't have "soul"*) and demands others to do so as well.


----------



## Guest

Dim7 said:


> Eh, it's in the post you're quoting?


Eh, "it doesn't have "soul" " doesn't seem to constitute an explanation of how the composing lacks planning, reasoning, feelings or opinions. To me, at least.


----------



## Dim7

It is an arbitrary and subjective reason for claiming that something isn't music.


----------



## Guest

Dim7 said:


> It is an arbitrary and subjective reason for claiming that something isn't music.


I appear to have got entirely the wrong end of the stick. Apologia.


----------



## Mahlerian

EDaddy said:


> But tell me (and be completely honest with yourselves), does Schoenberg's 12-tone music ever bring you to tears?


Most music doesn't, from any era or style.



EDaddy said:


> Or make you want to dance with sheer, uncontrolled joy?


Absolutely.



EDaddy said:


> does it ever really invoke anything deep or cathartic as far as a human emotional response?


Unquestionably.

To answer a few more unasked questions...

Yes, I love the melodies in his 12-tone music (please, don't go equating them with rows).

Yes, the harmonies he uses in his 12-tone music make me shiver with delight at their utter rightness and yet unexpectedness.


----------



## Dim7

Mahlerian said:


> EDaddy said:
> 
> 
> 
> Or make you want to dance with sheer, uncontrolled joy?
> 
> 
> 
> Absolutely.
Click to expand...

We demand a youtube video......


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/ama/best-works-by-decade


Another glance at this list because it genuinely intrigued me.

Not a single Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Varese, Xenakis, Stockhausen, Nono, Berio, Maderna, Grisey, Murail, Kurtag, Zimmermann, Ferneyhough, Ferrari, and only one very late Boulez.

At the same time, we have SIX Schnittke, SEVEN Lutoslawski, SEVEN Ligeti, and TWELVE Shostakovich, and 60% of the best 21st century works come from three prominent female composers.

Please keep in mind that I say this without the slightest degree of passive aggression because I love all of these composers, but it seems a very strange list to put any stock in.


----------



## EDaddy

Mahlerian, MacLeod, Dim7, Lance...

It is clear from your responses that this a lost cause. We come from two different worlds that speak two different languages. Your comment, McLeod, that "Music is nothing more than these sounds in this order" says it all. 

Enjoy your sounds in order, fellas. :tiphat:


----------



## Mahlerian

EDaddy said:


> Mahlerian, MacLeod, Dim7, Lance...
> 
> It is clear from your responses that this a lost cause. We come from two different worlds that speak two different languages. Your comment, McLeod, that "Music is nothing more than these sounds in this order" says it all.
> 
> Enjoy your sounds in order, fellas. :tiphat:


What do you think is different about our enjoyment?

I love this music because of how it sounds. I am affected emotionally by this music because of the way it sounds.

I assure you, anyone who enjoys Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler can love Schoenberg. His merits are similar to those of the others, and his music can be enjoyed in the same way.


----------



## Poppy Popsicle

New to this forum, just zipping through. No categories to vote for in the options given above, so I'll just say that serialism AFAIUI is a move (a shift in perception?) as interesting as any other. It's a label, sometimers useful, soöetimes restrictive. A useful term for exams perhaps.


----------



## EDaddy

Mahlerian said:


> What do you think is different about our enjoyment?
> 
> I love this music because of how it sounds. I am affected emotionally by this music because of the way it sounds.
> 
> I assure you, anyone who enjoys Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler can love Schoenberg. His merits are similar to those of the others, and his music can be enjoyed in the same way.


I like some of Schoenberg's music. Just don't care for his 12-tone works. But I am certainly glad you, and others, do. The beauty of it all is, there is something for everyone. And, I must confess, I was having a bit of fun hitting the Serialism-hive with a baseball bat. I knew what I was getting into. I knew I'd get swarmed and the stingers would come out.

Guess it's the mischievous prankster in me. :devil:


----------



## Guest

EDaddy said:


> Mahlerian, MacLeod, Dim7, Lance...
> 
> It is clear from your responses that this a lost cause. We come from two different worlds that speak two different languages. Your comment, McLeod, that "Music is nothing more than these sounds in this order" says it all.
> 
> Enjoy your sounds in order, fellas. :tiphat:


A lost cause indeed... Enjoy those fingers in your ears. :tiphat:


----------



## Guest

EDaddy said:


> I like some of Schoenberg's music. Just don't care for his 12-tone works. But I am certainly glad you, and others, do. The beauty of it all is, there is something for everyone. And, I must confess, I was having a bit of fun hitting the Serialism-hive with a baseball bat. I knew what I was getting into. I knew I'd get swarmed and the stingers would come out.
> 
> Guess it's the mischievous prankster in me. :devil:


So you're openly admitting to being _"someone who intentionally posts derogatory or inflammatory messages with the deliberate intent to bait users into responding, ranging from subtle jibes to outright personal attacks"_? That's troubling indeed.


----------



## EDaddy

nathanb said:


> So you're openly admitting to being _"someone who intentionally posts derogatory or inflammatory messages with the deliberate intent to bait users into responding, ranging from subtle jibes to outright personal attacks"_? That's troubling indeed.


No, I meant _everything_ I said. But I know how serious and humorless you serialists get on all this serial stuff. Just shakin' the tree a bit _ while_ sharing my OPINION, of which I have a right to do.

Over & out.


----------



## Mahlerian

EDaddy said:


> I like some of Schoenberg's music. Just don't care for his 12-tone works. But I am certainly glad you, and others, do. The beauty of it all is, there is something for everyone. And, I must confess, I was having a bit of fun hitting the Serialism-hive with a baseball bat. I knew what I was getting into. I knew I'd get swarmed and the stingers would come out.
> 
> Guess it's the mischievous prankster in me. :devil:


Forgive me if I don't believe you when you say you can tell the difference between a serial piece and a non-serial one. Most people cannot. Most trained musicians cannot. Serialism is distinguished in part by acting behind the scenes as it were and being a process that is mostly unnoticeable by ear (this has happened elsewhere throughout music history as well, like isorhythm).

But I take offense at your disregard for the experience of others. What basis do you have for saying we inhabit different worlds? I grew up with the same music as everyone else. I still listen to much of the same music as everyone else. When I hear others speak of their enjoyment of that music, I find that I often understand their experiences as if they were my own.



EDaddy said:


> No, I meant _everything_ I said. But I know how serious and humorless you serialists get on all this serial stuff. Just shakin' the tree a bit _ while_ sharing my OPINION, of which I have a right to do.
> 
> Over & out.


You started this discussion with the false accusations that have always hounded this music.

- That it is entirely intellectually conceived, without musical inspiration.
- That it is somehow more mathematical in nature than other music.
- That it is somehow a departure from previous music in a way different from other departures in style in other eras.

All of these things are entirely, *100%* false. You can't just go spouting off falsehoods and then criticize people for taking offense.


----------



## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, I love the melodies in his 12-tone music (please, don't go equating them with rows).


Don't worry, Mahlerian, we won't confuse the rows with the melodies. The _melodies_ are the ones with the two-octave leaps! Ba-da-bing! (crash!):lol:


----------



## Guest

EDaddy said:


> I like some of Schoenberg's music. Just don't care for his 12-tone works. But I am certainly glad you, and others, do. The beauty of it all is, there is something for everyone. And, I must confess, I was having a bit of fun hitting the Serialism-hive with a baseball bat. I knew what I was getting into. I knew I'd get swarmed and the stingers would come out.
> 
> Guess it's the mischievous prankster in me. :devil:


So not only do you make false assumptions about those who've posted replies to you (implications of hive mentality) but you're not even interested in having a discussion or defending your earlier assertions. Why waste all our time?


----------



## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Agreed. Of course I wasn't talking about science, a legitimate discipline, but about what might be called "scientism." The late 19th and early 20th centuries were shaped by the attempt to apply "scientistic" thinking to every area of life. Marxist regimes, Freudianism, eugenics, and "total serialism" in music all exhibit, in varying ways and degrees, the scientistic mindset, which its proponents fancied "scientific" and "progressive" and capable of assuring solutions to the inherent messiness of reality, nature and freedom.


I see it as secular institutions and movements religions replacing religion. Art should not have to pretend to be a 'legitimate discipline,' since it has always been tied to religion.

Comparing 'scientism' to science is missing the point; it's not that Marxists and Freudians are "wanna-be" scientists, but that theirs arer 'new religions' which attempt to solve "the messiness of reality, nature and freedom," which are very socially-oriented concerns, and out of the purview of science.


----------



## KenOC

nathanb said:


> ...Not a single Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Varese, Xenakis, Stockhausen, Nono, Berio, Maderna, Grisey, Murail, Kurtag, Zimmermann, Ferneyhough, Ferrari, and only one very late Boulez.
> 
> At the same time, we have SIX Schnittke, SEVEN Lutoslawski, SEVEN Ligeti, and TWELVE Shostakovich, and 60% of the best 21st century works come from three prominent female composers.
> 
> Please keep in mind that I say this without the slightest degree of passive aggression because I love all of these composers, but it seems a very strange list to put any stock in.


And? Not sure I take your point. The list reflects the votes of the people participating in these games, whose aggregate tastes may well differ from yours.


----------



## arpeggio

deleted duplicate post


----------



## Woodduck

Mahlerian said:


> But I take offense at your disregard for the experience of others. What basis do you have for saying we inhabit different worlds? I grew up with the same music as everyone else. I still listen to much of the same music as everyone else. When I hear others speak of their enjoyment of that music, I find that I often understand their experiences as if they were my own.
> 
> You started this discussion with the false accusations that have always hounded this music.
> 
> - That it is entirely intellectually conceived, without musical inspiration.
> - That it is somehow more mathematical in nature than other music.
> - That it is somehow a departure from previous music in a way different from other departures in style in other eras.
> 
> All of these things are entirely, *100%* false. You can't just go spouting off falsehoods and then criticize people for taking offense.


I don't want to fight the now-embattled EDaddy's battles for him, but two things here strike me as wrong.

"Inhabiting different worlds" is only a figure of speech. It's going to mean different things to different people. If certain people said to me "we inhabit different worlds," I might very well think to myself "and thank God for that!"

People are very different. There is simply no reason to believe that anyone can enjoy any music. The evidence seems to point more to the opposite conclusion.

Of the three "false accusations" you cite as being "100%" wrong - and assuming that we're talking about atonal serialism - I think you are completely right about the first one, but wrong about the second and third. And I'm sure it would not be difficult to find plenty of arguments on both sides of these questions. To say that EDaddy has gone "spouting off falsehoods" is really harsh and unfair.

I've pointed up the dogmatic and authoritarian mentality which I see embodied in the concept of "total serialism" and in the grandiose pronouncements about serialism from Schoenberg himself on down. I hardly think that continuing denials that the controversy on these subjects has legitimacy improves the whole phenomenon's image.


----------



## arpeggio

nathanb said:


> Another glance at this list because it genuinely intrigued me.
> 
> Not a single Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Varese, Xenakis, Stockhausen, Nono, Berio, Maderna, Grisey, Murail, Kurtag, Zimmermann, Ferneyhough, Ferrari, and only one very late Boulez.
> 
> At the same time, we have SIX Schnittke, SEVEN Lutoslawski, SEVEN Ligeti, and TWELVE Shostakovich, and 60% of the best 21st century works come from three prominent female composers.
> 
> Please keep in mind that I say this without the slightest degree of passive aggression because I love all of these composers, but it seems a very strange list to put any stock in.


I remember these games. They were in another forum I used to participate in. I participated in some of the games. The way it worked was that the members would nominated thirty works and then there would be a vote off.

I went back there and found the nominated works for 1900-1929:

Bartok: Miraculous Mandarin (1924)
Bartok: Piano Concerto No. 1 (1926)
Bartok: String Quartet #3 (1926)
Bartok: String Quartet #4 (1927)
Berg: Wozzeck (1922)

Enescu: Violin Sonata #3 (1926)
Gershwin: Piano Concerto in F (1925)
Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (1924)
Janácek: Missa Glagolitica (1926) 
Janacek: Sinfonietta (1926)

Milhaud : La Création Du Monde (1922-23)
Nielsen: Symphony #5 (1922)
Prokofiev: Piano Concerto #3 (1921)
Puccini: Turandot (1926)
Ravel: Bolero (1928)

Ravel: La Valse (1920)
Respighi: Pines of Rome (1924)
Schoenberg: Quartet #3, Op.30 (1920/23)
Sibelius: Symphony #6 in D minor, Op. 104 (1923) 
Sibelius: Symphony #7 in C, Op. 105 (1924) - march

Sibelius: Tapiola, Op. 112 (1926)
Shostakovich: Symphony #1, Op. 10 (1925)
Stravinsky: Les Noces (1923) - PFLA
Stravinsky: Pulcinella (1920)
Szymanowski: Stabat Mater (1926)

Vaughan Williams: Lark Ascending (1914/1920)
Vaughan Williams: Mass in G (1921)
Vaughan Williams: Symphony #3 ("Pastoral"; 1922)
Varèse: Amériques (1918-1921)
Zemlinsky: Lyric Symphony Op. 18 (1923)

I was frustrated by the game for the above works because I was familiar with every one of them. I thought they were all outstanding and I could not pick just ten of them 

If I recall correctly some of the members complained that these games were popularity contests because of some glaring omissions. I know I was irritated because nothing by Vivaldi or Corelli made any of the lists. Another glaring omission was Weber.


----------



## mmsbls

EDaddy said:


> It is clear from your responses that this a lost cause. We come from two different worlds that speak two different languages.





Mahlerian said:


> What basis do you have for saying we inhabit different worlds? I grew up with the same music as everyone else. I still listen to much of the same music as everyone else. When I hear others speak of their enjoyment of that music, I find that I often understand their experiences as if they were my own.


The term, "different worlds", in the two quotes above has different meanings, and I believe both statements make complete sense.

I believe EDaddy's different worlds refers to different specific musical experiences; whereas, Marlerian's world is the one world of music that all of us can experience. I think the metaphor of language, while imperfect, is useful to describe people's responses to varying musical genres.

When I first came to TC, I did not understand the language of modern music, and EDaddy presumably does not now. The music perhaps sounds to him and sounded to me like a mess of unordered sounds without beauty or sense. Those who have come to like modern music "hear" the music differently. Their brains understand the language and respond to the sounds quite differently. Their past experiences allow them to hear, in some sense, a completely different work. For example, as one hears more dissonance and greater dissonance, one tends to find it less abrasive. It is in this sense that EDaddy and Mahlerian come from different worlds and speak different languages.

But we're all human and (almost) all of us can find beauty in music. Listening to new music can open up our ears and brains to new musical sounds allowing us to appreciate what we previously did not. That's not to say that anyone can like everything, but most people can significantly increase the amount and kinds of music that they appreciate. We can understand that others are appreciating music in the same manner that we do, but maybe it's different music. In this sense we come from the same world.


----------



## KenOC

arpeggio said:


> I went back there and found the nominated works for 1900-1929: ... I know I was irritated because nothing by Vivaldi or Corelli made any of the lists. Another glaring omission was Weber.


Actually 1920-1929. If your favorite works weren't nominated, then either they weren't proposed or they didn't get seconds. If they were nominated but didn't make the top ten, then they failed to garner sufficient votes.


----------



## TresPicos

I've heard serialism described as a cul-de-sac in the evolution of modern classical music. I guess I understand why someone would say that, although I don't agree. But even if serialism would have been something that composers tried for a while before they ultimately realized that they had just wasted time and effort on something utterly useless, I would still call it a move forward. In my opinion, everything new in the creative arts would almost by definition be a move forward.


----------



## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> *My invention of twelve-tone music will guarantee the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years. - .Arnold Schoenberg*
> 
> There is no way to interpret Schoenberg's statement of belief as anything less than an expression of personal and ideological hubris. To the extent that he claimed that his new method was a logical continuation of Western musical history, he did not contradict, but rather confirmed, his belief in the historical necessity and world-changing importance of his work. The obvious fact that it was still possible to write traditionally tonal music does not contradict in the slightest the idea that, fundamentally, the _age_ of tonal music was at an end and that the advent of twelve-tone music was the great and necessary event of the moment. Schaepers' analysis is, as far as I can determine, historically accurate.
> 
> No one has called Schoenberg "a totalitarian" in the political sense, if that's what you mean by the word. I'm not drawing simplistic connections between any individual's art and his politics. And I haven't been talking primarily about Schoenberg. I thought it useful to point to his important position as the originator of serialism and to show the presence in his thinking of "totalism" - the desire for an all-embracing system by which reality can be controlled and rationalized as "historical necessity" - along with the aspiration to power and preeminence which I consider typical of the totalist mindset. It's true that Schoenberg's own music, while varied, is less "scientific" - or, as I like to say _scientistic_ - than that of some of his successors, who were far more totalist in their approach. Hence the reference to Boulez, whose Messianic posturing reached a pitch of arrogance and stridency as repellant as that of any petty dictator, as well as extremely - and not coincidentally - similar in verbal content. The line of descent from Schoenberg's pretentious and power-intoxicated rhetoric to that of Boulez, as serialism became increasingly totalist in concept and then became literally _totalitarian_ in its virtual stranglehold on the academic politics of "serious" music in the mid-20th century, is unmistakable.
> 
> Sid James has often pointed out the disinclination of people on this forum to look at the history of music, its ideologies and power structures. I'm suggesting that not only is music rife with such, but that the peculiar forms these take should be viewed with reference to the dominant ideologies of their times. Art does not develop, and its forms do not evolve, in a cultural vacuum. The men who claimed to be freeing music and who proclaimed as necessary and inevitable a pseudo-scientific system which tried to remake the syntax of Western music in a way that sought, at its extreme, to embrace and control its every element, were true representatives of their age. It was an age when men who claimed to be freeing humanity called upon the dogmas of historical necessity and pseudo-science in order to subject their nations to economic and political systems which could only be enforced by totalitarian control.
> 
> The political totalitarians delivered humanity into horrors of mass oppression on a scale never before seen. The musical totalitarians piled up not bodies but staff paper, filled with dense, calculated, arid, and essentially identical concatenations of notes which only a handful of people can make sense of intellectually and which only a handful have any interest in listening to - mostly, I would venture, the same handful. That handful are certainly disproportionately represented on forums such as this.


I agree with Mahlerian that Woodduck's characterization of serialists as 'musical fascists' is a stretch. Yet, little is mentioned of traditional tonality's connection to ideologies, namely the Church and the rich class, whoever happens to be in charge and wield the most power. My blog analogy of _'tonality equals God'_ comes to mind.t's all just clever metaphor, nothing can be proven.

Are the symphonies of Haydn any "freer" than serial music? No. Haydn's music reflects its ideology; its form is determined by the forces he had at his disposal, provided by the Esterhazy court; and one might go further to say that Haydn's symphonies reflect the dominant power structure, which was aligned with the Christianity and the wealthy, and that tonality and its forms reflect that 'ideology,' although it was so ubiquitous and taken for granted that we are hardly aware of it.

And isn't an opposition to Christian ideology by 'serial dictators' (serial killers) still a point of contention, even today? Apparently so. That's why a lot of people are here in this forum, listening to this kind of music.

The truth will be found in individual cases, away from the maddening crowd. The Second Viennese composers were basically song-men, composers of intimate lieder.


----------



## arpeggio

KenOC said:


> Actually 1920-1929. If your favorite works weren't nominated, then either they weren't proposed or they didn't get seconds. If they were nominated but didn't make the top ten, then they failed to garner sufficient votes.


Sorry. My mistake. My fingers aarnt as effective as they used to be on the keyboard. I actually have problems playing my bassoon. I have developed an uncontrolled tremor in the pinkie of my right hand. This adversely effects my ability to play some notes on my horn. I have been to four doctors including two neurologists and they are stumped concerning the cause. There is medication that can take to control it but I only use it during rehearsals and concerts.

The point I was trying to make is that I admired all of the above works and I had no idea which twenty to knock off.

Why do we have to have just ten? Why not fifteen? Why not seventeen and three-quarters?

Most of us can not come up with ten of anything. Yet we are constantly being asked to play games or participate in polls were we have to pick the best of this or that. I am glad you can do it because I can not.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> I agree with Mahlerian that Woodduck's characterization of serialists as 'musical fascists' is a stretch. Yet, little is mentioned of traditional tonality's connection to ideologies, namely the Church and the rich class, whoever happens to be in charge and wield the most power. My blog analogy of _'tonality equals God'_ comes to mind.t's all just clever metaphor, nothing can be proven.
> 
> Are the symphonies of Haydn any "freer" than serial music? No. Haydn's music reflects its ideology; its form is determined by the forces he had at his disposal, provided by the Esterhazy court; and one might go further to say that Haydn's symphonies reflect the dominant power structure, which was aligned with the Christianity and the wealthy, and that tonality and its forms reflect that 'ideology,' although it was so ubiquitous and taken for granted that we are hardly aware of it.
> 
> And isn't an opposition to Christian ideology by 'serial dictators' (serial killers) still a point of contention, even today? Apparently so. That's why a lot of people are here in this forum, listening to this kind of music.
> 
> The truth will be found in individual cases, away from the maddening crowd. The Second Viennese composers were basically song-men, composers of intimate lieder.


People do so love sound bites. I never used the phrase "musical fascists." Your putting it in quotes implies that I did. My argument is subtler than what that phrase might suggest, but the kinds of responses I've aroused are a stiff reminder of what happens around here to views that are both nuanced and unconventional.

I have found your views of tonality as a sociological phenomenon, as expressed in a number of posts, interesting and worth considering. You are one of very few people I've encountered on this forum interested in, or perhaps capable of, viewing the technical aspects of art from a philosophical and sociological perspective. I appreciate you for that, and I think we might have some interesting discussions if we were to talk personally. Writing can be so laborious!

I want to say, in relation to your present post, that the issue is not whether music of any sort is "free" of its technical elements (as in 'Are the symphonies of Haydn any "freer" than serial music?'). That question would make no sense. It also would make no sense to ask whether Haydn's music is "freer" of its cultural context than, say, Babbitt's, except to acknowledge that the ways and degrees in which composers reflect their societies differ. Perhaps that sort of difference is what you mean by 'The truth will be found in individual cases.' But if you're making a comparison between 'tonality' and 'serialism,' I'm sure you realize that the two things are not comparable.

Serialism is an invented technique for imposing order on tones. It is not a fundamental aspect of the way music is perceived and felt as orderly and meaningful, nor could it ever have arisen and evolved from anything in the nature of sound or the perception of it. My discussion of the subject was not about serialism's legitimacy as a technique - any technique may have its uses - but about what it meant in the 20th century, sociologically and psychologically, for that technique to be 1.) taken to the extreme of attempting to govern all the elements of an art ('total' or 'integral' serialism), 2.) propounded, by people speaking in aggressive and messianic tones, as historically necessary and even as rendering music of the past obsolete, 3.) accepted dogmatically by the musical establishment as the essence of musical modernity and progress, and 4.) effectively enforced in academia as virtually the only acceptable approach to composition. All of this has been amply documented, and since I am a product of the 20th century whose formative years overlapped the years of serialist hegemony, I'm interested in knowing what it says about Western society of that era and about human nature in general. There's always a danger of overreaching in trying to interpret art in this way, but better to overreach than not to inquire at all.

The meaning of common practice harmony as a reflection of society is a subject worth this sort of inquiry. But just as tonality, at any stage of its evolution, it is not a parallel phenomenon to a technique like serialism, its fundamental position in the music of its time is not a phenomenon parallel to the invention and rise to power of serialism, its bid for total control over the methods and materials of music, its grip on the musical thinking of its era, the stridently messianic and authoritarian posturing of its proponents, and their seizing control of institutions having the power to determine who gets taught what and what gets a hearing.

It's hard to know what to say to people who can't, or would rather not, discern the philosophical and psychological underpinnings of this phenomenon, and how uncomfortably these relate to some of the darker aspects of 20th-century society manifesting themselves during the same period. In pointing to them I am immediately assumed by some to be declaring Schoenberg and Boulez the moral equivalent of Hitler and Stalin. This is just too silly to respond to directly, and would be offensive if I were of a mind to be offended. I'm assuming it isn't an assumption you're making.

Progress and historical necessity, rationalism and scientism, the triumph of technology (technique), messianic rhetoric, authoritarianism, control of institutions - who would think, looking at those ideas, that the subject was _music?_ But they all fit the dominant musical ideology and practice of the age of serialism. I know of nothing like it in the realm of art.


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## Albert7

Music doesn't have to be derived from nature necessarily. It's abstract and happily remains so pour moi.


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> I never used the phrase "musical fascists." Your putting it in quotes implies that I did. My argument is subtler than what that phrase might suggest


You didn't have to use those exact words for your posts to be taken to imply their equivalence. And I must say your posts are not always as nuanced than you believe them to be.



Woodduck said:


> Serialism is an invented technique for imposing order on tones. It is not a fundamental aspect of the way music is perceived and felt as orderly and meaningful, nor could it ever have arisen and evolved from anything in the nature of sound or the perception of it.


And all that went before it was derived from nature, and not a technique for imposing order on tones?


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## EDaddy

MacLeod said:


> You didn't have to use those exact words for your posts to be taken to imply their equivalence. And I must say your posts are not always as nuanced than you believe them to be.
> 
> And all that went before it was derived from nature, and not a technique for imposing order on tones?


I do so beg to differ, MacLeod. Woodduck is one of the consistently clearer, more thoughtful and _nuanced_ writers on this board. Period. Millionrainbows can be as well (when he abstains from his snarky leanings). I, for one, know I can sometimes come off as being heavy-footed or offensive in my approach at debate (this thread being a prime example); and I am often reminded that my intended sense of humor doesn't always translate in text and, even if it does, it isn't always going to be well-received. But one thing I am _not _(by nature or intention) is mean-spirited. Sure, most of us can get a little worked up and over-zealous at times, being passionate about our opinions and all; but it's unfortunate when people feel the need to resort to pointless derogatory slams aimed at cutting other board members down.

I have observed these debates, as I find this and closely-related topics to be of interest, and have even occasionally jumped in (though sometimes at my own peril); but when I read comments like "And I must say your posts are not always as nuanced than you believe them to be."... well, I feel like someone needs to call it out. Is your writing so consistently tight and nuanced that you feel you have a right to point out someone else's allegedly inferior writing? (And may I point out the irony of the fact that, in the very sentence in which you are criticizing Woodduck's writing abilities, you have a glaring grammatical error of your own?) But the most humorous part to me is that you are saying it to someone who is arguably one of the best, if not _the best_, writers - not to mention eloquent, refined and mannerly debaters - on this thread.

You certainly don't ever see Woodduck - or most other members on TC for that matter - resorting to such blatantly insecure tactics. I suggest you may want to take notes and follow suit.


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## Guest

Dad, 
We all post in our own "style" - you, me, Woodduck, MacLeod, everyone. It would be a duller place if there was some degree of homogenisation.


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## Woodduck

MacLeod said:


> You didn't have to use those exact words for your posts to be taken to imply their equivalence. And I must say your posts are not always as nuanced than you believe them to be.
> 
> *And all that went before it was derived from nature, and not a technique for imposing order on tones?*


I objected to being "quoted" as using words I did not use. Wouldn't you?

Generalizations about how "nuanced" you think I consider my posts to be are insulting, as I'm sure you know. I'll overlook it - but just this once. 

Now as to your question:

I didn't say that all that went before serialism was derived from nature. Neither did I say that nothing that came before serialism was a technique for imposing order on tones. If you will go back the post you've excerpted and look at the context of that excerpt, you'll see that my principal point was that serialism and tonality are _not comparable phenomena._ The subject of _tonality_ need not have arisen here at all; I didn't bring it up, but it was brought up implicitly by millionrainbows' asking me whether I thought the symphonies of Haydn were "freer" than serial music. That made it necessary for me to point out that tonality and serialism are not parallel phenomena. Serialism is merely a _technique_. Tonality is more than a technique. Tonality (common practice or otherwise) has arisen in musics all over the world as a _fundamental principle_ of musical organization, and it has done so for several reasons: first, because it has roots in the acoustic properties of tones and the way tones are perceived; second, because hierarchical organization corresponds to the way conceptual thought works (concepts are hierarchically related, and themselves contain the principle of hierarchy); and third, because the dynamics of stability/instability, rest/movement, departure/return, etc., are inherent in the physical phenomena we perceive and in all the functions of life - physical, mental, and emotional - and are most clearly expressed musically in hierarchical structures which maximize our sense of these dynamics. The most important way in which tonality and serialism are not parallel or comparable - important for music and for how it is experienced - is that _tonality is experienced as dynamic_: as an inner compulsion, as a driving force, as energetic and alive.

In these ways (and I won't take the time here to explore further implications) tonality is rooted in natural phenomena, and is an expression of both what humans experience in the world, internal and external, and how they perceive it.

Unlike tonality, serialism is not a fundamental, intuitive, naturally arising, dynamically functioning principle of musical formation. It does not relate to the acoustics or perception of tones, it does not represent any perceived structures of physical reality or processes of mental functioning, and it does not express the dynamics of life functions. It does not contain any inherent energy, any compelling force. It is an abstract concept, a patterning device, a template to which sounds are made to conform. To think of it as parallel to tonality, or as something that replaces tonality, is to misunderstand its nature. All it has in common with tonality is that the application of it results in some kind of structure. Comparing "tonal music" with "serial music" is like comparing apples with teacups.

This has been a bit of a diversion, and perhaps insufficiently "nuanced," but I hope it addresses your question.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Serialism is an invented technique for imposing order on tones. It is not a fundamental aspect of the way music is perceived and felt as orderly and meaningful, nor could it ever have arisen and evolved from anything in the nature of sound or the perception of it.


Serialism is not as determined as you would have us think, and tonality is not as natural as you would also have us think.

Tonality was conceived as being based on perfect 2:3 stacked fifths, and that had to be compromised in order to close the spiral (octave). Twelve notes in an octave is as pie-in-the-sky as seventeen.
Major thirds (4:5) were compromised from the start, thus all the mean-tone attempts at better thirds which arose. The whole history has been a big struggle.

Serialism was never completely codified into a set of general rules. It's still a technique which requires unique solutions to each use of it.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Serialism is not as determined as you would have us think, and tonality is not as natural as you would also have us think.
> 
> Tonality was conceived as being based on perfect 2:3 stacked fifths, and that had to be compromised in order to close the spiral (octave). Twelve notes in an octave is as pie-in-the-sky as seventeen.
> Major thirds (4:5) were compromised from the start, thus all the mean-tone attempts at better thirds which arose. The whole history has been a big struggle.
> 
> Serialism was never completely codified into a set of general rules. It's still a technique which requires unique solutions to each use of it.


Just how "determined" do you think I would have you think serialism is? And just how "natural" do you think I would have you think tonality is?

And really, isn't this beside the point I was making, which is that the two things are not comparable or parallel, and therefore are not opposites? It was your bringing up Haydn, and then MacLeod, who pushed me to mention tonality in the first place. The only thing they have in common is that they are ways of organizing music. Tonal music can make use of serial techniques, can it not? Atonal music does not have to do so. Tonality is not the issue. I was only talking about _why_ it is not the issue - why serialism shouldn't be thought of as an equivalent or a replacement for tonality: because the two things are _different kinds _of things. I don't know how to make it any clearer.


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## arpeggio

Woodduck said:


> Just how "determined" do you think I would have you think serialism is? And just how "natural" do you think I would have you think tonality is?
> And really, isn't this beside the point I was making, which is that the two things are not comparable or parallel, and therefore are not opposites? It was your bringing up Haydn, and then MacLeod, who pushed me to mention tonality in the first place. The only thing they have in common is that they are ways of organizing music. Tonal music can make use of serial techniques, can it not? Atonal music does not have to do so. Tonality is not the issue. I was only talking about _why_ it is not the issue - why serialism shouldn't be thought of as an equivalent or a replacement for tonality: because the two things are _different kinds _of things. I don't know how to make it any clearer.


Woodduck, one of the reasons I rarely respond to your posts is because most of the time I do not understand them and have no idea what you are trying to prove.

I think I understand what you are trying to say with the above and it is still very confusing to me. I really do not know how to respond.

Based on the music courses that I took in college and all of the music history books I have read on Schoenberg, he never intended atonality to replace tonality. The only place I have seen that assertion are in some of the posts here.

One of the problems that I have with some of these discussions is when members make declarative statements that run contrary to my training and experiences as a musician.


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## EDaddy

dogen said:


> Dad,
> We all post in our own "style" - you, me, Woodduck, MacLeod, everyone. It would be a duller place if there was some degree of homogenisation.


Dog, 
It's not my want for homogenization or dullness. I guess I don't consider keeping things decorous and above board a recipe for homogenization or dullness. If anything, it clears the way for a far more honest, colorful and _enjoyable_ debate.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Dafuq did I just read? What's happened to my thread? What's happened to music theory? What's happened to analysis of serial technique? 

The idea of progress in music was something that was brought up before and I will address my thoughts on it now.....

And is there no such thing as progress in music? Really? Are we saying that Mozart's 1st symphony is in the same style and utilises the same techniques to the same level of proficiency as his 41st???????? Is Schoenberg's String Quartet in D major in the same style as his String Quartet no. 4??????? Didn't these composers come from somewhere and go somewhere else with their approach to and understanding of composition???? Saying that there is no progress is like saying that music doesn't change and composers don't actually learn and become more experienced at composition throughout the course of their career. Composers don't stick to one style in every single piece of music they write.

If there was no progression from one style to another style in music we wouldn't even have music notation. The history of western music notation is a history of progress from ligatures to staffs, clefs and notes as we know them today. There is also progress from Renaissance polyphony to Baroque homophony; it was a change in style which was influenced by various factors and _not_ the progress of 'improvement.' Improvement is limited purely to the progress of an individual, like Schoenberg or Mozart to name two I've mentioned in this post. The progress of these individuals equates to furthering their experience and understanding of music composition, progress could mean that their style could change or they might use different techniques more often or less often, but it's up to the individual. I'm not going to say that every piece they wrote was an improvement on the last, that would be a silly thing to say, but I can say that over time they progressed from one level of understanding to another through experience.

From my understanding, Schoenberg's serial technique was part of his development as a composer. Contextually it suited him as he was a traditionalist who admired and studied the music of the past. He implemented techniques from the past in an aesthetic that he developed himself. Was it a step backwards? A step forwards? Well...I would say he was revitalising tradition in his own way, so kinda both. My example at he start of this thread of Bach using pretty much the same techniques of motifs can development backs up my opinion on this.

I'm surprised that people don't believe in progress in music though. Perhaps I'm just ill-informed on the subject of music styles and different approaches to composition.


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## arpeggio

^^^^^

I know exactly what you are talking about.

This idea of music progression is one of the facets of music I studied in my music theory and history classes. You did a good job of summarizing it in your post.

It just seems to me that there are some here who do not understand post 19th century music. So they have to come up with rhetoric to support their views. Like claiming that they are being belittled or challenging the progression of music.


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## KenOC

arpeggio said:


> It just seems to me that there are some here who do not understand post 19th century music. So they have to come up with rhetoric to support their views. Like claiming that they are being belittled or challenging the progression of music.


I absolutely challenge the idea of "the progression of music." If music were progressing, how likely would it be that the three most popular composers were all dead by almost 200 years ago? Or is the value of music independent of its appreciation by listeners?


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## GreenMamba

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> And is there no such thing as progress in music? Really? Are we saying that Mozart's 1st symphony is in the same style and utilises the same techniques to the same level of proficiency as his 41st????????


I don't think the fact that an experienced, adult composer writes music more advanced than he did at the age of eight is what people mean when they talk about musical progress.


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## arpeggio

KenOC said:


> I absolutely challenge the idea of "the progression of music." If music were progressing, how likely would it be that the three most popular composers were all dead by almost 200 years ago? Or is the value of music independent of its appreciation by listeners?


Fine. I will send a letter to all my professors who are still alive and tell them they are wrong.


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## KenOC

arpeggio said:


> Fine. I will send a letter to all my professors who are still alive and tell them they are wrong.


It would hardly be the first time. :lol:

From François-Joseph Fétis, one of the more prominent music professors of musical history: "...what Monsieur Berlioz composes is not part of that art which we distinguish as music, and I am completely certain that he lacks the most basic capability in this art." In the Revue musicale issue of 1 February 1835 he wrote of the Symphonie Fantastique, "[Berlioz] had no taste for melody and but the feeblest notion of rhythm; that his harmony, composed by piling up tones into heaps that were often monstrous, was nevertheless flat and monotonous."

However, Fetis was the teacher and sponsor of Juan Arriaga, for which I thank him.


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## Woodduck

arpeggio said:


> Woodduck, one of the reasons I rarely respond to your posts is because most of the time I do not understand them and have no idea what you are trying to prove.
> 
> I think I understand what you are trying to say with the above and it is still very confusing to me. I really do not know how to respond.
> 
> Based on the music courses that I took in college and all of the music history books I have read on Schoenberg, he never intended atonality to replace tonality. The only place I have seen that assertion are in some of the posts here.
> 
> One of the problems that I have with some of these discussions is when members make declarative statements that run contrary to my training and experiences as a musician.


I don't mean to be confusing. Truly. But its bound to happen when a number of people with a number of different perspectives pull a conversation in different directions. Sometimes its hard to keep two posts in a row focused on the same topic!

I'm pretty sure the topic of this thread is the compositional technique known as "serialism," but that's about the only thing I feel certain of. The thread asks whether serialism moved music "forward" or "backward," and I have to say that I'm not sure what that means. Certainly serialism's creator, Schoenberg, believed he was moving music forward in a very profound way when he said that his invention would guarantee the supremacy of German music for the next 100 years. Not even the notoriously egotistical Wagner claimed anything comparable for a mere method of composition! Schoenberg made a great many assertions at various stages of his life - some quite grandiose, others moderate and insightful (he was a complex man) - and he left in his wake plenty of disagreements among his followers about what music would or should become, about the real nature of his innovations, and about the place of those innovations in the larger scheme of history. As I've expressed elsewhere, the early decades of the 20th century were heady times, and people had grand designs for reforming the world, many of them paradoxically justified as "historically inevitable." I think we should remember that paradoxical _zeitgeist_ when we argue about whether Schoenberg's innovations represent a continuity with past practice or a radical break with it, and when we see how his own statements and those of his followers can support both points of view. For them there was no contradiction. History demanded a break in the trajectory of history, and tradition had to be abandoned in order to perpetuate tradition. Or so it seemed to those who cared about tradition at all. Not everyone did. Some just wanted to burn down the opera houses.

I think we need to concede that most of the 20th century's grand designs to take human life into a revolutionized, yet historically inevitable, future don't look so grand in retrospect. The world is reeling from failed attempts at Hegelian synthesis, universal brotherhood enforced at gunpoint, racial perfection, technological salvation, and whatnot, and we've become skeptical of messiahs, in politics, art, or anything else (or at least I hope we have). Serialism was brought down on tablets of stone from the mountaintop and was reverently enshrined in the ark of the new covenant of music, to be carried "forward" into the temples of art for half a century. There's probably no way even to guess how many young aspiring composers bowed down before it and proceeded to turn out, with head-splitting effort and deep seriousness, what I'd wager was a greater quantity of music listened to and enjoyed by fewer people than had ever been produced in the whole history of the art. But despite all these earnest efforts at vindicating the prophets of the musical millennium, serialism - we can finally acknowledge with relief - turns out to be not the salvation of Western music but just another compositional device, and an elusive one at that, which most listeners can't detect even when they're hearing it.

To my last post: When millionrainbows asked whether I thought the music of Haydn was any "freer" than serial music, I could have taken the word "freer" to mean a number of things. But since I had previously been talking about "total (or integral) serialism," a mechanism for bringing all the elements of a musical composition under one controlling principle, I figured he was referring to that and positing tonality as an equally controlling system or technique, as operative in Haydn. This prompted me to look at ways in which the two systems for structuring music, tonality and serialism, are similar or different. It appeared to me that they are different in fundamental ways - that they are in fact not the same kind of thing at all. What an interesting realization! I found it interesting enough to try to define, in general terms, what the difference is. I think my general terms are generally correct, but of course open to question and debate, if anyone's interested. It is, I recognize, a bit of a tangent. But when the nominal topic is not clearly defined, who's to say what's tangential and what may be useful in the end? Useful or not, I just find it interesting, and for me that's the bottom line. No one needs to agree with me. So, if you're confused as to what I'm trying to "prove" with my posts on such questions and topics as this, I can only answer that I don't know what you mean by "prove." My story is that I find music not only enjoyable to make and to listen to but intellectually fascinating. I like to think about it. And as I think about it and feel that I'm on to some worthwhile ideas, I write the ideas down and try to make sense of them and to make them make sense. It's a sort of scientific activity for me: I look at a phenomenon (music), I think about it, I have intuitions about where it comes from and how it's made and what it does and what it means, I hypothesize, and I write. I _love_ to write. Can you tell?

Ultimately I don't expect anyone in particular to be interested in my speculations or to agree with them. In fact I welcome intelligent disagreement and enjoy debate. I realize however that debate isn't everyone's thing, and that some people get positively offended by it. I do like to challenge orthodoxy, question authority, and expose what I like to call horsepuckey. I find a lot of that in the world, even - can you believe it - right here on TC! So I expect to keep busy, and I expect some people to be pleased about that and a certain number to be displeased. But your pleasure or anyone else's is none of my business. I'm here to please myself, to exercise my brain, and hopefully to stave off senility. Luckily dementia doesn't run in the family.


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## arpeggio

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Now I am really confused


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## Guest

EDaddy said:


> when I read comments like "And I must say your posts are not always as nuanced than you believe them to be."... well, I feel like someone needs to call it out. Is your writing so consistently tight and nuanced that you feel you have a right to point out someone else's allegedly inferior writing? (And may I point out the irony of the fact that, in the very sentence in which you are criticizing Woodduck's writing abilities, you have a glaring grammatical error of your own?) But the most humorous part to me is that you are saying it to someone who is arguably one of the best, if not _the best_, writers - not to mention eloquent, refined and mannerly debaters - on this thread.


Nothing to call out. Woodduck claimed he was nuanced. I saw no reason why I shouldn't observe that I didn't think was always the case. For example, it's hardly surprising that Mahlerian took exception to this rather unnuanced paragraph.



> The political totalitarians delivered humanity into horrors of mass oppression on a scale never before seen. The musical totalitarians piled up not bodies but staff paper, filled with dense, calculated, arid, and essentially identical concatenations of notes which only a handful of people can make sense of intellectually and which only a handful have any interest in listening to - mostly, I would venture, the same handful. That handful are certainly disproportionately represented on forums such as this.


(BTW, I notice you had no hesitation in pointing out that I'm not flawless, and yet I've not even claimed to be so.)

Now we've dealt with the logs and motes, perhaps you'd like to answer the question and respond to the observations I made about your 'hive-kicking' in post #95?



Woodduck said:


> I objected to being "quoted" as using words I did not use. Wouldn't you?


Probably. But I read Millions' words in 'scare quotes' as a shorthand summary of what you had written, not as a direct quote.



Woodduck said:


> Now as to your question:
> 
> I didn't say that all that went before serialism was derived from nature. Neither did I say that nothing that came before serialism was a technique for imposing order on tones.


Nor did I say you did. I can see the difference you elaborate between 'tonality' and 'serialism' in terms of not being comparable phenomena. I don't accept the conclusion you have drawn that tonality is rooted in natural phenomena, unlike serialism which is "not a fundamental [...]" etc.



ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> The idea of progress in music was something that was brought up before and I will address my thoughts on it now.....
> 
> And is there no such thing as progress in music? Really?


You're right, it has been brought up before, and there has been at least one whole thread on it since I've been a member.

http://www.talkclassical.com/27601-does-progress-exist-classical.html
(also http://www.talkclassical.com/34988-has-musics-progress-been.html)
(and http://www.talkclassical.com/9564-does-progress-music-exist.html)
(and http://www.talkclassical.com/28285-does-music-progress-ii.html)

AIR, one of the bones of contention was whether the term 'progress' was inherently 'positive'. That caused problems for those who see both negative and positive in the historical unwinding of the development of music. I don't think anyone disputed the idea that within one composer's lifetime, you could see 'development' and 'improvement' - and there are some obvious examples - but when it came to Schoenberg, some claimed there was a regress, as he moved towards what some deemed an unacceptable development. Beyond that, 'music' itself developed or evolved in the way it did, but the word 'progress' doesn't accurately reflect what happened, as it seems to imply the inevitable move from the crude and barbaric to the sophisticated, complex...nuanced thing it is today!


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## Grizzled Ghost

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> I'm surprised that people don't believe in progress in music though. Perhaps I'm just ill-informed on the subject of music styles and different approaches to composition.


The quantity and range of available musical styles increases over time. So there is progress in the sense of a continuing accumulation.

But it is not clear to me that the appeal of individual works of new music is higher compared to earlier times. So in this sense there may not be progress.


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## KenOC

Grizzled Ghost said:


> The quantity and range of available musical styles increases over time. So there is progress in the sense of a continuing accumulation.
> 
> But it is not clear to me that the appeal of individual works of new music is higher compared to earlier times. So in this sense there may not be progress.


Well put. I'm not sure that an increased range of artistic possibilities results in better art, at least as judged by general appreciation of the results. I'd be happy to hear of other benchmarks, of course!


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## mmsbls

@ Woodduck: The thread seems to contain two distinct ideas related to serialism in music. One is the totalitarian (i.e. restrictive) nature of the technique, and the other is the sociological and philosophical ideas surrounding serialism. The latter you summarize below, and I think I understand your viewpoint. I'm hardly very knowledgeable about the sociology of serialism, but I was rather surprised when I originally read about the topics you list.



Woodduck said:


> My discussion of the subject was not about serialism's legitimacy as a technique - any technique may have its uses - but about what it meant in the 20th century, sociologically and psychologically, for that technique to be 1.) taken to the extreme of attempting to govern all the elements of an art ('total' or 'integral' serialism), 2.) propounded, by people speaking in aggressive and messianic tones, as historically necessary and even as rendering music of the past obsolete, 3.) accepted dogmatically by the musical establishment as the essence of musical modernity and progress, and 4.) effectively enforced in academia as virtually the only acceptable approach to composition.


I'd like to ask about the restrictive nature of the technique. From your posts it was not clear to me whether you feel that the technique itself, specifically the restrictive nature, is highly problematic for music. Serialism puts constraints on the order of pitches, and total serialism goes much further by constraining other musical elements. There are restrictions in poetry as well. The sonnet and haiku are rather restrictive forms (maybe not techniques) that greatly limit how one says something with poetry. We could argue whether those forms are more or less restrictive than serialism or total serialism.

If, in fact, you do feel that serialism was too restrictive in allowing composers to express music, do you also feel that poetic forms can be too restrictive in allowing poets to express poetry? Much music and much poetry includes restrictions, but when do those restrictions become problematic?


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## ArtMusic

A word or two can have profound meanings even on its own without formal grammar, hence maybe poetic but not so with music. That's the difference. So I don't think the analogy is adequate at all.


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## Mahlerian

ArtMusic said:


> A word or two can have profound meanings even on its own without formal grammar, hence maybe poetic but not so with music. That's the difference. So I don't think the analogy is adequate at all.


A single note or sound contains a world of information on its own, regardless of any context. In other words, I don't understand your objection.


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## mmsbls

ArtMusic said:


> A word or two can have profound meanings even on its own without formal grammar, hence maybe poetic but not so with music. That's the difference. So I don't think the analogy is adequate at all.


I'm not sure I would call it an analogy. Clearly one can place restrictions on artistic works whether those works are music, painting, poetry, drama, etc.. At some point I would say restrictions can constrain art such that it ceases to have enough expressive power to be interesting. Haiku is getting close (for me). I'm not sure when the number of syllables becomes too few to be of interest, but at some point it does.

More generally, I think haiku appeals to many fewer people than generic poetry does because is has less expressive power. The question is whether restrictions on music also reduce the potential expressive power such that those works are less interesting or less appealing _because of the restrictions_.


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## Woodduck

mmsbls said:


> @ Woodduck: The thread seems to contain two distinct ideas related to serialism in music. One is the totalitarian (i.e. restrictive) nature of the technique, and the other is the sociological and philosophical ideas surrounding serialism. The latter you summarize below, and I think I understand your viewpoint. I'm hardly very knowledgeable about the sociology of serialism, but I was rather surprised when I originally read about the topics you list.
> 
> I'd like to ask about the restrictive nature of the technique. From your posts it was not clear to me whether you feel that the technique itself, specifically the restrictive nature, is highly problematic for music. Serialism puts constraints on the order of pitches, and total serialism goes much further by constraining other musical elements. There are restrictions in poetry as well. The sonnet and haiku are rather restrictive forms (maybe not techniques) that greatly limit how one says something with poetry. We could argue whether those forms are more or less restrictive than serialism or total serialism.
> 
> If, in fact, you do feel that serialism was too restrictive in allowing composers to express music, do you also feel that poetic forms can be too restrictive in allowing poets to express poetry? Much music and much poetry includes restrictions, but when do those restrictions become problematic?


An inquiry into the relationship between music's audible content and its sociological meaning is bound to be highly intuitive and fraught with risks. Maybe that's why it has always appealed to me! I appreciate your isolating these two things by pointing out their distinctness. I've probably been assuming that a connection between them would be obvious, but I realize that this isn't necessarily the case, and that the attempt to draw a connection will be controversial. My own ideas are intuitive, and I don't claim that they cover the territory. But I don't want to carry that discussion further here.

On your question about whether I think serialism is "restrictive," I would say that I don't know what that would mean. Restrictive of what? In relation to what? All art proceeds within certain limits, and those limits determine its form. What restrictions are accepted depends on the sort of art we want to produce. Serialism as a technique or procedure has certain objectives and works to achieve them. I don't see it as peculiar in that respect. I do see it as peculiar in other respects, however. I can't say much about the specific technical procedures involved in serial composition in its various forms; others here have done that and are better qualified to do it. What interests me is not how to write a serial work, but the _kind_ of thing serialism is. When You speak of serialism as accepting restrictions on what a composer may do, you compare it to certain poetic forms - sonnet and haiku - which accept certain formal limitations. But I don't think this is the right comparison to make, or that that sort of limitation gets at the essence of what serialism is and does.

Musical form is determined on a number of levels, involving everything from basic principles underlying the syntax of a style to precise and minute templates for the construction of a particular work. Basic principles exist as as a musical "grammar" apart from and prior to the creation of any particular work and are assumed and used at a largely intuitive level by a composer. Tonality would be such a principle. At the other extreme are individual "forms" such as bar form (AAB) or rondo (ABACAD etc.), which define very specific structures and are chosen at the outset of creating an individual work (sonnet and haiku being examples of such specific forms in poetry). Basic formative principles such as tonality may be codified as "rules" or "procedures," and this may cause us to speak of them as if they were mere templates arbitrarily chosen for the creation of particular works. But basic principles are not forms and are not felt as restrictive artistic choices, but rather are assumed premises which _inform_ and _guide_ artistic choices, and do so at a mostly unconscious level. A composer writing a piece in a tonal idiom is not inventing tonality, or (unless he is a student doing theory exercises) applying it as a set of rules or prescribed procedures. He is merely thinking of music which happens to be tonal, much as a poet writing in English, whether he's writing a sonnet or a haiku, is not applying the "rules" of English but is merely thinking of poetry which happens to be in English.

Is serialism, then, in terms of the above distinction, a basic principle or a specific musical form? I would say: neither of these. But I suspect that there is confusion about what it actually _is_, and that the confusion dates all the way back to Schoenberg's own stated rationale for his invention of twelve-tone composition. He said that he developed the technique to "replace those structural differentiations provided formerly by tonal harmonies". Now I suppose that the exact implications of that statement might be argued. One thing it apparently does _not_ mean is that twelve-tone music was invented to replace tonal music altogether. But what it _does_ seem to say is that serialism is intended to function, in some basic way, the way tonality functioned in giving music "structural differentiations" - i. e., form. Schoenberg had run into the difficulty, in his early atonal works, that the harmonies of such music were not guided by any overarching structural concepts such as tonal music had generated over the centuries, any basic procedural premises from which ideas of formal development could evolve. In tonal music, hierarchies of relationships between notes of the scale and harmonies rooted in them, and the relationships between tonal plateaus or "keys" derived from those hierarchies, had provided both a sense of dynamic movement and a foundation for large-scale structures. Seeing that atonal harmony had no such basis for generating dynamic and lucid structures, Schoenberg knew that if he wanted to compose harmonic music of a dimension and scale comparable to tonal music he would need to come up with a new principle to underlie and govern his procedures. Thus, his twelve-tone technique was intended to duplicate the basic function of tonality - in effect, to serve as a replacement for it. But does it?

For me this is the basic question to ask in order to understand what serialism is, and what it isn't. I've noted a tendency to talk about tonality and serialism from a purely structural standpoint, as if they were nothing but alternative and equally arificial and arbitrary sets of procedures or building blocks chosen by a composer to make pieces of music from. But tonality is not, at base, a set of procedures or structures. What it most fundamentally is is a complex of _ relationships_: specifically, _dynamic_ _relationships_. It tells us, not what music is _made_ of, but what it is _doing._ While any tonal idiom - whether it be our Western common practice or some modal system in the music of Africa or Asia - must consist of a certain set of elements with the potential for being ordered and combined in certain ways, it is not the elements themselves or their combinations, but their dynamic cross-relationships - the forces which are felt to be active among them - which are the real essence of tonality and the real reason for identifying it as a phenomenon. And if we see that this is the case, we must ask, with regard to serialism, whether it contains any principle of cross-relational dynamism which entitles it to be considered a proxy for or a successor to tonality.

I believe that it does not. And I believe that it is the absence of any acknowledgement of the dynamic aspect of harmony - the perceived (by the listener) implication that one harmonic event leads to, causes, results from, and is influenced by other harmonic events, both proximately and at a distance - which makes serialism something fundamentally new in music: a system of procedures designed to ensure the coherence of harmonic music which does not originate in the perceived nature of tones as active entities or of harmony as an active process. As such, it is not, as procedures for writing tonal music are, a method of finding significance in tones and extrapolating order out of them, but of imposing an essentially extrinsic order on them. The problem which led Schoenberg to invent the twelve-tone row was the very problem of how to make his new harmonic vocabulary, no longer tied to the elaborate system of functional relationships embodied in tonal harmony, capable of generating coherent structures in time. Harmony is not the only element of music which can be organized coherently: music which lacks tonality, or indeed tones themselves, can be made to sound ordered and coherent through simple patterning of sounds, just as a painting can be made coherent through a patterning of shapes and colors. But it was not simple patterning that gave tonal music its tremendous powers of coherent expressiveness over time spans short and long - and Schoenberg, of all people, knew that. It is thus a great irony that the principle he introduced for giving coherence to musical time was based, not on utilizing any intrinsic tendencies of tones to organize and progress through time, but on patterning them in a way specifically intended to prevent such tendencies from arising: non-repetitively, with all twelve tones of the scale given "equal importance" and "relating only to one another," as he expressed it.

A tone row - unlike a melody, a motivic germ, or a tonal scheme - is simply an arrangement, without inherent force or meaning: twelve tones of the chromatic scale, laid out in any order but (in its original, most basic concept) not repeating any note till all twelve are sounded, designed as a template with which the composer then goes about making a piece of music. The tone row, once sounded, is supposed to impart some sort of unity or coherence to the piece as it is repeated, broken up, turned around, inverted, etc. Whether it actually does so depends very much on whether the composer has the creative power necessary to make an inherently unmemorable sequence of tones memorable through devices not inherent in them, devices such as rhythm, accent, tone color, and harmony. But - _harmony?_ The very element of music which caused all the trouble, and whose lack of form-generating capacity in "free" atonal music necessitated creation of "the method" to begin with? Can harmony be called in to save the tone row and its progeny from anonymity?

The irony deepens. In tonal music, a succession of tones - a melody - is itself a tonal entity. It is intended to be memorable, and it is made memorable, as well as expressive, not only by its shape but by the tonal implications of that shape and the relationship of its tones to an underlying tonality. A melody in tonal music can have a great variety of functions, from being the principle substance of the music to being a source of material - melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic - for an entire piece. In many complex works it performs all these functions, and one of the marks of excellence in such a work is that it can be distinctly heard to perform even the most complex and ingenious of them (consult any sonata or quartet of Beethoven). Memorability and recognizability are artistic virtues. Tone rows, unlike melodies, are not memorable by virtue of their sequence of pitches, and their permutations in the course of works to which they are supposed to impart unity are for the most part not audible as such (the unmemorability of rows and the unrecognizability of their transformations have been demonstrated in listening tests with people possessing a wide range of musical experience and listening skills). How then, we have to ask, does the serial method of musical organization impart coherence to works in which the row can scarcely be heard? If we do hear such works as coherent, is it because of the serial method's "replacement of the structural differentiations provided formerly by tonal harmonies" - or is it because the composer has drawn upon the traditional elements of music - rhythm, melody, harmony, and tone color - to create memorable patterns in exactly the same way as all composers have throughout history? In other words, do serially structured works really owe their effectiveness to that structure? Is it really the source, or at least the primary source, of whatever coherence and impact such works are perceived to possess? Was serialism really the solution - the inevitable solution - to the problem it was invented to solve? Was there even a problem that needed solving? Was serialism _necessary?_

My own belief - which should be obvious if you're still with me - is that serialism was not what Schoenberg said it was, i.e., any sort of equivalent to or replacement for the organizing function of tonality, and that what it really was was an abstract concept for the purpose of patterning tones very limited in its capacity to create the sort of large-scale coherence it was intended to create, and generally dependent on a composer's employment of traditional musical elements - including harmony with its tonal implications - to make up for those limitations. It seems that Schoenberg himself was very conscious of the insufficiency of a strict application of the serial concept, given the freedom with which he utilized his own invention in introducing clear suggestions of tonal relationships in nominally serial works. It's revealing that others took his concept to an extreme that he didn't contemplate, and the notion of total, or integral, serialism - the serialization of all aspects of a work - steps completely outside his original concept, which was a response specifically to a personal crisis involving harmony. Total serialism was an idea unrelated to any similar need, real or imaginary; but if it doesn't carry forward Schoenberg's specific artistic purpose, it does embody - in spades - the grandiosity with which he could generalize his own personal artistic needs to argue that music as a whole needed the "solution" he was offering. What's fascinating is the degree to which he was able to convince a number of gifted composers that his interpretation of history was the correct one, and then the way in which the ideology of serialist supremacy, if it failed to fulfill Schoenberg's excited prediction for German music, came to exert such power over "classical" music through the middle of the twentieth century until the spirit of the times changed and the inevitable reaction set in.

But that's where the sociology of music comes in. And I'm not going there tonight.


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## Guest

Just to be clear, the only notions of 'restriction' that _I _had in mind, and, I think to some extent so did Millionrainbows, were to do with the external control exerted by those in positions of power. The historical avoidance of the use of the tritone, the church objections to polyphony and harmony, for example, and the inevitable influences of the system of patronage are just three 'restrictions' I had in mind.

In other words, the sociology of music.


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## KenOC

Some time back I took an on-line course on "How to write music like Mozart." The course was all about a set of very restrictive rules -- if you understood them and obeyed them, without exception, your music would indeed "sound like" Mozart, however crappy it might be otherwise. Mozart himself obeyed these rules 99% of the time.

This made me re-think the whole concept of "freedom" versus "restriction" in music. Rules are not, in themselves, necessarily bad things!


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## Woodduck

KenOC said:


> Some time back I took an on-line course on "How to write music like Mozart." The course was all about a set of very restrictive rules -- if you understood them and obeyed them, without exception, your music would indeed "sound like" Mozart, however crappy it might be otherwise. Mozart himself obeyed these rules 99% of the time.
> 
> This made me re-think the whole concept of "freedom" versus "restriction" in music. Rules are not, in themselves, necessarily bad things!


Mozart's "rules" were not really rules to him. They were just properties of fine music. They became rules when people started teaching other people to compose "like Mozart."


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## KenOC

Well, some or most were certainly "rules," mostly to do with voice leading and species counterpoint as formulated by Fux in his _Gradus ad Parnassum_ (1725). Mozart learned from that text with his father's help, and was said to keep a well-thumbed and annotated copy close by throughout his life. Beethoven studied the same text under Albrechtsberger, and Haydn had his own copy. Or so I have read.

"Sonata form" was another matter of course! That more fits the thrust of your post.


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## EdwardBast

KenOC said:


> Well, some or most were certainly "rules," mostly to do with voice leading and species counterpoint as formulated by Fux in his _Gradus ad Parnassum_ (1725). Mozart learned from that text with his father's help, and was said to keep a well-thumbed and annotated copy close by throughout his life. Beethoven studied the same text under Albrechtsberger, and Haydn had his own copy. Or so I have read.
> 
> "Sonata form" was another matter of course! That more fits the thrust of your post.


One _can_ reduce counterpoint to rules, and for people unable to grasp principles, this approach might seem pedagogically pragmatic. But it is better to generate counterpoint from principles, principal among which are independence of line and the primacy of consonance. The numerous little rules about parallel motion and dissonance resolution follow from these. I suspect all of the composers you mention internalized the principles early on and didn't bog down their thinking with rules.


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## SixFootScowl

No poll choice for me:

I don't know what serialism is and am not interested in knowing.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Just how "determined" do you think I would have you think serialism is? And just how "natural" do you think I would have you think tonality is?
> 
> And really, isn't this beside the point I was making, which is that the two things are not comparable or parallel, and therefore are not opposites? It was your bringing up Haydn, and then MacLeod, who pushed me to mention tonality in the first place. The only thing they have in common is that they are ways of organizing music. Tonal music can make use of serial techniques, can it not? Atonal music does not have to do so. Tonality is not the issue. I was only talking about _why_ it is not the issue - why serialism shouldn't be thought of as an equivalent or a replacement for tonality: because the two things are _different kinds _of things. I don't know how to make it any clearer.


Oh, I was just responding to the general characterization of serial music and composers as being 'all about control.' There's definitely a lot of wiggle room in serialism, i.e., it hasn't got a general set of axioms or factors which 'regulate' it, as tonality does. Perhaps it never will; maybe it is inherently a more cerebral manifestation of music as being in the Quadrivium, which doesn't bother me.


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## millionrainbows

KenOC said:


> I absolutely challenge the idea of "the progression of music." If music were progressing, how likely would it be that the three most popular composers were all dead by almost 200 years ago? Or is the value of music independent of its appreciation by listeners?


That view works if we see music and art as entertainment. Lasting popularity has little to do with the development of musical language. This idea that "popular equals lasting value" in music or art is really utilitarian at its core; the idea that art should serve some sort of entertainment or socially redeeming purpose.

Theoretical physics is not subject to this sort of criterion; why should the language of music, as seen by the Greeks as part of the Quadrivium, along with astronomy, math, and geometry? Poetry and the arts were separate.

This is the problem; as long as music is seen strictly as an 'art' form, while ignoring its nature as physical sound (physics, acoustics) and its geometric and mathematical aspects (triads expressed as ratios, division of the octave into 12 parts, frequencies), then you're correct.

But you are commenting in the wrong area, because many composers are aware of this other dimension which you seem unable to acknowledge or grapple with, stopping at Beethoven, presumably.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> ...if you're making a comparison between 'tonality' and 'serialism,' I'm sure you realize that the two things are not comparable.


But to understand either, we must compare them for their differences, in order to define each more clearly for what it is.



Woodduck said:


> Serialism is an invented technique for imposing order on tones. It is not a fundamental aspect of the way music is perceived and felt as orderly and meaningful, nor could it ever have arisen and evolved from anything in the nature of sound or the perception of it.


Serialism, like all music, is about meaningful patterns. Schoenberg derived the row idea from Brahms, and the idea of motivic development. Since it uses intervals, which are heard by the ears, it is natural in the sense that its ideas are ultimately realised as sounds. Serialism can also go in the direction of harmonic sound, as George Perle has done, and as Schoenberg was doing in certain works, using hexads as harmonic material.



Woodduck said:


> My discussion of the subject was not about serialism's legitimacy as a technique - any technique may have its uses - but about what it meant in the 20th century, sociologically and psychologically, for that technique to be 1.) taken to the extreme of attempting to govern all the elements of an art ('total' or 'integral' serialism)...


I've been complaining in other threads about how serialism, especially Schoenberg's brand, was not defined enough; that it left too much 'undefined' as general axioms, an area where tonality has an advantage, since many of its mechanisms are self-explanatory, and reflexive in their operation.



Woodduck said:


> 2.)...propounded, by people speaking in aggressive and messianic tones, as historically necessary and even as rendering music of the past obsolete...


Well, look where that got Schoenberg: forced out of his home country, to become an underpaid professor at UCLA, playing ping-pong with George Gershwin, and wondering what happened.



Woodduck said:


> ...3.) accepted dogmatically by the musical establishment as the essence of musical modernity and progress...


What 'musical establishment' do you mean, Yale or Harvard, where academics have little influence over music at large? Popular music, and movie soundtracks are what people at large are interested in, not Milton Babbitt. So what if it's art?



Woodduck said:


> ...and 4.) effectively enforced in academia as virtually the only acceptable approach to composition.


Like I said, academia, and art, are irrelevant to 15-year-old girls, who are really the main consumers of music in America.



Woodduck said:


> All of this has been amply documented, and since I am a product of the 20th century whose formative years overlapped the years of serialist hegemony, I'm interested in knowing what it says about Western society of that era and about human nature in general. There's always a danger of overreaching in trying to interpret art in this way, but better to overreach than not to inquire at all.


It appears we are at the end of an era...



Woodduck said:


> The meaning of common practice harmony as a reflection of society is a subject worth this sort of inquiry. But just as tonality, at any stage of its evolution, it is not a parallel phenomenon to a technique like serialism, its fundamental position in the music of its time is not a phenomenon parallel to the invention and rise to power of serialism, its bid for total control over the methods and materials of music, its grip on the musical thinking of its era, the stridently messianic and authoritarian posturing of its proponents, and their seizing control of institutions having the power to determine who gets taught what and what gets a hearing.


Yes, that's correct; Frank Sinatra is tonal music, and he wins.



Woodduck said:


> It's hard to know what to say to people who can't, or would rather not, discern the philosophical and psychological underpinnings of this phenomenon, and how uncomfortably these relate to some of the darker aspects of 20th-century society manifesting themselves during the same period.


Hey. that's art. Sometimes it's dark.



Woodduck said:


> In pointing to them I am immediately assumed by some to be declaring Schoenberg and Boulez the moral equivalent of Hitler and Stalin. This is just too silly to respond to directly, and would be offensive if I were of a mind to be offended. I'm assuming it isn't an assumption you're making.


The "piles of bodies" to "piles of manuscript paper" analogy does not bolster your case.



Woodduck said:


> Progress and historical necessity, rationalism and scientism, the triumph of technology (technique), messianic rhetoric, authoritarianism, control of institutions - who would think, looking at those ideas, that the subject was _music?_ But they all fit the dominant musical ideology and practice of the age of serialism. I know of nothing like it in the realm of art.


Social control and music? Who would have ever thought there was a connection (sarcasm). Flower power, disco, etc: it's all social control to an extent.


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## Grizzled Ghost

Actually I think the "piles of bodies" to "piles of manuscript paper" analogy DOES bolster his case because piles of bodies and piles of paper are totally different phenomena.

Otherwise, carry on!


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## Grizzled Ghost

millionrainbows said:


> This is the problem; as long as music is seen strictly as an 'art' form, while ignoring its nature as physical sound (physics, acoustics) and its geometric and mathematical aspects (triads expressed as ratios, division of the octave into 12 parts, frequencies), then you're correct.


My music goes up to 13.









Does anyone seriously think that 12-tone as opposed to say 15-tone or whatever is some sign of musical or intellectual progress? If so, please explain, because to me 12 seems quite arbitrary.


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## millionrainbows

Grizzled Ghost said:


> My music goes up to 13.
> 
> View attachment 73023
> 
> 
> Does anyone seriously think that 12-tone as opposed to say 15-tone or whatever is some sign of musical or intellectual progress? If so, please explain, because to me 12 seems quite arbitrary.


No, what I mean is there are two approaches: triad-based harmonic tonality, where the division of the octave is IV and V (4 and 5), and geometric thinking, where the division is 6, which is symmetrical (geometrically) but has less to to with sonority or harmonic consonance, since a tritone (division at 6) is a dissonant interval.

Remember, tonality is essentially 7 notes.

It's later that it got more chromatic, approaching the full 12-notes. This makes it less tonal, and more like serial thinking, since all 12 notes are involved. You can't have strong tonality with 12 notes. In this sense, tonality (chromatic) is very comparable to serialism, since all 12 notes are in circulation all the time, contrary to what Woodduck says.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> ...serialism is intended to function, in some basic way, the way tonality functioned in giving music "structural differentiations" - i. e., form. Schoenberg had run into the difficulty, in his early atonal works, that the harmonies of such music were not guided by any overarching structural concepts such as tonal music had generated over the centuries, any basic procedural premises from which ideas of formal development could evolve. In tonal music, hierarchies of relationships between notes of the scale and harmonies rooted in them, and the relationships between tonal plateaus or "keys" derived from those hierarchies, had provided both a sense of dynamic movement and a foundation for large-scale structures. Seeing that atonal harmony had no such basis for generating dynamic and lucid structures, Schoenberg knew that if he wanted to compose harmonic music of a dimension and scale comparable to tonal music he would need to come up with a new principle to underlie and govern his procedures. Thus, his twelve-tone technique was intended to duplicate the basic function of tonality - in effect, to serve as a replacement for it. But does it?


What you are calling 'atonal' or 'free atonality' was a continuation of extreme chromaticism, where tonality was so weakened that it no longer had the _"hierarchies of relationships between notes of the scale and harmonies rooted in them"_*(this has reached the area of 12-note chromaticism, not 7-note diatonicism)*_ and the relationships between tonal plateaus or "keys" derived from those hierarchies," _*(there's no key areas or plateaus in a constantly changing, seething morass of root movements)* and had no definite _"dynamic movement"_ either* (all 12 notes are in circulation, there is really no goal)*; late tonality became a seething morass of root movements with so many cross-meanings and double-meanings that "function" and "harmonic dynamism" became essentially meaningless.

Tonality is a matter of degree, and does not adhere to a strict heirarchy, as is demonstrated when it breaks down into chromaticism and free atonality. It was a short step from there to serialism.


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## Grizzled Ghost

millionrainbows said:


> What you are calling 'atonal' or 'free atonality' was a continuation of extreme chromaticism, where tonality was so weakened that it no longer had the _"hierarchies of relationships between notes of the scale and harmonies rooted in them"_*(this has reached the area of 12-note chromaticism, not 7-note diatonicism)*_ and the relationships between tonal plateaus or "keys" derived from those hierarchies," _*(there's no key areas or plateaus in a constantly changing, seething morass of root movements)* and had no definite _"dynamic movement"_ either* (all 12 notes are in circulation, there is really no goal)*; late tonality became a seething morass of root movements with so many cross-meanings and double-meanings that "function" and "harmonic dynamism" became essentially meaningless.
> 
> Tonality is a matter of degree, and does not adhere to a strict heirarchy, as is demonstrated when it breaks down into chromaticism and free atonality. It was a short step from there to serialism.


Someday I may understand that... but not today!

It seems to me the only reason why 12-tone systems are even discussed is because someone a few hundred years ago decided to put 12 keys on the keyboard between each octave.

I can imagine ol' JS Bach inheriting a keyboard with 12 keys per octave and figuring out various ways of implementing different do-re-mi systems, paving the way towards major and minor key systems along with corresponding musical notation conventions.

Of course 19th century composers increasingly bent the rules and some later composers chose to throw away the rules altogether. But it seems to me just an historical accident that Bach started out with a 12 key keyboard in the first place.

I'm revealing my ignorance here, but am happy to receive enlightenment! No doubt there is a rich and fascinating history behind the origins of the modern keyboard.


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## EdwardBast

millionrainbows said:


> No, what I mean is there are two approaches: triad-based harmonic tonality, where the division of the octave is IV and V (4 and 5), and geometric thinking, where the division is 6, which is symmetrical (geometrically) but has less to to with sonority or harmonic consonance, since a tritone (division at 6) is a dissonant interval.


This is a false dichotomy. Why do you think division into 2 parts is somehow geometric while division into proportions of 3/2 is not? That is simply arbitrary.



millionrainbows said:


> Remember, tonality is essentially 7 notes.


This is meaningless reductionism. The standard scales have seven notes. The number of notes involved in a tonal hierarchy of any individual piece does not have this restriction.



millionrainbows said:


> It's later that it got more chromatic, approaching the full 12-notes. This makes it less tonal, and more like serial thinking, since all 12 notes are involved. You can't have strong tonality with 12 notes.


Of course one can have strong tonality with 12 notes. It was and is done all the time.



millionrainbows said:


> In this sense, tonality (chromatic) is very comparable to serialism, since all 12 notes are in circulation all the time, contrary to what Woodduck says.


This is nonsense. Chromatic tonality has nothing to do with serialism, historically or theoretically.


----------



## EdwardBast

millionrainbows said:


> But to understand either, we must compare them for their differences, in order to define each more clearly for what it is.


Incorrect. Explaining serialism in enough detail to practice it or analyze it in no way requires any reference to tonality.



millionrainbows said:


> Serialism, like all music, is about meaningful patterns. Schoenberg derived the row idea from Brahms, and the idea of motivic development.


Whatever sense Schoenberg might or might not have believed serialism related to the music of Brahms, any actual theoretical connection is vague to the point of meaninglessness.

Try as I might, I cannot process the rest of your rejoinders as a meaningful response to the issues Woodduck raised.



millionrainbows said:


> Since it uses intervals, which are heard by the ears, it is natural in the sense that its ideas are ultimately realised as sounds. Serialism can also go in the direction of harmonic sound, as George Perle has done, and as Schoenberg was doing in certain works, using hexads as harmonic material.
> 
> I've been complaining in other threads about how serialism, especially Schoenberg's brand, was not defined enough; that it left too much 'undefined' as general axioms, an area where tonality has an advantage, since many of its mechanisms are self-explanatory, and reflexive in their operation.
> 
> Well, look where that got Schoenberg: forced out of his home country, to become an underpaid professor at UCLA, playing ping-pong with George Gershwin, and wondering what happened.
> 
> What 'musical establishment' do you mean, Yale or Harvard, where academics have little influence over music at large? Popular music, and movie soundtracks are what people at large are interested in, not Milton Babbitt. So what if it's art?
> 
> Like I said, academia, and art, are irrelevant to 15-year-old girls, who are really the main consumers of music in America.
> 
> It appears we are at the end of an era...
> 
> Yes, that's correct; Frank Sinatra is tonal music, and he wins.
> 
> Hey. that's art. Sometimes it's dark.
> 
> The "piles of bodies" to "piles of manuscript paper" analogy does not bolster your case.
> 
> Social control and music? Who would have ever thought there was a connection (sarcasm). Flower power, disco, etc: it's all social control to an extent.


----------



## EdwardBast

millionrainbows said:


> What you are calling 'atonal' or 'free atonality' was a continuation of extreme chromaticism, where tonality was so weakened that it no longer had the _"hierarchies of relationships between notes of the scale and harmonies rooted in them"_


*

This is fallacious in that it grants agency to abstract concepts like "tonality" and "chromaticism." Tonality was not weakened, whatever that is supposed to mean. If you mean it was manifested less strongly in the work of certain composers, then say so and say to whom you are referring. There is no necessary connection between chromaticism and tonality. As much chromaticism as one wishes can be accommodated by tonality, depending on how it is used. Without citing particular works and styles, this is just a cloud of vague verbiage.



millionrainbows said:



(there's no key areas or plateaus in a constantly changing, seething morass of root movements) and had no definite "dynamic movement" either (all 12 notes are in circulation, there is really no goal); late tonality became a seething morass of root movements with so many cross-meanings and double-meanings that "function" and "harmonic dynamism" became essentially meaningless.

Click to expand...

Late tonality did not become anything at all. It is not an agent capable of "becoming." All 12 tones being in circulation (another foggy term) has nothing to do with whether or not a work or passage has a goal or whether tonal function and harmonic dynamism are present or meaningful. Once again, bandying about unspecific terms like tonality and other poorly defined constructions (e.g. "seething morass of root movements") unrelated to any actual music only results in virtually content free statements.



millionrainbows said:



Tonality is a matter of degree, and does not adhere to a strict heirarchy, as is demonstrated when it breaks down into chromaticism and free atonality. It was a short step from there to serialism.

Click to expand...

Tonality doesn't break down; Composers write music with a more or less strong sense of gravitation around a particular center. These are compositional choices, not mysterious, self-directed historical phenomena with a life of their own. There is no relation between free atonality and serialism and no meaningful sense in which one is a short or long step from the other. They are simply unrelated phenomena.*


----------



## millionrainbows

EdwardBast said:


> ...abstract concepts like "tonality" and "chromaticism." Tonality was not weakened, whatever that is supposed to mean. If you mean it was manifested less strongly in the work of certain composers, then say so and say to whom you are referring.





EdwardBast said:


> There is no necessary connection between chromaticism and tonality. As much chromaticism as one wishes can be accommodated by tonality, depending on how it is used.





EdwardBast said:


> All 12 tones being in circulation (another foggy term) has nothing to do with whether or not a work or passage has a goal or whether tonal function and harmonic dynamism are present or meaningful.





EdwardBast said:


> ...unspecific terms like tonality and other poorly defined constructions (e.g. "seething morass of root movements") unrelated to any actual music only results in virtually content free statements.





EdwardBast said:


> There is no relation between free atonality and serialism and no meaningful sense in which one is a short or long step from the other. They are simply unrelated phenomena.


Ok, here are the specifics.

Tonality is determined by harmonic content. This is usually in the form of a scale.

Pentatonic scales are "more tonal" than 7-note diatonic major scales, because there is less redundancy, and in this case, no tritone. Tonality is determined as much by what notes are present as by what notes are not present. The more notes (approaching 12), the more redundancy, hence, less clarity, more ambiguity, and "less sense of tonality."

The following material presented here is from Howard Hanson's "Harmonic Materials of Modern Music".

_The Projection of the Fifth

As we all know, going around the circle of fifths yields all twelve notes before repeating. Therefore, there is a progression into chromaticism that is visible in this process.

First, some nomenclature: 
p=perfect fifth (or fourth) 
m=major third (minor sixth)
n=minor third (major sixth)
s=major second (minor seventh)
d=minor second (major seventh)
t=augmented fourth, diminished fifth

"Projection": the building of sonorities or scales by superimposing a series of similar intervals one above the other.

Beginning with C, we add G, then D, to produce the triad C-G-D, or reduced to an octave, or its "melodic projection", C-D-G. Numerically, in terms of 1/2 steps, 2-5. In terms of total interval content, using the nomenclature above: p2 s.

Next, we add A to the stack, forming the tetrad C-G-D-A, reduced melodically to C-D-G-A. Numerically, 2-5-2. Interval content: p3 n s2. 
The minor third appears for the first time.

Next, pentad C-G-D-A-E, reduced to C-D-E-G-A, recognizable as the pentatonic scale. The major third appears for the first time. Numerically, 2-2-3-2. Interval analysis: p4 m n2 s3.

The hexad adds B, forming C-G-D-A-E-B, reduced to C-D-E-G-A-B. Numerically: 2-2-3-2-2. Interval content: p5 m2 n3 s4 d. 
For the first time, the dissonant minor second (or major seventh) appears.

Continuing, we add F# to get the heptad C-G-D-A-E-B-F#, reduced as C-D-E-F#-G-A-B. Here the tritone appears; also, this is the first scale which in its melodic projection contains no interval larger than a major second; i.e., look, ma, no gaps. It contains all six basic intervals for the first time in our series. 
Numerically: 1-1-2-2-1-2-2. Intervals: p6 m3 n4 s5 d2 t.

Octad: Add C#, yielding C-C#-D-E-F#-G-A-B. Numerically, 1-1-2-2-1-2-2. Intervals: p7 m4 n5 s6 d4 t2.

Nonad: Add G#: C-C#-D-E-F#-G-G#-A-B. Numerically, 1-1-2-2-1-1-1-2. Intervals: p8 m6 n6 s7 d6 t3.

The Decad adds D#, yielding C-C#-D-D#-E-F#-G-G#-A-B. 
Numerically, 1-1-1-1-2-1-1-1-2. Intervals: p9 m8 n8 s8 d8 t4.

Undecad: Add A#. C-C#-D-D#-E-F#-G-G#-A-A#-B. In 1/2 steps, numerically, it is 1-1-1-1-2-1-1-1-1-1. Interval content: p10 m10 n10 s10 d10 t5.

The last one, the duodecad, adds the last note, E#. C-C#-D-D#-E-E#-F#-G-G#-A-A#-B. 
Numerically: 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1. 
Interval content: p12 m12 n12 s12 d12 t6.

Note the overall progression:
doad: p
triad: p2 s
tetrad: p3 n s2
pentad: p4 m n2 s3
hexad: p5 m2 n3 s4 d
heptad: p6 m3 n4 s5 d2 t 
octad: p7 m4 n5 s6 d4 t2
nonad: p8 m6 n6 s7 d6 t3
decad: p9 m8 n8 s8 d8 t4
undecad: p10 m10 n10 s10 d10 t5
duodecad: p12 m12 n12 s12 d12 t6

What can be noted is the affinity of the perfect fifth and the major second, since the projection of one fifth upon another always produces the concomitant interval of a major second; 
The relatively greater importance of the minor third over the major third; the late arrival of the minor second, and lastly, the tritone.

Each new progression adds one new interval, plus adding one more to those already present; but beyond seven tones, no new intervals can be added. In addition to this loss of new material, there is also a gradual decrease in the difference of the quantitative formation. 
In the octad, the same number of major thirds & minor seconds; In the nonad, same number of maj thirds, min thirds, and min seconds. In the decad, an equal number of maj/min thirds and seconds.
When 11 and 12 are reached, the only difference is the number of tritones.

So the sound of a sonority, whether it be harmony or melody, depends on what is present, but also on what is not present. 
The pentatonic sounds as it does because it contains mainly perfect fifths, and also maj seconds, minor thirds, and one major third, but also because it does not contain the minor second or tritone.

As sonorities get projected beyond the six-range, they tend to lose their individuality.

This is probably the greatest argument against the rigorous use of atonal theory in which all 12 notes are used in a single melodic or harmonic pattern. These constructs begin to lose contrast, and a monochromatic effect emerges.

Each scale discussed here can have as many versions as there are notes in the scale. The seven-tone scale has seven versions, beginning on C, D, E, and so forth. These "versions" should not be confused with involutions of the same scale.

What has the projection of a fifth revealed to us?

Quoting Hanson: "Since, as has been previously stated, all seven-tone scales contain all of the six basic intervals, and since, as additional tones are added, the resulting scales become increasingly similar in their component parts, the student's best opportunity for the study of different types of tone relationship lies in the six-tone combinations, which offer the greatest number of scale types."

_


----------



## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Tonality is determined by harmonic content. This is usually in the form of a scale.
> 
> Pentatonic scales are "more tonal" than 7-note diatonic major scales, because there is less redundancy, and in this case, no tritone. Tonality is determined as much by what notes are present as by what notes are not present. The more notes (approaching 12), the more redundancy, hence, less clarity, more ambiguity, and "less sense of tonality."


I'm not sure I understand this, I'm uncomfortable with it, and I suspect I disagree. I wish I could be sure.

The statement "tonality is determined by harmonic content" is ambiguous. Every word in it is open to multiple interpretations. You go on to use the word "redundancy," which I've never seen used in reference to tonality and which brings nothing to mind when I think of tonal music. I'm awash in a sea of abstractions here. Can you bring them down to earth? Meanwhile...

Are you saying that the pentatonic scale is "more tonal" than the diatonic scale because, conceived harmonically, it's more static - "stuck" on a tonic chord, so to speak - and doesn't allow for ambiguous harmonies (the tritone) and modulation? I don't see how that makes music composed on the pentatonic scale necessarily more tonal than music composed on the diatonic scale. In fact, the absence of a leading-tone-to-tonic relationship and a hierarchy of keys makes pentatonic music, to me, _less_ strongly tonal, because the more complex hierarchy of diatonic music allows composers to create structures which generate greater tonal gravitational force, of which pentatonic music, as I hear it, possesses little. I would say further that the addition of semitones - chromaticism - can heighten the tensions of tonal feeling even further, which is just the opposite of your assertion that the more notes there are in the scale, the less the sense of tonality. Chromaticism can certainly generate ambiguity with respect to the perceived direction of tonal gravitation, weakening any clear sense of direction, but "ambiguity" in harmony is itself a concept meaningful only in a tonal context. In this sense the classic crucible for the supposed "breakdown" of tonality in Western music, the prelude to _Tristan und Isolde_, is as intensely tonal a piece as has ever been written, exploring the possibilities of tonal harmony in a manner that plays powerfully with our expectations - expectations created by tonality and Wagner's mastery of it. It's no coincidence that the dramatic theme of the opera is insatiable desire, sustained through every chromatic device the composer could imagine over several hours and finally resolved in an ecstasy of diatonicism. It's pretty obvious that Wagner could not have managed such an apotheosis of tonality with the pentatonic scale!


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## arpeggio

I have been reading a research study that was performed at University of Southern California that supports the notion that tonal music is more "natural" than serial music. I have been hesitate to mention anything about it because it also supports the notion that disco music is more "natural" than Bach, Mozart, Beethoven or Brahms.

This study is real scientific research that included lab studies on the type of music that is the most accessible to the human brain. It undermines many of the biases that we have, including some of my own. Instead or trying to learn from it, many members would attack it without any real documentation to support their positions. I have shared it with some of my friends here at Talk Classical. One of them feels that some its findings would be to provocative.


----------



## Woodduck

arpeggio said:


> I have been reading a research study that was performed at University of Southern California that supports the notion that tonal music is more "natural" than serial music. I have been hesitate to mention anything about it because it also supports the notion that disco music is more "natural" than Bach, Mozart, Beethoven or Brahms.
> 
> This study is real scientific research that included lab studies on the type of music that is the most accessible to the human brain. It undermines many of the biases that we have, including some of my own. Instead or trying to learn from it, many members would attack it without any real documentation to support their positions. *I have shared it with some of my friends here at Talk Classical. One of them feels that some its findings would be to provocative.*


Awww, c'mon! Don't be shy!

I'll bet most TC members are strong enough (if they're even interested) to survive the shock of discovering whether some study says that disco, Mozart, or Webern is more "natural."

Heck, if you'd be willing to unclassify that information, I'd be willing to reveal whether it was Schubert or Xenakis the little people were playing aboard the UFO the night I was abducted.


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## Guest

arpeggio said:


> I have shared it with some of my friends here at Talk Classical.


I must have missed your PM!



arpeggio said:


> I have been reading a research study that was performed at University of Southern California that supports the notion that tonal music is more "natural" than serial music. [...]This study is real scientific research that included lab studies on the type of music that is the most accessible to the human brain.


So let's consider the proposition - before we get to the research - that 'natural' and 'accessible' are in some way comparable.

2+2=4 is more accessible than e=mc[SUP]2[/SUP]...does it make it more natural?


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## arpeggio

One of the points that has been raised in these discussions is many of us belittle those who prefer tonal music.

Many would consider some of the findings in this research to be provocative and irrelevant. It primarily deals with popular music and the American consumer. I read about it in the Washington Post. The report appeared in the _Journal of Consumer Psychology_. It seems to me many of its findings could be related to other genres of music.

If I posted this report I am certain that some would accuse me of trying to belittle those who dislike atonal music.

It would blow apart many members pet theories. I know it has several of mine.

I am not in the mood to be accused of being a bullying elitist troll, again. In this forum I have been accused of being a bullying elitist. I really do not know how to respond to such accusations. I try not to be.

Anyways I really want to study it some more before I send it to anyone else.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> I'm not sure I understand this, I'm uncomfortable with it, and I suspect I disagree. I wish I could be sure.
> 
> The statement "tonality is determined by harmonic content" is ambiguous.


The chart I provided, which details harmonic content, is not ambiguous. It is very specific.



Woodduck said:


> Every word in it is open to multiple interpretations.


You are certainly allowed your own.



Woodduck said:


> You go on to use the word "redundancy," which I've never seen used in reference to tonality and which brings nothing to mind when I think of tonal music. I'm awash in a sea of abstractions here. Can you bring them down to earth? Meanwhile...


You can't get more specific than a chart which details every intervallic relationship in a scale.



Woodduck said:


> Are you saying that the pentatonic scale is "more tonal" than the diatonic scale because, conceived harmonically, it's more static - "stuck" on a tonic chord, so to speak - and doesn't allow for ambiguous harmonies (the tritone) and modulation?


Yes, and it 'reinforces' the tone center. If you see this as being 'stuck,' then don't listen to Indian ragas or Terry Riley.



Woodduck said:


> I don't see how that makes music composed on the pentatonic scale necessarily more tonal than music composed on the diatonic scale. In fact, the absence of a leading-tone-to-tonic relationship and a hierarchy of keys makes pentatonic music, to me, _less_ strongly tonal, because the more complex hierarchy of diatonic music allows composers to create structures which generate greater tonal gravitational force, of which pentatonic music, as I hear it, possesses little.


This is the problem: I'm using the general definition of tonality, which means a tone center, and you are using it to reference the major/minor system we know as tonality. You are citing 'tonal rhetorical procedures' which reinforce 'tonality' as you define it.

To me, these procedures detract from a* general* sense of tonality, as the definition I am using defines it (see Harvard Dictionary of Music), which means a tone center, not the major/minor system we call 'tonality.'



Woodduck said:


> I would say further that the addition of semitones - chromaticism - can heighten the tensions of tonal feeling even further, which is just the opposite of your assertion that the more notes there are in the scale, the less the sense of tonality. Chromaticism can certainly generate ambiguity with respect to the perceived direction of tonal gravitation, weakening any clear sense of direction, but "ambiguity" in harmony is itself a concept meaningful only in a tonal context. In this sense the classic crucible for the supposed "breakdown" of tonality in Western music, the prelude to _Tristan und Isolde_, is as intensely tonal a piece as has ever been written, exploring the possibilities of tonal harmony in a manner that plays powerfully with our expectations - expectations created by tonality and Wagner's mastery of it. It's no coincidence that the dramatic theme of the opera is insatiable desire, sustained through every chromatic device the composer could imagine over several hours and finally resolved in an ecstasy of diatonicism. It's pretty obvious that Wagner could not have managed such an apotheosis of tonality with the pentatonic scale!


That's all tonal rhetoric. I'm speaking strictly harmonically, in terms of what sounds are the most stable and inherently, with no 'procedures,' reinforce a tonal center inherently, based soley on the note content.

It can be seen either way. I see it as *purely harmonic,* by the way it sounds to the ear, and you are seeing it it terms of what I call 'tonal rhetoric,' which is cerebral, not purely sensual.

My definition of *tonality* is the most general one (see Harvard Dictionary of Music), which means a tone center, not the major/minor system we call 'tonality.' This is based on pure sound, not thought-constructs or rhetorical baggage which comes after the fact of sound.

For me, the pentatonic scale is more tonal and stable for these reasons:

1.) A major pentatonic scale on C (C-D-E-G-A-C) can be seen as a *subset* of the C major diatonic scale, without the F or B (this is the tritone I mentioned earlier). In traditional tonality, the E-F and B-C can be seen as "tensions" which need resolving, but they do not contribute, in isolation, more of a sense of centeredness around C; in fact, they are _dissonances_ which, in a strictly harmonic sense, in relation to C, distract from the tone-centeredness, or tonality.

2.)The ideas of 'tension' and 'resolution' are 'tonal rhetoric.'

'Tension' and 'resolution' are essentially melodic procedures, which must occur in succession, and therefore must take place in time. If taken as strictly harmonic members of a scale (harmonic verticality sounded simultaneously), *F* and *B* distract from the harmonic stability; i.e. they create tension and dissonance.

The pentatonic, by comparison as a vertical harmonic entity sounded simultaneously, is more stable by comparison.

Of course, this is all conditional on what you prefer. If 'tonality' to you means a 'restless struggle' between tension and resolution, then that's in keeping with the Western aesthetic.

If you prefer harmonic stability with no tension, then no tensions or dissonances are necessary. I think each apoproach has analogues when applied to different world-views. I'm coming from more of a 'world' perspective, including jazz.

Of course *Howard Hanson,* who is where these ideas came from, is able to use them without bias, being 'harmonically objective' in his exposition. I admire his objective thought.


----------



## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> I'm using the general definition of tonality, which means a tone center, and you are using it to reference the major/minor system we know as tonality. You are citing 'tonal rhetorical procedures' which reinforce 'tonality' as you define it.
> 
> To me, these procedures detract from a* general* sense of tonality, as the definition I am using defines it (see Harvard Dictionary of Music), which means a tone center, not the major/minor system we call 'tonality.'
> 
> I'm speaking strictly harmonically, in terms of what sounds are the most stable and inherently, with no 'procedures,' reinforce a tonal center inherently, based soley on the note content.
> 
> It can be seen either way. I see it as *purely harmonic,* by the way it sounds to the ear, and you are seeing it it terms of what I call 'tonal rhetoric,' which is cerebral, not purely sensual.
> 
> My definition of *tonality* is the most general one (see Harvard Dictionary of Music), which means a tone center, not the major/minor system we call 'tonality.' This is based on pure sound, not thought-constructs or rhetorical baggage which comes after the fact of sound.
> 
> For me, the pentatonic scale is more tonal and stable for these reasons:
> 
> 1.) A major pentatonic scale on C (C-D-E-G-A-C) can be seen as a *subset* of the C major diatonic scale, without the F or B (this is the tritone I mentioned earlier). In traditional tonality, the E-F and B-C can be seen as "tensions" which need resolving, but they do not contribute, in isolation, more of a sense of centeredness around C; in fact, they are _dissonances_ which, in a strictly harmonic sense, in relation to C, distract from the tone-centeredness, or tonality.
> 
> 2.)The ideas of 'tension' and 'resolution' are 'tonal rhetoric.'
> 
> 'Tension' and 'resolution' are essentially melodic procedures, which must occur in succession, and therefore must take place in time. If taken as strictly harmonic members of a scale (harmonic verticality sounded simultaneously), *F* and *B* distract from the harmonic stability; i.e. they create tension and dissonance.
> 
> The pentatonic, by comparison as a vertical harmonic entity sounded simultaneously, is more stable by comparison.
> 
> Of course, this is all conditional on what you prefer. If 'tonality' to you means a 'restless struggle' between tension and resolution, then that's in keeping with the Western aesthetic.
> 
> If you prefer harmonic stability with no tension, then no tensions or dissonances are necessary. I think each apoproach has analogues when applied to different world-views. I'm coming from more of a 'world' perspective, including jazz.
> 
> Of course *Howard Hanson,* who is where these ideas came from, is able to use them without bias, being 'harmonically objective' in his exposition. I admire his objective thought.


I will try to explain how I am using the term "tonality."

Tonality - even generally defined, not merely in common practice terms - is a complex phenomenon. It is a phenomenon of _perception_. As such, it is rooted in both the perceiver and the perceived. The thing being perceived - music - is dynamic. It moves. Tonality is an interpretation by the human mind of how certain elements of music - tones - move, and ought to move or want to move, in relation to one another.

Tonality has a basis in acoustical science, but cannot be understood purely as an objective attribute of sounds. Tones and harmonies themselves, being fixed quantities, have no tonality; they have only certain acoustic measurements which contribute to the tonal sense. "Tonality" does not exist until tones and harmonies are heard, and relationships between them sensed and systematized, by the human mind. Tonality is not a physical but a _musical_ phenomenon, and music is not an array of static relationships between tones and chords but a dynamic phenomenon in which those relationships are perceived to change, and the significance of specific tones and chords are perceived to vary, in a musical context. Tonality includes not only what sounds _are_, but what they are _perceived_ to _do_ and to _become_.

It is this dynamic, contextual concept of tonality which causes me to assert that tonality - the perceived tendency of tones and systems of tones to be attracted to, to gravitate toward, to seek resolution in, tonal centers - can actually, in the context of actual music, be _enhanced_ by complexification. "More tonal" need not always mean "more statically at rest on a tonal center." It may also mean "more generative of the feeling of a dynamic force exerted by a tonal center." Whether the music is complex or simple, pentatonic, diatonic, or chromatic, is not the overriding factor that must necessarily determine the listener's sense of the strength of tonality. That depends not only what tones are in the scale being used, but on _how_ those tones are used, and is rooted as much in the structure of human perception, human conceptual function, and human affect, as it is in the acoustical properties of sound.

It appears to me that acoustical characteristics are the only only basis of tonality you acknowledge, or think is important. I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong.


----------



## Guest

Does the fact that an 'A' is not the same 'A' everywhere make a difference? UK and US orchestras usually tune to 440 hz, but in Europe they tune to 432hz...apparently!


----------



## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> I will try to explain how I am using the term "tonality."
> 
> Tonality - even generally defined, not merely in common practice terms - is a complex phenomenon. It is a phenomenon of _perception_. As such, it is rooted in both the perceiver and the perceived. The thing being perceived - music - is dynamic. It moves. Tonality is an interpretation by the human mind of how certain elements of music - tones - move, and ought to move or want to move, in relation to one another.


I don't think a sense of tonality, or tone-centeredness, as I am using the term, is _solely_ dependent on perception in time; it can be perceived, and does the job, as a harmonic phenomenon in itself, as a simultaneous sounding of tones, in isolation, without any other relations except those internal relations in the scale or harmonic entity itself.

For example, if all of the notes of a C major scale are sounded at once, and compared to a major pentatonic subset of that, the pentatonic will sound more sonorous, less dissonant, and reinforces the tone center to a greater degree. This is because 1.) there are fewer notes, and 2.) the interval content of a pentatonic consists of major thirds, major seconds, and fifths, and contains no minor seconds or tritones, as the C major scale does.



Woodduck said:


> Tonality has a basis in acoustical science, but cannot be understood purely as an objective attribute of sounds. Tones and harmonies themselves, being fixed quantities, have no tonality; they have only certain acoustic measurements which contribute to the tonal sense. "Tonality" does not exist until tones and harmonies are heard, and relationships between them sensed and systematized, by the human mind.


Again, I disagree. If you take Hanson's idea of "harmonic redundancy" to its extreme, then one note in isolation is the "ultimate tonality." As the Indian musicians say,_ "All music can be understood from the understanding of a single note."

_Traditional tonality is also dependent on the harmonic content of "one note," in the way it assigns functions to triads within the scale tonality: the fifth is the most prominent harmonic of a note, and this harmonic is given priority in function, as the dominant V. Next, its inversion, the fourth, is seen as the next strongest, the IV or subdominant.

From my blog, *Harmonic Function:*_

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

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

_Quoting *Harry Partch, from Genesis of a New Music:*_

The steps of our scale, and the "functions" of the chords built thereon, are the direct result of interval ratios, all in relation to a "keynote" or unity of 1; the intervals not only have a dissonant/consonant quality determined by their ratio, but also are given a specific scale degree (function) and place in relation to "1" or the Tonic. *This is where all "linear function" originated, and is still manifest as ratios (intervals), which are at the same time, physical harmonic phenomena.

*_The above quote by Harry Partch directly contradicts Woodduck's following statement:



Woodduck said:


> Tonality is not a physical but a _musical_ phenomenon, and music is not an array of static relationships between tones and chords but a dynamic phenomenon in which those relationships are perceived to change, and the significance of specific tones and chords are perceived to vary, in a musical context. Tonality includes not only what sounds _are_, but what they are _perceived_ to _do_ and to _become_.


I think it's a little bit of both, but verticality came first, before any time passed.



Woodduck said:


> It is this dynamic, contextual concept of tonality which causes me to assert that tonality - the perceived tendency of tones and systems of tones to be attracted to, to gravitate toward, to seek resolution in, tonal centers - can actually, in the context of actual music, be _enhanced_ by complexification.


Enhanced, yes, but after the fact. Your assertions all involve "tonal rhetoric" and the passage of time, in a series of relationships. Of course, this is how traditional tonality works; I do not disagree. I'm saying that there is a "harmonic truth" which precedes all of that. As I said, one note establishes a tone center, before anything else occurs.



Woodduck said:


> "More tonal" need not always mean "more statically at rest on a tonal center."


That is true, and I recognize this, and I am flexible enough to acknowledge this. But "tone centeredness" can be traced all the way back to a single, "static" note. Your argument is biased towards a sense of traditional tonality, and involves function, and relationships as perceived through time. I'm saying that tonality, as I use it in a general sense (see Harvard Dictionary of Music), is established harmonically. In this general sense, almost all music is tonal.



Woodduck said:


> It may also mean "more generative of the feeling of a dynamic force exerted by a tonal center." Whether the music is complex or simple, pentatonic, diatonic, or chromatic, is not the overriding factor that must necessarily determine the listener's sense of the strength of tonality. That depends not only what tones are in the scale being used, but on _how_ those tones are used, and is rooted as much in the structure of human perception, human conceptual function, and human affect, as it is in the acoustical properties of sound.


I get your point, because as human beings, we exist "in time." Still, tonality as I use the term, is established by the harmonic content, such as a scale, before any horizontal activity has occured. You may see this as simply "sonority," but I see it as establishing a center of perceived tonality, with one note as the reference, in a harmonic hierarchy which occurs instantaneously.



Woodduck said:


> It appears to me that acoustical characteristics are the only only basis of tonality you acknowledge, or think is important. I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong.


No, you are correct about my view, in a certain sense. I see tonality as a primal centeredness, which precedes all other phenomena and relationships. All that is necessary is a single note.

_ "All music can be understood from the understanding of a single note."_


----------



## Woodduck

I don't think a sense of tonality, or tone-centeredness, as I am using the term, is solely dependent on perception in time; it can be perceived, and does the job, as a harmonic phenomenon in itself, as a simultaneous sounding of tones, in isolation, without any other relations except those internal relations in the scale or harmonic entity itself. 

I agree that the perception of harmonics does provide raw material for the content of tonal systems. I don't think I'd use the expression "does the job," since until music starts moving there is no job to do (unless simply enjoying the sound of a note or chord and feeling the fundamentality of the fundamental is a musical experience, which it might be if your definition of music is broad enough).

For example, if all of the notes of a C major scale are sounded at once, and compared to a major pentatonic subset of that, the pentatonic will sound more sonorous, less dissonant, and reinforces the tone center to a greater degree.

What "tone center"? The "root" of a pentatonic mode need not always be the same note. In the set of notes C-D-E-G-A, the first note of the scale might be either C or A; it might even be heard as E or D. These would signify different tonal systems - different modes - using the pentatonic scale, similar to the different modes utilizing the notes of the diatonic scale. A group of tones has no root or "tonic" outside of a hierarchical system which orders and employs it in a certain way. Whether sounding all those notes together is more consonant or more dissonant is irrelevant to establishing tonality.

Traditional tonality is also dependent on the harmonic content of "one note," in the way it assigns functions to triads within the scale tonality: the fifth is the most prominent harmonic of a note, and this harmonic is given priority in function, as the dominant V. Next, its inversion, the fourth, is seen as the next strongest, the IV or subdominant.

Agree, if we're talking about common practice tonality. This is the most obvious bit of evidence for the "naturalness" - or, maybe better, "natural basis" - of the key hierarchy in common practice.

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

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


The simplest and clearest representation of the _acoustic_ - but _only_ the acoustic - basis of our tonal hierarchy.

Your assertions all involve "tonal rhetoric" and the passage of time, in a series of relationships. Of course, this is how traditional tonality works; I do not disagree. I'm saying that there is a "harmonic truth" which precedes all of that. As I said, one note establishes a tone center, before anything else occurs.

I acknowledge this phenomenon. A single note certainly has a "tone center" - i.e., a fundamental - and a hierarchy of relationships among its harmonics. But this is not the same as a "tonal center," which is a functional concept.

Your argument is biased towards a sense of traditional tonality, and involves function, and relationships as perceived through time. I'm saying that tonality, as I use it in a general sense (see Harvard Dictionary of Music), is established harmonically. In this general sense, almost all music is tonal.

I would say, not that tonality is "established harmonically," but that it is "harmonically based." A definition of tonality implied by the statement that "almost all music is tonal" merely because it consists of tones which possess a fundamental pitch and an array of harmonics seems to me of limited usefulness for a discussion of the scope and meaning of tonality. This is really the basis of my dislike of using the term in a purely acoustical sense, divorced from its actual function in music. On the purely acoustic foundation of tonal perception, I can't disagree with you at all, at least in the present state of my understanding of the physical phenomena involved. But I believe there are other foundations of tonality as a _musical_ phenomenon, foundations which have nothing to do with acoustical properties and were, evolutionarily and historically, equally determinative in the human need to develop tonality as a system for the dynamic, functional ordering of tones in time (whether we're talking about common practice or any other melodic or harmonic system). Music is not just sound, form is not identical to substance, and a "fundamental" becomes a "tonic" only by serving the expressive needs of the human being, needs which are cognitive, emotional, and even physiological (there are reasons for thinking that all three are involved). Acoustical phenomena give us, at least in part, the "what" of tonality, but we have to look much farther for the "how" and the "why."


----------



## EdwardBast

millionrainbows said:


> Ok, here are the specifics.
> 
> Tonality is determined by harmonic content. This is usually in the form of a scale.


Harmonic content in the form of a scale??? This has no concrete meaning whatever.



millionrainbows said:


> Pentatonic scales are "more tonal" than 7-note diatonic major scales, because there is less redundancy, and in this case, no tritone. Tonality is determined as much by what notes are present as by what notes are not present. The more notes (approaching 12), the more redundancy, hence, less clarity, more ambiguity, and "less sense of tonality."


This peculiar discussion is wrong, when it is not nonsense, but it is essentially nonsense. The tritone is traditionally thought to be the defining interval of tonality. The notion that redundancy = less clarity = less sense of tonality is arbitrary. The number of notes in use, as I have stated before, has no particular or necessary relationship to a sense of tonal centeredness. You seem to have just made this up for no purpose I can discern and without providing any rational discussion of the issue and without relating it to any real music or style.

Frankly, I fail to see any point in your excerpts from Hanson and the tedious enumeration of what happens when one projects a perfect fifth. This is perfectly obvious, elementary, and has nothing to do with any substantive issue under discussion in this thread. It is like kudzu, for which the only reasonable cure is a herd of goats.



millionrainbows said:


> The following material presented here is from Howard Hanson's "Harmonic Materials of Modern Music".
> 
> _The Projection of the Fifth
> 
> As we all know, going around the circle of fifths yields all twelve notes before repeating. Therefore, there is a progression into chromaticism that is visible in this process.
> 
> First, some nomenclature:
> p=perfect fifth (or fourth)
> m=major third (minor sixth)
> n=minor third (major sixth)
> s=major second (minor seventh)
> d=minor second (major seventh)
> t=augmented fourth, diminished fifth
> 
> "Projection": the building of sonorities or scales by superimposing a series of similar intervals one above the other.
> 
> Beginning with C, we add G, then D, to produce the triad C-G-D, or reduced to an octave, or its "melodic projection", C-D-G. Numerically, in terms of 1/2 steps, 2-5. In terms of total interval content, using the nomenclature above: p2 s.
> 
> Next, we add A to the stack, forming the tetrad C-G-D-A, reduced melodically to C-D-G-A. Numerically, 2-5-2. Interval content: p3 n s2.
> The minor third appears for the first time.
> 
> Next, pentad C-G-D-A-E, reduced to C-D-E-G-A, recognizable as the pentatonic scale. The major third appears for the first time. Numerically, 2-2-3-2. Interval analysis: p4 m n2 s3.
> 
> The hexad adds B, forming C-G-D-A-E-B, reduced to C-D-E-G-A-B. Numerically: 2-2-3-2-2. Interval content: p5 m2 n3 s4 d.
> For the first time, the dissonant minor second (or major seventh) appears.
> 
> Continuing, we add F# to get the heptad C-G-D-A-E-B-F#, reduced as C-D-E-F#-G-A-B. Here the tritone appears; also, this is the first scale which in its melodic projection contains no interval larger than a major second; i.e., look, ma, no gaps. It contains all six basic intervals for the first time in our series.
> Numerically: 1-1-2-2-1-2-2. Intervals: p6 m3 n4 s5 d2 t.
> 
> Octad: Add C#, yielding C-C#-D-E-F#-G-A-B. Numerically, 1-1-2-2-1-2-2. Intervals: p7 m4 n5 s6 d4 t2.
> 
> Nonad: Add G#: C-C#-D-E-F#-G-G#-A-B. Numerically, 1-1-2-2-1-1-1-2. Intervals: p8 m6 n6 s7 d6 t3.
> 
> The Decad adds D#, yielding C-C#-D-D#-E-F#-G-G#-A-B.
> Numerically, 1-1-1-1-2-1-1-1-2. Intervals: p9 m8 n8 s8 d8 t4.
> 
> Undecad: Add A#. C-C#-D-D#-E-F#-G-G#-A-A#-B. In 1/2 steps, numerically, it is 1-1-1-1-2-1-1-1-1-1. Interval content: p10 m10 n10 s10 d10 t5.
> 
> The last one, the duodecad, adds the last note, E#. C-C#-D-D#-E-E#-F#-G-G#-A-A#-B.
> Numerically: 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1.
> Interval content: p12 m12 n12 s12 d12 t6.
> 
> Note the overall progression:
> doad: p
> triad: p2 s
> tetrad: p3 n s2
> pentad: p4 m n2 s3
> hexad: p5 m2 n3 s4 d
> heptad: p6 m3 n4 s5 d2 t
> octad: p7 m4 n5 s6 d4 t2
> nonad: p8 m6 n6 s7 d6 t3
> decad: p9 m8 n8 s8 d8 t4
> undecad: p10 m10 n10 s10 d10 t5
> duodecad: p12 m12 n12 s12 d12 t6
> 
> What can be noted is the affinity of the perfect fifth and the major second, since the projection of one fifth upon another always produces the concomitant interval of a major second;
> The relatively greater importance of the minor third over the major third; the late arrival of the minor second, and lastly, the tritone.
> 
> Each new progression adds one new interval, plus adding one more to those already present; but beyond seven tones, no new intervals can be added. In addition to this loss of new material, there is also a gradual decrease in the difference of the quantitative formation.
> In the octad, the same number of major thirds & minor seconds; In the nonad, same number of maj thirds, min thirds, and min seconds. In the decad, an equal number of maj/min thirds and seconds.
> When 11 and 12 are reached, the only difference is the number of tritones._


----------



## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> I agree that the perception of harmonics does provide raw material for the content of tonal systems. I don't think I'd use the expression "does the job," since until music starts moving there is no job to do (unless simply enjoying the sound of a note or chord and feeling the fundamentality of the fundamental is a musical experience, which it might be if your definition of music is broad enough).


I disagree, because tonality is established harmonically, with the ears, not the brain, so to speak. I mean to say that it is self-explanatory, as a perception of hearing and sound, and is self-evident if you have a good ear.

For example, if all of the notes of a C major scale are sounded at once, and compared to a major pentatonic subset of that, the pentatonic will sound more sonorous, less dissonant, and reinforces the tone center to a greater degree.



Woodduck said:


> What "tone center"? The "root" of a pentatonic mode need not always be the same note. In the set of notes C-D-E-G-A, the first note of the scale might be either C or A; it might even be heard as E or D. These would signify different tonal systems - different modes - using the pentatonic scale, similar to the different modes utilizing the notes of the diatonic scale. A group of tones has no root or "tonic" outside of a hierarchical system which orders and employs it in a certain way. Whether sounding all those notes together is more consonant or more dissonant is irrelevant to establishing tonality.


You're looking at the scale as an abstract entity, as an 'index of possibilities.'

If the pentatonic notes are *actual pitches,* the perceived tone center will be heard harmonically as the *lowest pitch,* and the other notes will be heard in relation to that tone center, just the same way we hear a fundamental and its harmonics.

Traditional tonality is also dependent on the harmonic content of "one note," in the way it assigns functions to triads within the scale tonality: the fifth is the most prominent harmonic of a note, and this harmonic is given priority in function, as the dominant V. Next, its inversion, the fourth, is seen as the next strongest, the IV or subdominant.



Woodduck said:


> Agree, if we're talking about common practice tonality. This is the most obvious bit of evidence for the "naturalness" - or, maybe better, "natural basis" - of the key hierarchy in common practice.


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

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




Woodduck said:


> The simplest and clearest representation of the _acoustic_ - but _only_ the acoustic - basis of our tonal hierarchy.


What else is there? Tonality is sound. All else is intellectual baggage, added later.

Your assertions all involve "tonal rhetoric" and the passage of time, in a series of relationships. Of course, this is how traditional tonality works; I do not disagree. I'm saying that there is a "harmonic truth" which precedes all of that. As I said, one note establishes a tone center, before anything else occurs.




Woodduck said:


> I acknowledge this phenomenon. A single note certainly has a "tone center" - i.e., a fundamental - and a hierarchy of relationships among its harmonics. But this is not the same as a "tonal center," which is a functional concept.


That's fine; "function" fits in with your definition of tonality as our major/minor system.

But don't forget, "function" is inherent, as a relation to the root. Remember the chart above?

Tonality, in the general sense I am using it (see Harvard Dictionary of Music) simply means the perception of a tone center, and I think this is established harmonically, on internally-based harmonic relations, which are verticalities, and require no horizontal activity to accomplish this. The internal relations determine the root functions of triads built on each scale step, as well. It's all given, before anything is done.

Your argument is biased towards a sense of traditional tonality, and involves function, and relationships as perceived through time. I'm saying that tonality, as I use it in a general sense (see Harvard Dictionary of Music), is established harmonically. In this general sense, almost all music is tonal. Also, I would say that all scales have_ inherent function,_ simply due to their construction, in relation to the root.



Woodduck said:


> I would say, not that tonality is "established harmonically," but that it is "harmonically based." A definition of tonality implied by the statement that "almost all music is tonal" merely because it consists of tones which possess a fundamental pitch and an array of harmonics seems to me of limited usefulness for a discussion of the scope and meaning of tonality.


That's the definition of tonality I am using, and it is general, but valid. If you want to discuss tonality outside of that definition, that's up to you.

If you see a general definition of tonality, which includes almost all music from all over the world, as "limited," then it seems to me that you are going to be "limited" to your more narrow definition, which applies to the major/minor system we call Western tonality.

I need a more general, flexible definition that will allow me to assimilate ideas from a wide range of sources, and that is flexible enough to allow me to use it creatively, outside the bounds of Western classical tradition, and even into areas which may not use the 12-note octave division. I also need this general definition to understand Western composers such as Messiaen, who use methods which are non-Western.



Woodduck said:


> This is really the basis of my dislike of using the term in a purely acoustical sense, divorced from its actual function in music. On the purely acoustic foundation of tonal perception, I can't disagree with you at all, at least in the present state of my understanding of the physical phenomena involved. But I believe there are other foundations of tonality as a _musical_ phenomenon, foundations which have nothing to do with acoustical properties and were, evolutionarily and historically, equally determinative in the human need to develop tonality as a system for the dynamic, functional ordering of tones in time (whether we're talking about common practice or any other melodic or harmonic system).


It was a grand evolution through history, wasn't it? So grand, like a huge painting in a museum. I must say, I'm quite impressed.

Now, in the post-modern era, after the debris has settled, we are still left with what we started with: sound.

As far as function, that is inherent, and goes along with the fundamental, as a free bonus. The sounds will tell you what to do, as far as function.



Woodduck said:


> Music is not just sound...


Can I quote you on that?


----------



## Woodduck

Tonality is established harmonically, with the ears, not the brain, so to speak. I mean to say that it is self-explanatory, as a perception of hearing and sound, and is self-evident if you have a good ear.

Tonality is a concept in music, not in physics. It is a creation of the mind, using material perceived through the ear. What is self-evident to a "good ear" is only a fundamental pitch and a harmonic series. A pitch is not yet music; that exists when pitches are strung together in some kind of order, and the kind of order in which a particular pitch (or pitches) is felt to be centrally important in determining the relationships and functions of other pitches is called a system of tonality. Tonal systems, and the scales and modes they utilize, are not all alike, and their correspondences with the harmonic series differ. They are variously influenced by that series, but not bound by it, as is shown by the diversity of scales and modes, and the differing functional hierarchies, in different kinds of music.

I need a more general, flexible definition that will allow me to assimilate ideas from a wide range of sources, and that is flexible enough to allow me to use it creatively, outside the bounds of Western classical tradition, and even into areas which may not use the 12-note octave division. I also need this general definition to understand Western composers such as Messiaen, who use methods which are non-Western.

How is a definition of tonality which merely describes static, unvarying physical relationships more general, flexible, and useful than one which acknowledges the dynamic relationships of tones determined contextually in music? You need to explain how looking at the harmonic series and calling its ratios "tonality" is a necessary basis for "understanding" non-Western music or Messiaen. What do you mean by "understanding"? Is reducing music to its physical components "understanding" it?

If the pentatonic notes are actual pitches, the perceived tone center will be heard harmonically as the lowest pitch, and the other notes will be heard in relation to that tone center, just the same way we hear a fundamental and its harmonics.

We don't always hear the lowest note of a chord as a root or "tonal center." I can strike the notes of a pentatonic scale in various "inversions," and they will suggest different hierarchies to me, sometimes "rooted" in the lowest note, sometimes not - just as, in an actual musical context, a "root" or "center" may be heard in any part of a chord. Yes, if we sound the notes C-D-E-G-A with C at the bottom, we will hear C as a root, because there is a correspondence with the harmonic series. I can also put A at the bottom and hear that as root, but I can put D at the bottom and _not_ hear it as a root. It's nice to notice these things, but then what?

Tonality is sound. All else is intellectual baggage, added later.

Far from it. When musicologists, neurologists, psychologists, anthropologists and evolutionary biologists look at music and ask what tonality is, why it exists, and what it's for, they are not asking about acoustics. They are looking at a profoundly and universally _human_ phenomenon: they are looking not merely at _sounds_, but at how the sounds are _perceived_ and what they _mean_ to the perceiver. Hardly "baggage."

That's the definition of tonality I am using, and it is general, but valid. If you want to discuss tonality outside of that definition, that's up to you.

If you define tonality as a phenomenon of acoustics, there's not much to discuss. It seems that the real discussions take place in your "baggage" compartment.

As far as function, that is inherent, and goes along with the fundamental, as a free bonus. The sounds will tell you what to do, as far as function.

Obviously, what the sounds tell the sitar players of India to do is quite different from what they told Mozart to do. What explanation will the sounds offer should we ask them for one?

Can I quote you on that?

Any time.


----------



## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Tonality is a concept in music, not in physics.


In the most general sense (see Harvard Dictionary of Music), tonality is the perception of a tonal center, which is heard by the ears.



Woodduck said:


> It is a creation of the mind, using material perceived through the ear.


You are contradicting yourself. First you say tonality is not physics, then you say it starts as perception (vibration) which is "created" by the mind. Which one is it?



Woodduck said:


> What is self-evident to a "good ear" is only a fundamental pitch and a harmonic series.


But there is a lot contained in that note and its harmonic relationships. All the functions of tonality are based on this relation of subservient harmonics to "1."



Woodduck said:


> A pitch is not yet music; that exists when pitches are strung together in some kind of order...


LaMont Young and Stockhausen (Stimmung) have written music with single pitches. I don't believe off-the-wall statements about music unless someone has done some homework.



Woodduck said:


> ...the kind of order in which a particular pitch (or pitches) is felt to be centrally important in determining the relationships and functions of other pitches is called a system of tonality.


It's just as true, if not more so, that vertical order of harmonic content, in relation to a single fundamental pitch, is of primary importance in detemining functions and relationships. That's why V (the fifth) is so important in traditional tonality; it is the least dissonant interval, and most prominent (besides unison & octave, of course).



Woodduck said:


> Tonal systems, and the scales and modes they utilize, are not all alike, and their correspondences with the harmonic series differ.


I think it is more productive to my case if we look at the similarities between tonal systems and the scales and modes they utilize.



Woodduck said:


> They are variously influenced by that series, but not bound by it, as is shown by the diversity of scales and modes, and the differing functional hierarchies, in different kinds of music.


Scales and modes sometimes reflect the harmonic series directly, and sometimes they 'model' a harmonic series. The whole tone scale, for example, is really more a result of the projection of the major second than it is a reflection of the harmonic series, and its vague tonality reflects this (no fifth, six possible roots, redundant structure).



Woodduck said:


> How is a definition of tonality which merely describes static, unvarying physical relationships more general, flexible, and useful than one which acknowledges the dynamic relationships of tones determined contextually in music?


The 'static' relationships you speak of are only static in the horizontal sense, which seems redundant to say, since I'm talking about vertical factors. Vertically, these relationships give rise to all the functions of any note in relation to "1" or the fundamental keynote.



Woodduck said:


> You need to explain how looking at the harmonic series and calling its ratios "tonality" is a necessary basis for "understanding" non-Western music or Messiaen.


You'd know, if you read about Messiaen's music and methods, that his music is often "functionless" in a tonal sense, has no development as we know it traditionally, and is a series of 'events' or isolated moments of sonority. A lot of his methods are geared toward creating sonorities. He is also of a strong religious and mystical bent, which I think should be considered in the context we are speaking, which is vertical (quiescence, stillness) versus horizontal (restless activity created by the mind). I refer you to a book by Robert Sherlaw Johnson.

To understand anything at its essence, one must ask very basic questions, and resolve these before moving on.



Woodduck said:


> We don't always hear the lowest note of a chord as a root or "tonal center."


As a triad, we do hear the root, no matter what inversion it is in.

We hear a C major chord as "C major" no matter what inversion it is in. This is because of harmonic factors.

You are using this to refute, without taking into consideration what exactly happens in a chord inversion, and why a chord inversion of a C major still retains its identity as a "C" under inversion.

Have you really thought this through?


----------



## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Have you really thought this through?


Flattery will get you nowhere.

There is nothing new in your responses here. You've quoted only the parts of my arguments that don't challenge your view, and then repeated what you've said before.

A tone has a fundamental and a hierarchy of overtones, and that hierarchy corresponds closely to the hierarchy of keys in Western tonal music. That's easy to see. You've said it many times. I knew it before you said it. I have indeed "thought it through." Long ago. But you then want to say that this property of tones accounts sufficiently for the existence and character of what the musical world calls "tonality," a phenomenon which takes varied forms in the musics of the world.

Here are the points you're not addressing (quoting myself):

1. _"Tonality is a concept in music, not in physics. A pitch is not yet music; that exists when pitches are strung together in some kind of order, and the kind of order in which a particular pitch (or pitches) is felt to be centrally important in determining the relationships and functions of other pitches is called a system of tonality."
_
Acousticians did not create the concept of tonality. Until we are actually discussing music, the concept is simply unnecessary. What's necessary is only to recognize that acoustical properties have partly, but variably, determined the content of tonal systems.

Definitions of tonality culled from the web: "The character of a piece of music as determined by the key in which it is played or the relations between the notes of a scale or key." "The sum of relations, melodic and harmonic, existing between the tones of a scale or musical system; a particular scale or system of tones; a key." "The organization of all the tones and harmonies of a piece of music in relation to a tonic." "a musical system in which pitches or chords are arranged so as to induce a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, and attractions." "An organized system of tones (e.g., the tones of a major or minor scale) in which one tone (the tonic) becomes the central point to which the remaining tones are related. In tonality, the tonic (tonal center) is the tone of complete relaxation, the target toward which other tones lead."

Your attribution of tonality to single tones is, at the very least, eccentric. (And, by the way, quibbling about whether a single pitch can be a piece of music simply evades the issue.)

2. _"Tonal systems, and the scales and modes they utilize, are not all alike, and their correspondences with the harmonic series differ. They are variously influenced by that series, but not bound by it, as is shown by the diversity of scales and modes, and the differing functional hierarchies, in different kinds of music."_

Your answer to this is "I think it is more productive to my case if we look at the similarities between tonal systems and the scales and modes they utilize." Well, undoubtedly! But I'm asking you to look at what the _differences_ in tonal systems do to your case. You've said that "the sounds [of the harmonic series] will tell you what to do, as far as function." My challenge to that was _"what the sounds tell the sitar players of India to do is quite different from what they told Mozart to do. What explanation will the sounds offer should we ask them for one?"_ My challenge stands.

3. You've said that "tonality is sound. All else is intellectual baggage, added later." This implies that all the definitions of "tonality" I listed - and I could have listed more - are "baggage," because they identify tonality as a system of _relationships__ between sounds in __music_ and not as a characteristic of sound as such.

You do not answer my observation:

_"When musicologists, neurologists, psychologists, anthropologists and evolutionary biologists look at music and ask what tonality is, why it exists, and what it's for, they are not asking about acoustics. They are looking at a profoundly and universally human phenomenon: they are looking not merely at sounds, but at how the sounds are perceived and what they mean to the perceiver. Hardly 'baggage.'"
_

Positing a definition of "tonality" which describes acoustical relationships in the absence of musical dynamics seems to me to be of limited use in describing or understanding what notes do in the diverse musics of the world, and the implication that all tonally oriented melodic and harmonic progression in these musics conforms to the hierarchy of overtone ratios in the harmonic series - as in your statement that "the sounds will tell us what to do" - seems simply false. It certainly is not supported by the fascinatingly beautiful Japanese koto music I'm listening to right now. Its tonal hierarchies are clearly not our common Western ones. In some pieces I hear plenty of fifths and fourths, at least, but these don't predominate everywhere. Often, seconds and tritones are abundant, and minor (more dissonant) intervals are more frequent than major (more consonant) ones. Sometimes the identity of the tonal center itself is ambiguous or shifting: the note most emphasized is not the one which the harmonic series would dictate as the tonal center, but the fourth above. How does your concept of tonality account for different scales or modes, preference for dissonance, and ambiguity of the tonic?


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## isorhythm

I've been gone, but I want to jump way back in the thread and address the idea that total serialism and political authoritarianism have a kind of spiritual kinship or are in some way analogous.

I have a lot of thoughts about this that I'm too tired to put down right now, but I want to note one serious problem with the idea: political authoritarians generally have not liked that kind of music.

I realize it would be simplistic to think that if political authoritarianism and tightly controlled musical systems spring from analogous impulses, they should go together in the real world, and appeal to the same people. But I do think if there's any kind of deeper connection between them, we shouldn't find an _antagonistic_ relationship between them in the real world, which appears to be what we do find.

Anyway I'm jet lagged and about to pass out. More on this later (maybe).


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck is growing increasingly argumentative and using invalidations like 'eccentric' in characterizing my posts. This amounts to a criticism of my posting style, and I am not interested in continuing on this line.

Just to say that my argument for tonality consists of the entire vertical dimension; it's misleading to say that 'one note' creates tonality, as the vertical dimension is a complete hierarchy of relationships, which establish a tonality as a 'potentiality' of events, before any activity (music) takes place. In this sense, tonality is the vertical 'seed' out of which music is created.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Positing a definition of "tonality" which describes acoustical relationships in the absence of musical dynamics seems to me to be of limited use in describing or understanding what notes do in the diverse musics of the world, and the implication that all tonally oriented melodic and harmonic progression in these musics conforms to the hierarchy of overtone ratios in the harmonic series - as in your statement that "the sounds will tell us what to do" - seems simply false.


 That's not an accurate summation of what I said, and it shows that you are more interested in refuting my position than in presenting your own case. That's life; sometimes we run into people we can't get on the same wavelength with. It's not my problem.



Woodduck said:


> It certainly is not supported by the fascinatingly beautiful Japanese koto music I'm listening to right now. Its tonal hierarchies are clearly not our common Western ones. In some pieces I hear plenty of fifths and fourths, at least, but these don't predominate everywhere. Often, seconds and tritones are abundant, and minor (more dissonant) intervals are more frequent than major (more consonant) ones. Sometimes the identity of the tonal center itself is ambiguous or shifting: the note most emphasized is not the one which the harmonic series would dictate as the tonal center, but the fourth above. How does your concept of tonality account for different scales or modes, preference for dissonance, and ambiguity of the tonic?


 All I've really said is that tonality is a potentiality which is self-contained in its vertical relationships to "1" or the root fundamental. I never said that this could not be elaborated on, or that it invalidates the horizontal activity which results, or that the horizontal invalidates the vertical. I don't really see a conflict with the two paradigms.

This 'conflict' that Woodduck seems to perceive is due, as I am guessing, to differing mindsets; to simplistically and somewhat humorously sum it up, this exchange represents the Western academic vs. the "Eastern" view. It can even be analogized, as I love to do, by various metaphors, such as "the West with its restless conflict, relentless horizontal control, imperialism, taking over countries" versus the East, with its stillness, inactivity, one-ness, receptiveness, and, of course, the relentless drone of the tamboura (Lamont Young collects tambouras, BTW)."

As far as modes, dissonance, ambiguity, I never said that tonality was being 'held hostage' by its vertical relationships. All that follows (horizontal events in time] can go in a million different directions, and can either reinforce the natural tendencies of the harmonic dimension, or work against these relationships.

This is why I choose to use the general definition of tonality, rather than the academic definition.


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## millionrainbows

Additionally, the vertical is more than a set of potentialities, since the relationships are based on actual sound phenomena, such as dissonance and consonance in relation to "1" or the fundamental. Therefore, it's misleading to think that "actual musical activity" must occur in order for there to be a tonality established.

Also, it's worth noting that any sort of activity can occur after this vertical potentiality is established. Things may occur which either reinforce or degrade this sense of tonality.

So, the vertical harmonic dimension of relationships should not be seen as all-determining, rigid factors in establishing tonality; yet, they are 'givens' which should be accepted as greatly determining the tonality and harmonic content of music, if the music uses this scale or index of pitches.

Neither should the horizontal and melodic activity which results from the given harmonic content be seen as the sole determining factor of establishing a sense of tonality, since this activity is based on, and given function, by the vertical.


----------



## Woodduck

The vertical is more than a set of potentialities, since the relationships are based on actual sound phenomena, such as dissonance and consonance in relation to "1" or the fundamental. Therefore, it's misleading to think that "actual musical activity" must occur in order for there to be a tonality established.

This clearly states that a single tone has "tonality."

Also, it's worth noting that any sort of activity can occur after this vertical potentiality is established. Things may occur which either reinforce or degrade this sense of tonality.

Does this mean that a melodic or harmonic system not based on a hierarchy of pitches identical to the hierarchy of overtones inherent in a single tone is "less tonal" than a system that is so based? For example, would music based on the scale C-Db-E-F#-G-Bb-B-C necessarily be "less tonal" than music based on C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C?

So, the vertical harmonic dimension of relationships should not be seen as all-determining, rigid factors in establishing tonality; yet, they are 'givens' which should be accepted as greatly determining the tonality and harmonic content of music, if the music uses this scale or index of pitches.

This appears to say that if the music doesn't use "this scale" (what scale?), the hierarchy of the overtone series _doesn't_ greatly determine the "tonality" and harmonic content of the music. What does determine those things in such cases?

Neither should the horizontal and melodic activity which results from the given harmonic content be seen as the sole determining factor of establishing a sense of tonality, since this activity is based on, and given function, by the vertical.

But melodic activity is only based on and given function by the vertical if "this scale" (not specified, above) is used. What "gives function" to melodic activity if a different scale is used? And would such melodic activity be "less tonal" in nature?


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## Grizzled Ghost

Millionrainbows and Woodduck - you two are lucky to have found each other! It's not so often that we find people with similar enough interests yet differing enough opinions to fuel seemingly endless debate! Plus other people can learn from your discussion!

Thanks to you both!


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## millionrainbows

I'm having problem with this Wi-Fi connection, and keep losing my work, so I will post my responses in increments. Sorry about the inconvenience.

The vertical is more than a set of potentialities, since the relationships are based on actual sound phenomena, such as dissonance and consonance in relation to "1" or the fundamental. Therefore, it's misleading to think that "actual musical activity" must occur in order for there to be a tonality established.



Woodduck said:


> This clearly states that a single tone has "tonality."


It's misleading to say that one note has tonality, although in a literal sense this is true. Tonality is based on the relation of harmonics to a fundamental.

Also, it's worth noting that any sort of activity can occur after this vertical potentiality is established. Things may occur which either reinforce or degrade this sense of tonality.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Does this mean that a melodic or harmonic system not based on a hierarchy of pitches identical to the hierarchy of overtones inherent in a single tone is "less tonal" than a system that is so based?


There is no "one hierarchy" of overtones. The harmonic model is simply a model. Either you're not grasping that the harmonic model of tonality is a general principle, or you are posing 'leading questions' to make my position seem rigid and inflexible.



Woodduck said:


> For example, would music based on the scale C-Db-E-F#-G-Bb-B-C necessarily be "less tonal" than music based on C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C?


It might create less of a sense, or a different sense, of tonality by comparision. That's why we have different scales. It's not always a matter of degree, but it can be seen that way in the case of pentatonic vs. major.

So, the vertical harmonic dimension of relationships should not be seen as all-determining, rigid factors in establishing tonality; yet, they are 'givens' which should be accepted as greatly determining the tonality and harmonic content of music, if the music uses this scale or index of pitches.


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## millionrainbows

So, the vertical harmonic dimension of relationships should not be seen as all-determining, rigid factors in establishing tonality; yet, they are 'givens' which should be accepted as greatly determining the tonality and harmonic content of music, if the music uses this scale or index of pitches.



Woodduck said:


> This appears to say that if the music doesn't use "this scale" (what scale?), the hierarchy of the overtone series _doesn't_ greatly determine the "tonality" and harmonic content of the music.


Again, there is no "one scale." The harmonic model, using different scales, is a general principle. Whatever scale is used, the music reflects this set of relations.



Woodduck said:


> What does determine those things in such cases?


Whatever scale is used.


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## millionrainbows

So, the vertical harmonic dimension of relationships should not be seen as all-determining, rigid factors in establishing tonality; yet, they are 'givens' which should be accepted as greatly determining the tonality and harmonic content of music, if the music uses this scale or index of pitches.



Woodduck said:


> This appears to say that if the music doesn't use "this scale" (what scale?), the hierarchy of the overtone series _doesn't_ greatly determine the "tonality" and harmonic content of the music.


Again, the harmonic model should be understood to be a general principle.



Woodduck said:


> What does determine those things in such cases?


The scale.

Neither should the horizontal and melodic activity which results from the given harmonic content be seen as the sole determining factor of establishing a sense of tonality, since this activity is based on, and given function, by the vertical.



Woodduck said:


> But melodic activity is only based on and given function by the vertical if "this scale" (not specified, above) is used. What "gives function" to melodic activity if a different scale is used? And would such melodic activity be "less tonal" in nature?


All functions of all scales are based on the relations to the keynote. Certain scales might create a lesser sense of tonality for various reasons, such as if they don't have a fifth.


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## millionrainbows

I think that perhaps what is going on here is a clash of paradigms, or overall mindsets about music. Woodduck wants the horizontal to be the determining factor of all things, because this gives power to the creator, as an 'act of will' which controls everything. It is an active, dynamic, moving gesture, very deliberate.

My vertical model is all about potentiality, and passive stillness, like a seed which gives forth a plant, as the main cause.


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## Barbebleu

Neither. It was just another musical "thing".


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## millionrainbows

As I was saying, a jazz or 'ear' player demonstrates the vertical paradigm. When John Coltrane plays "My Favorite Things" by Rogers & Hammerstein, he sees it as more of a vehicle for improvisation, rather than the literal tune itself, because that's what he is designed to do, and that's what we want to hear: what he does with it, not the tune itself.


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## millionrainbows

On the other hand, the classical paradigm gives all importance to the composer, and separates him as creator from the performer. John Coltrane is both creator and performer, as is true in most 'ear' or aural cultures.


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## millionrainbows

Grizzled Ghost said:


> Millionrainbows and Woodduck - you two are lucky to have found each other! It's not so often that we find people with similar enough interests yet differing enough opinions to fuel seemingly endless debate! Plus other people can learn from your discussion!
> 
> Thanks to you both!


I appreciate the sentiment, GG, but I'm not sure this debate is as benign as you might think. I've had to defend my position against a steady stream of questions which seem designed to invalidate or poke holes, rather than to illuminate anything. I suppose the most valuable thing you can learn is to know your position well, and have plenty of back-up sources.

It is satisfying to me on some level, though; I feel like the 'prodigal music theory student' who has come back to wreak his revenge on his more conventional music theory teacher. Apparently he has thrown up his hands in frustration and has left the room.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> I appreciate the sentiment, GG, but I'm not sure this debate is as benign as you might think. I've had to defend my position against a steady stream of questions which seem designed to invalidate or poke holes, rather than to illuminate anything. I suppose the most valuable thing you can learn is to know your position well, and have plenty of back-up sources.
> 
> It is satisfying to me on some level, though; I feel like the 'prodigal music theory student' who has come back to wreak his revenge on his more conventional music theory teacher. Apparently he has thrown up his hands in frustration and has left the room.


You make it very difficult to leave the room when you keep telling other people what my motives and goals are. From the "like," I see that you have at least one fan who thinks you're behaving respectably by doing so. I don't. But let's just add to the above nonsense some more from previous posts of yours:

I think that perhaps what is going on here is a clash of paradigms, or overall mindsets about music. Woodduck wants the horizontal to be the determining factor of all things, because this gives power to the creator, as an 'act of will' which controls everything. It is an active, dynamic, moving gesture, very deliberate.

My vertical model is all about potentiality, and passive stillness, like a seed which gives forth a plant, as the main cause.

This 'conflict' that Woodduck seems to perceive is due, as I am guessing, to differing mindsets; to simplistically and somewhat humorously sum it up, this exchange represents the Western academic vs. the "Eastern" view. It can even be analogized, as I love to do, by various metaphors, such as "the West with its restless conflict, relentless horizontal control, imperialism, taking over countries" versus the East, with its stillness, inactivity, one-ness, receptiveness, and, of course, the relentless drone of the tamboura (Lamont Young collects tambouras, BTW)."

This is pure moonshine, not to mention gratuitous psychologizing. My questions are aimed at trying to get you to clarify your definitions of terms and your explanations for musical phenomena. I couldn't care less for "paradigms" and "mindsets" and "taking over countries," or any other such tangential fantasies. I was quite prepared to leave you to your definitions and explanations, but can hardly do so now that you've decided to try to explain the real me to the good people of TC.

You describe tonality as inherent in the acoustical properties of tones, apart from any musical organization of tones. This appears to entail a personal definition of your own, one not to be found in any source I can find. Tonality has always, to my knowledge, been defined as a principle or system of musical organization. The fact that tonal systems may utilize, and may in part have been suggested to the human mind by, perceptions of harmony and the relative consonance and dissonance of harmony inherent in acoustical phenomena, does not make these pre-musical phenomena themselves "tonal."

This disagreement may seem merely academic. After all, why shouldn't we extend the use of the term "tonality" to include the acoustical phenomena that clearly underlie basic features of tonal systems, such as the existence of the tonic (corresponding to the fundamental of a tone) and the fifth (corresponding to the second overtone, clearly audible when a tone is sounded)? I suggest two reasons: first, no necessary purpose is served by doing so. The acoustic phenomena are already well understood, a satisfactory vocabulary for describing them already exists, and correspondences to the features of tonal systems are easily seen. But, perhaps more important, such a broadening of the term tends to suggest that the relationships between the perception of the acoustic structure of tones and the sense of tonality as employed in actual music are straightforward and even essential. Even a cursory examination of the varieties of tonal organization in traditional musics of the world reveals that this is not the case. Any attempt to find direct correspondences between the tones of the harmonic series and the notes of the numerous modes, scales, and tonal hierarchies of world music will quickly run aground on the fact that the only such correspondence which is invariably present is that of the fundamental of a tone to the tonic note of a tonal system. All other correspondences are optional. Tonality in actual practice may show very little interest in, or cognizance of, acoustics. That tells me that the nature and primary causes of tonal perception and tonal organization lie in factors not to be accounted for by the perception of the harmony or disharmony of overtones, and that the pitches which constitute the harmonic series are merely possible sources of melodic or harmonic material, to be used or not according to musical purposes based on other criteria.

Common practice tonality as developed in Western Europe has a tonal hierarchy - a harmonic hierarchy of keys, utilizing scales we call major and minor - which exhibits very conspicuous correspondences between that hierarchy of keys and the hierarchy of strength among the overtones in the harmonic series. This is obvious. When there are such obvious correspondences, it might seem reasonable to conclude that tonality in music is an expression of these physical relationships, and that, as you put it, "the sounds will tell you what to do." But, as I've pointed out, these same sounds seem not to have given much instruction to the musicians of other cultures, who have clearly derived their scales and tonal systems by some other means than listening to the natural harmonics of tones. How? From what I can glean so far, your answer is:

1. "As far as modes, dissonance, ambiguity, I never said that tonality was being 'held hostage' by its vertical relationships. All that follows (horizontal events in time) can go in a million different directions, and can either reinforce the natural tendencies of the harmonic dimension, or work against these relationships."

2. "So, the vertical harmonic dimension of relationships should not be seen as all-determining, rigid factors in establishing tonality; yet, they are 'givens' which should be accepted as greatly determining the tonality and harmonic content of music, if the music uses this scale or index of pitches.

3. "It's worth noting that any sort of activity can occur after this vertical potentiality is established. Things may occur which either reinforce or degrade this sense of tonality.

4. " The harmonic model, using different scales, is a general principle. Whatever scale is used, the music reflects this set of relations."

Among these responses, the ones that seem nearest to acknowledging a source for tonality beyond acoustics are numbers two and four: you say that different scales or modes may be used, and that "whatever scale is used, the music reflects this set of relations." But this doesn't answer the questions: What is the relationship of the various scales, modes, and tonal systems to the "vertical dimension" towhich you attribute "tonality"? How, if they don't reflect your acoustical model, do you account for the fact that they don't? If a scale such as E-F-A-B-D is used (taking E as the tonic), then you would say that music using that scale would reflect "that set of relations." But, given the realities of the acoustics of sound and hearing you talk about, where in the world does "that set of relations" come from?

The ultimate question I'm asking is: to what degree, and in what respects, do we need to refer to acoustical phenomena to explain tonality? It appears that this is for you the most fundamental way of understanding tonality, but I see it as offering only limited insight into a limited subset of the world's tonal systems, and primarily that subset constituting what we in the West know as "common practice." And because it doesn't explain other tonal systems, I'm not sure what to make of statements such as:

_"I need a more general, flexible definition that will allow me to assimilate ideas from a wide range of sources, and that is flexible enough to allow me to use it creatively, outside the bounds of Western classical tradition, and even into areas which may not use the 12-note octave division."

"This exchange represents the Western academic vs. the "Eastern" view. It can even be analogized, as I love to do, by various metaphors, such as "the West with its restless conflict, relentless horizontal control, imperialism, taking over countries" versus the East, with its stillness, inactivity, one-ness, receptiveness, and, of course, the relentless drone of the tamboura." _

It's hard to see how a concept of tonality which focuses on the acoustics of tone and overtone ratios takes you outside the bounds of Western classical tradition. It seems to me that it puts you precisely there.


----------



## arpeggio

^^^^^^^^^^
Like so many of your contributions, I have no idea what you are trying to prove. 

And on the few occasions I thought I understood, I was accused of misinterpreting your observations.


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## Richannes Wrahms

Tldr (............)


----------



## Dim7

Richannes Wrahms said:


> Tldr (............)


Tldr.............


----------



## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> You make it very difficult to leave the room when you keep telling other people what my motives and goals are. From the "like," I see that you have at least one fan who thinks you're behaving respectably by doing so. I don't. But let's just add to the above nonsense some more from previous posts of yours:


It gets so boring when you launch into these invalidation rants. Just stick to the ideas, and everyone will learn something, hopefully.




Woodduck said:


> This is pure moonshine, not to mention gratuitous psychologizing. My questions are aimed at trying to get you to clarify your definitions of terms and your explanations for musical phenomena. I couldn't care less for "paradigms" and "mindsets" and "taking over countries," or any other such tangential fantasies. I was quite prepared to leave you to your definitions and explanations, but can hardly do so now that you've decided to try to explain the real me to the good people of TC.


You shouldn't have walked out in the middle, then. I'm still waiting for an infraction to expire (gee, I wonder where that came from), so I must assume that there is some other more malicious agenda going on here. Just protecting myself, and being sincere.



Woodduck said:


> You describe tonality as inherent in the acoustical properties of tones, apart from any musical organization of tones.


No, that's not my position. Look who's putting words in my mouth now.



Woodduck said:


> This appears to entail a personal definition of your own, one not to be found in any source I can find.


I quoted one source: _Harry Partch's Genesis of a New Music.
_


Woodduck said:


> Tonality has always, to my knowledge, been defined as a principle or system of musical organization. The fact that tonal systems may utilize, and may in part have been suggested to the human mind by, perceptions of harmony and the relative consonance and dissonance of harmony inherent in acoustical phenomena, does not make these pre-musical phenomena themselves "tonal."


I think it does. Tonality of any variety can be ultimately traced back, and be given causality, by harmonic models.



Woodduck said:


> This disagreement may seem merely academic. After all, why shouldn't we extend the use of the term "tonality" to include the acoustical phenomena that clearly underlie basic features of tonal systems, such as the existence of the tonic (corresponding to the fundamental of a tone) and the fifth (corresponding to the second overtone, clearly audible when a tone is sounded)? I suggest two reasons: first, no necessary purpose is served by doing so. The acoustic phenomena are already well understood, a satisfactory vocabulary for describing them already exists, and correspondences to the features of tonal systems are easily seen. But, perhaps more important, such a broadening of the term tends to suggest that the relationships between the perception of the acoustic structure of tones and the sense of tonality as employed in actual music are straightforward and even essential.


I never said that "acoustic phenomena"_ in themselves _served as the basis of a vertical harmonic theory. To do so would be stiff and restrictive. But we must bear in mind that "harmonic models" do correspond, in a very real way, to actual sound relationships, or harmonic hierarchies.



Woodduck said:


> Even a cursory examination of the varieties of tonal organization in traditional musics of the world reveals that this is not the case. Any attempt to find direct correspondences between the tones of the harmonic series and the notes of the numerous modes, scales, and tonal hierarchies of world music will quickly run aground on the fact that the only such correspondence which is invariably present is that of the fundamental of a tone to the tonic note of a tonal system.


There you go again, misconstruing what I intend to say. The "varieties of modes, scales, and tonal hierarchies" are the harmonic models I spoke of. There are a variety of possibilities. But the general principle underlying all of these models is usually the same: an hierarchy based on a harmonic model, i.e., a fundamental tone and the relations of its component parts to that keynote.



Woodduck said:


> All other correspondences are optional. Tonality in actual practice may show very little interest in, or cognizance of, acoustics.


I agree with that; but now we are getting into grey areas, where "constructs" of tones may be based on other factors, such as interval projection, or other devices. Now, we cannot simply call it "tonality" any longer; it has veered into modern thinking, not based on harmonic principles or models. The whole tone scale is the best example of this; the way the WT scale consists of two hexads, a semitone apart, was crucial to Schoenberg and Berg's thinking as they entered the realm of atonality.



Woodduck said:


> That tells me that the nature and primary causes of tonal perception and tonal organization lie in factors not to be accounted for by the perception of the harmony or disharmony of overtones, and that the pitches which constitute the harmonic series are merely possible sources of melodic or harmonic material, to be used or not according to musical purposes based on other criteria.


I can agree with most of that, but I still maintain that "tonality" should be properly understood as being based on harmonic models. Some of the factors in "grey area" free atonal music, which is veering away from tonality, are cerebral constructs, geometric in nature, derived from geometric and mathematical factors which cannot be properly identified as being purely tonal in nature. Thus we have Bartok, Debussy, and other hybrid forms of music which cannot be properly called purely tonal. Modernist geometric thought is creeping in.



Woodduck said:


> Common practice tonality as developed in Western Europe has a tonal hierarchy - a harmonic hierarchy of keys, utilizing scales we call major and minor - which exhibits very conspicuous correspondences between that hierarchy of keys and the hierarchy of strength among the overtones in the harmonic series. This is obvious. When there are such obvious correspondences, it might seem reasonable to conclude that tonality in music is an expression of these physical relationships, and that, as you put it, "the sounds will tell you what to do."


Agreed.



Woodduck said:


> But, as I've pointed out, these same sounds seem not to have given much instruction to the musicians of other cultures, who have clearly derived their scales and tonal systems by some other means than listening to the natural harmonics of tones.


Such as? Examples, please. Most of the world's music is tonal, in the general sense (see Harvard Dictionary of Music).



Woodduck said:


> How? From what I can glean so far, your answer is:
> 
> 1. "As far as modes, dissonance, ambiguity, I never said that tonality was being 'held hostage' by its vertical relationships. All that follows (horizontal events in time) can go in a million different directions, and can either reinforce the natural tendencies of the harmonic dimension, or work against these relationships."
> 
> 2. "So, the vertical harmonic dimension of relationships should not be seen as all-determining, rigid factors in establishing tonality; yet, they are 'givens' which should be accepted as greatly determining the tonality and harmonic content of music, if the music uses this scale or index of pitches.
> 
> 3. "It's worth noting that any sort of activity can occur after this vertical potentiality is established. Things may occur which either reinforce or degrade this sense of tonality.
> 
> 4. " The harmonic model, using different scales, is a general principle. Whatever scale is used, the music reflects this set of relations."
> 
> Among these responses, the ones that seem nearest to acknowledging a source for tonality beyond acoustics are numbers two and four: you say that different scales or modes may be used, and that "whatever scale is used, the music reflects this set of relations." But this doesn't answer the questions: What is the relationship of the various scales, modes, and tonal systems to the "vertical dimension" towhich you attribute "tonality"? [How, if they don't reflect your acoustical model, do you account for the fact that they don't? If a scale such as E-F-A-B-D is used (taking E as the tonic), then you would say that music using that scale would reflect "that set of relations." But, given the realities of the acoustics of sound and hearing you talk about, where in the world does "that set of relations" come from?


Using your example, the scale E-F-A-B-D (a five note scale, but not a proper pentatonic, since it has a half-step E-F and seems more like a Balinese tuning), a tonal hierarchy could be constructed, if harmonic results are desired. Bear in mind that Balinese and Thai musics are melodic in nature, and have no harmony as we know it.

If E is the key note, it has a B above it, which is the least dissonant interval. This "B" would be the most related step to E. A would be next (4:5), then A (M3), then D (M2). Other interval result, and I will not do a complete interval vector analysis.



Woodduck said:


> The ultimate question I'm asking is: to what degree, and in what respects, do we need to refer to acoustical phenomena to explain tonality? It appears that this is for you the most fundamental way of understanding tonality, but I see it as offering only limited insight into a limited subset of the world's tonal systems, and primarily that subset constituting what we in the West know as "common practice."


Well, as I said, not all music has harmony; some of it is purely melodic and rhythmic. Still, there are always relations present in the melodic elaboration which have sonance in relation to the key note. This produces a sense of tonality, with tensions and resolutions, without the presence of harmony or triads built on the steps.



Woodduck said:


> And because it doesn't explain other tonal systems, I'm not sure what to make of statements such as:
> 
> _"I need a more general, flexible definition that will allow me to assimilate ideas from a wide range of sources, and that is flexible enough to allow me to use it creatively, outside the bounds of Western classical tradition, and even into areas which may not use the 12-note octave division."
> 
> "This exchange represents the Western academic vs. the "Eastern" view. It can even be analogized, as I love to do, by various metaphors, such as "the West with its restless conflict, relentless horizontal control, imperialism, taking over countries" versus the East, with its stillness, inactivity, one-ness, receptiveness, and, of course, the relentless drone of the tamboura." _
> 
> It's hard to see how a concept of tonality which focuses on the acoustics of tone and overtone ratios takes you outside the bounds of Western classical tradition. It seems to me that it puts you precisely there.


I've just given you the examples of Balinese and Thai music. "Tonality" as I use the term generally, can include most of the world's music.


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## millionrainbows

I think a concept needs to be clarified here. Scales are unordered sets. They have an "interval vector" or list of all the one-to-one correspondences within that scale.


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## millionrainbows

I think a concept needs to be clarified here. Scales are unordered sets. They have an "interval vector" or list of all the one-to-one correspondences within that scale.

This set of correspondences, or relations, is what creates a sense of tonality, synonymous with its harmonic content, and the hierarchy created.

Scales are traditionally listed in linear form, from low to high, with the starting note assumed to be the keynote.


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## arpeggio

If you dig serial music does it really matter if you call it atonal, pantonal or ingrowntonal?


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## millionrainbows

arpeggio said:


> If you dig serial music does it really matter if you call it atonal, pantonal or ingrowntonal?


But how do you know it's serial music? :devil:


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> I'm still waiting for an infraction to expire (gee, I wonder where that came from), so I must assume that there is some other more malicious agenda going on here.


Calling my reasons for questioning your ideas about music a "malicious agenda"and insinuating that I'm responsible for your infractions is way out of line. Neither of those things is true, you have no basis for them and no right to say them.

I have found some of your ideas interesting, but also sometimes confusingly expressed and weighted down with distracting detail. I have questioned them when they have struck me as unclear or unconvincing. You are one of the few people on the forum at the moment who has ideas I find worth grappling with. I've tried to be clear and direct in addressing them. If you don't think I'm understanding what you're saying, it is quite possible that the problem is not with me but with your presentation. You may feel you have consistent and clear positions on the matters you talk about, but I have not found your verbalization of them to be so. It would be helpful if some other member of the forum could step in and "translate," but it appears that that is not going to happen. It's probably a lost cause, and I think it's time to let it lie. Rest assured that I have no interest in tormenting you or anyone. I can be severe in debate but there's nothing personal here.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Calling my reasons for questioning your ideas about music a "malicious agenda"and insinuating that I'm responsible for your infractions is way out of line. Neither of those things is true, you have no basis for them and no right to say them.


QUOTE: "I'm still waiting for an infraction to expire (gee, I wonder where that came from), so I must assume that there is some other more malicious agenda going on here. Just protecting myself, and being sincere."

I don't see that as directly accusing you of anything; I was just referring to the general dangers of this forum.

However, I cannot very well exclude you from any of the possible behaviors that posters here are capable of. That would be naïve on my part.



Woodduck said:


> I have found some of your ideas interesting, but also sometimes confusingly expressed and weighted down with distracting detail. I have questioned them when they have struck me as unclear or unconvincing.


I have communicated clearly. The problem seems to be in the "macro-conceptual" rather than the details. That's why I ascribed it to a clash of paradigms. That's a more all-embracing view.



Woodduck said:


> You are one of the few people on the forum at the moment who has ideas I find worth grappling with. I've tried to be clear and direct in addressing them. If you don't think I'm understanding what you're saying, it is quite possible that the problem is not with me but with your presentation.


You are engaging in a behavior known as invalidation, where the person is persuaded to introvert and look at themselves, instead of the ideas. The next statement shows this clearly as well, by attempting to get me to focus on my own "deficiencies."



Woodduck said:


> You may feel you have consistent and clear positions on the matters you talk about, but I have not found your verbalization of them to be so. It would be helpful if some other member of the forum could step in and "translate," but it appears that that is not going to happen.


Do you see how unpleasant that sounds? I'm all for the discussion of music and ideas, but I feel that you need to examine the way you are handling this exchange, rather than "complaining" to me about my inability to communicate.



Woodduck said:


> It's probably a lost cause, and I think it's time to let it lie. Rest assured that I have no interest in tormenting you or anyone. I can be severe in debate but there's nothing personal here.


My feelings are not hurt. I just hope I don't get another infraction for simply "telling it like I see it." Best wishes to all.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> QUOTE: "I'm still waiting for an infraction to expire (gee, I wonder where that came from), so I must assume that there is some other more malicious agenda going on here. Just protecting myself, and being sincere."
> 
> I don't see that as directly accusing you of anything; I was just referring to the general dangers of this forum.
> 
> However, I cannot very well exclude you from any of the possible behaviors that posters here are capable of. That would be naïve on my part.


Yes, right... "The _general_ dangers of the forum," when your remark is addressed directly _to me_ in the context of a conversation involving _only you and me_, and after the following remark _about__ me_ to another member: "I'm not sure this debate is as benign as you might think. I've had to defend my position against a steady stream of questions which seem designed to invalidate or poke holes, rather than to illuminate anything. It is satisfying to me on some level, though; I feel like the 'prodigal music theory student' who has come back to wreak his revenge on his more conventional music theory teacher. Apparently he has thrown up his hands in frustration and has left the room."

Who, exactly, is being malicious here? I'm not the one making disparaging remarks about you to other members. And how am I supposed to take a remark like "I cannot very well exclude you from _any of the possible behaviors_ that posters here are capable of." What the hell is that supposed to mean - apart from what it literally and obviously does mean?

As Judge Judy likes to say: "Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining."


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## tortkis

Woodduck said:


> But, as I've pointed out, these same sounds seem not to have given much instruction to the musicians of other cultures, who have clearly derived their scales and tonal systems by some other means than listening to the natural harmonics of tones.


Most of the traditional music in the world is based on "the natural harmonics," just intonation. Indian classical music, Indonesian Gamelan music, Japanese koto music, etc. Could you list up some examples of music that are not derived from natural harmonics?

I think what millionrainbows posted in the last few pages cleared up what he meant, which I agree (except for the comments about agenda or paradigms, which I am not sure about.)


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Yes, right... "The _general_ dangers of the forum," when your remark is addressed directly _to me_ in the context of a conversation involving _only you and me_, and after the following remark _about__ me_ to another member: "I'm not sure this debate is as benign as you might think. I've had to defend my position against a steady stream of questions which seem designed to invalidate or poke holes, rather than to illuminate anything. It is satisfying to me on some level, though; I feel like the 'prodigal music theory student' who has come back to wreak his revenge on his more conventional music theory teacher. Apparently he has thrown up his hands in frustration and has left the room."
> 
> Who, exactly, is being malicious here? I'm not the one making disparaging remarks about you to other members. And how am I supposed to take a remark like "I cannot very well exclude you from _any of the possible behaviors_ that posters here are capable of." What the hell is that supposed to mean - apart from what it literally and obviously does mean?
> 
> As Judge Judy likes to say: "Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining."


Yes, Judge Judy seems to be an appropriate analogy.

I just don't find your line of questioning to be of a friendly or benign nature. It seems more designed to find fallacies or inconsistencies.

I've had to do all of the explaining here, while you seem to assume a position of authority, with no apparent need to explain your position. That seems one-sided to me.

Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, you are the one who seems to want to get personal, and depart from the ideas, by making general invalidations which do nothing to illuminate.

Your language seems aggressive; "what the hell" and "pee" are two examples.

I have no personal axe to grind here. Did it ever occur to you that I may simply be reacting to the general tone of your inquisition?

My ideas about tonality ultimately derive from my ears, and the way I hear music. I always trust my ears before I trust any kind of authority or dictates.

My position is simple:

1. I use the term tonality in a general sense (see Harvard Dictionary of Music), as the presence of a tonal center.

2. Tonality is an hierarchy based on a harmonic model. In the same way a that harmonics are related to a fundamental, all notes in a scale are related to a keynote. By their sonance, they have a function.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Yes, Judge Judy seems to be an appropriate analogy.
> 
> I just don't find your line of questioning to be of a friendly or benign nature. It seems more designed to find fallacies or inconsistencies.
> 
> I've had to do all of the explaining here, while you seem to assume a position of authority, with no apparent need to explain your position. That seems one-sided to me.
> 
> Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, you are the one who seems to want to get personal, and depart from the ideas, by making general invalidations which do nothing to illuminate.
> 
> Your language seems aggressive; "what the hell" and "pee" are two examples.
> 
> I have no personal axe to grind here. Did it ever occur to you that I may simply be reacting to the general tone of your inquisition?
> 
> My ideas about tonality ultimately derive from my ears, and the way I hear music. I always trust my ears before I trust any kind of authority or dictates.
> 
> My position is simple:
> 
> 1. I use the term tonality in a general sense (see Harvard Dictionary of Music), as the presence of a tonal center.
> 
> 2. Tonality is an hierarchy based on a harmonic model. In the same way a that harmonics are related to a fundamental, all notes in a scale are related to a keynote. By their sonance, they have a function.


Please understand that my line of questioning has indeed been intended to test the validity of your ideas, to see whether they make sense to me, and to contest your statements when they don't. That is called _debate_. Why do you find it objectionable? If you're going to put forward theoretical explanations which may be unfamiliar to your readers, or which differ from your readers' own conceptions of reality, your readers are not obligated to simply nod and smile. Some of them may say "Now wait just a minute..." or "Hogwash!" and take on some of the ideas you've presented. Looking back at my series of posts, I see no indication of personal animosity or disrespect in my questions and statements. Whether you think I'm qualified to question or contradict your firmly held convictions is neither here nor there - though it's pretty clear you don't think I am, from your readiness to creatively characterize my motives and my supposed worldview (unknown even to me) and share your interpretations of me with other members as if I were not even here.

I do, in fact, respect the fact that you think about things from perspectives that most here don't, and I like the fact that you broach ideas worth engaging with. If you feel my response is aggressive, you might notice from my posting style elsewhere on the forum that it's my custom to focus sharply on an idea and strike it firmly, without much "softening" language. There is no "malice" behind it. Sometimes I agree with you, sometimes I don't, and sometimes I just can't get a fix on what you mean. Intending no disrespect, you are not always easy to follow, and sometimes you mix large portions of facts and figures with notions I find fanciful. I actually enjoy that cross-domain kind of thinking, and like to indulge in it myself, but sorting out someone else's can be hard work. In this case, the work's been pretty hard.

I'll be careful about engaging you in the future. I don't enjoy personal conflicts.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Please understand that my line of questioning has indeed been intended to test the validity of your ideas, to see whether they make sense to me, and to contest your statements when they don't. That is called _debate_. Why do you find it objectionable?


Okay. Part of this is fear of more infractions. I see no quibble with your view of tonality as only existing as a manifest form, consisting of concrete actions, rather than mine, which sees tonality structurally, as a set of internal relations or potentialities. I just see them as different views, or paradigms; mine is inner, yours is outer.



Woodduck said:


> If you're going to put forward theoretical explanations which may be unfamiliar to your readers, or which differ from your readers' own conceptions of reality, your readers are not obligated to simply nod and smile. Some of them may say "Now wait just a minute..." or "Hogwash!" and take on some of the ideas you've presented.


On the other hand, it might be nice if you were more accommodating, because the net result is that I felt I was being made to jump through hoops. Most people here are not even interested in ideas enough to react, and if they did say "hogwash!" I would be skeptical, and also wary that this was some sort of bait to draw me in to another infraction. I'm operating from extreme caution.



Woodduck said:


> Looking back at my series of posts, I see no indication of personal animosity or disrespect in my questions and statements. Whether you think I'm qualified to question or contradict your firmly held convictions is neither here nor there - though it's pretty clear you don't think I am, from your readiness to creatively characterize my motives and my supposed worldview (unknown even to me) and share your interpretations of me with other members as if I were not even here.


It's not that I think you are not qualified; it's a matter of the way most people think about things. I am dissatisfied with the way most people approach things, accepting too many things as 'givens' without questioning seemingly simple 'facts' even deeper.

I see your approach as being academic, and my experience with music teachers was frustrating and uncreative.

You did leave the conversation abruptly, so I see that as a passive action, designed to see what I would do. I did act, and now you use that to cast me in a bad light. I don't want to play that game.



Woodduck said:


> I do, in fact, respect the fact that you think about things from perspectives that most here don't, and I like the fact that you broach ideas worth engaging with.


Yes, it's fun being a 'freak' like Schoenberg, who was self-taught. My perspective would be well-understood by him, or by Harry Partch, I think; and almost any creative thinker who knows about the field of music. Read Harmonielehre.



Woodduck said:


> If you feel my response is aggressive, you might notice from my posting style elsewhere on the forum that it's my custom to focus sharply on an idea and strike it firmly, without much "softening" language. There is no "malice" behind it.


Hey, man, I just don't want to get another infraction! This last one doesn't expire until the end of September. It's lasted all summer. I know there are people here who would love to see me gone, and I am very wary of 'baiting.'



Woodduck said:


> Sometimes I agree with you, sometimes I don't, and sometimes I just can't get a fix on what you mean. Intending no disrespect, you are not always easy to follow, and sometimes you mix large portions of facts and figures with notions I find fanciful.


Conversely, you tend to say things that seem like academic concepts which do not need any more depth than is necessary for them to be useful and utilitarian. In other words, they don't seem to penetrate to the core of the matter, which is where I want to be.



Woodduck said:


> I actually enjoy that cross-domain kind of thinking, and like to indulge in it myself, but sorting out someone else's can be hard work. In this case, the work's been pretty hard.


Textbooks aren't cheap, either. It's work cross-sorting all the different approaches until you can finally arrive at a truth that will cut through all the clutter.



Woodduck said:


> I'll be careful about engaging you in the future. I don't enjoy personal conflicts.


You could look at it this way: all you did was stir up a glass of dirty water. It had residue at the bottom, you didn't dirty it, it was already dirty. All you did was stir it up.


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## Marschallin Blair

Woodduck said:


> It wouldn't gain you any points if it _were_.


As if dignity and charm can be 'given.'


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## Che2007

millionrainbows said:


> On the other hand, the classical paradigm gives all importance to the composer, and separates him as creator from the performer. John Coltrane is both creator and performer, as is true in most 'ear' or aural cultures.


The majority of classical composers I can think of were also performers and partook in improvisation.


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## millionrainbows

Che2007 said:


> The majority of classical composers I can think of were also performers and partook in improvisation.


That in no way invalidates my point.


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## Che2007

millionrainbows said:


> That in no way invalidates my point.


Well, except that you say the classical tradition was interested in a thing that it wasn't. The classical paradigm you refer to is more of a lay-man impression of classical tradition refracted through an early modern aesthetic rather than a historical reflection on what it actually was. Beethoven was a fantastic performer and improvisor, so was Mozart, so was Liszt etc. etc. Why is their practice would be so completely different to jazz performers to you?


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## MoonlightSonata

Forward, of course, because it was something that hadn't been done before.
Personally, though, I can't tell the difference between serial and freely atonal music the vast majority of the time.


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## KenOC

MoonlightSonata said:


> Forward, of course, because it was something that hadn't been done before.


Anything that hasn't been done before is a step forward? That suggests some very interesting historical examples that are much too depressing to mention here.


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## SeptimalTritone

KenOC said:


> Anything that hasn't been done before is a step forward? That suggests some very interesting historical examples that are much too depressing to mention here.


Are you really comparing Schoenberg to Hitler? Really?


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## Richannes Wrahms

Here comparing music to math is way more appropriate than comparing to history.


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## KenOC

SeptimalTritone said:


> Are you really comparing Schoenberg to Hitler? Really?


They say that the sign of a great mind is the ability to make unexpected logical leaps. The keyword here is "logical."


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## MoonlightSonata

KenOC said:


> Anything that hasn't been done before is a step forward? That suggests some very interesting historical examples that are much too depressing to mention here.


I was referring to music. Surely doing something that hasn't been done before is a step forward in understanding it?


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## millionrainbows

The inevitability of the materials and their nature. The achievement, arrival, and universal adoption of the 12-note equally tempered scale effectively did away with the old harmonically-based classicism, which was doomed from the start, and allowed the geometrically-divided octave to begin to emerge.


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## JosefinaHW

arpeggio said:


> Sorry. My mistake. My fingers aarnt as effective as they used to be on the keyboard. I actually have problems playing my bassoon. I have developed an uncontrolled tremor in the pinkie of my right hand. This adversely effects my ability to play some notes on my horn. I have been to four doctors including two neurologists and they are stumped concerning the cause. There is medication that can take to control it but I only use it during rehearsals and concerts.
> 
> .


Got back here to 2015 from reading posts in Mozart Genius Thread from Feb 2016... How is your hand now? Have you found a way that stills that tremor? Very sorry to hear you have/had this problem..... Best Wishes


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## AnthonyCornicello

Shall we say it was a 'thing' - neither forward nor backward? 
It was an expression of the times, a natural outgrowth of Modernist aesthetic values and tendencies. If Modernism is about the 'new', then what would be better than a music which perpetually re-invents itself?

What has happened to this music? Well, a great deal of the 2nd Viennese school has been absorbed into the mainstream; Boulez has described his earliest serial pieces (Polyphony X, Structures) as 'documents'. Still, an interesting adventure, just not easy listening for some.


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## arpeggio

AnthonyCornicello said:


> Shall we say it was a 'thing' - neither forward nor backward?
> It was an expression of the times, a natural outgrowth of Modernist aesthetic values and tendencies. If Modernism is about the 'new', then what would be better than a music which perpetually re-invents itself?
> 
> What has happened to this music? Well, a great deal of the 2nd Viennese school has been absorbed into the mainstream; Boulez has described his earliest serial pieces (Polyphony X, Structures) as 'documents'. Still, an interesting adventure, just not easy listening for some.


Wow! Best succinct explanation that I have read. I think you are 100% correct. :tiphat:


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## arpeggio

JosefinaHW said:


> Got back here to 2015 from reading posts in Mozart Genius Thread from Feb 2016... How is your hand now? Have you found a way that stills that tremor? Very sorry to hear you have/had this problem..... Best Wishes


Thanks for your concern over my hand. I have medication that I take that can help. As you get older your skills do deteriorate. I can not tongue as well as I use to and my embouchure is not as strong. I still can play but I have given up being the principle bassoonist in the groups that I play with. At my age I am still grateful that I can do what I can do.


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