# Chromaticism and Tonality



## millionrainbows

The CP tonal system is based on 7-note scales. Tonality flourishes under this number.

The more notes that are added, up to 12, the more redundant the index of intervallic possibilities in the scale becomes.

This is demonstrated empirically by Howard Hanson in his book "Harmonic Materials of Modern Music":


Howard Hanson said:


> _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_
> 
> _doad (2 notes): 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 (12 notes): p12 m12 n12 s12 d12 t6_
> 
> _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. _
> 
> _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._


(Hanson generates these scales by projection (stacking) of fifths: doad: C-G, triad C-G-D, tetrad C-G-D-A, pentad C-G-D-A-E, hexad C-G-D-A-E-B, heptad C-G-D-A-E-B-F# (our diatonic G Major scale), etc.

The actual sound of a scale, if considered empirically as a 'sonority,' contributes to our sense of tonality. The functions of the scale are derived from triads built on the scale steps.

This is only one aspect of chromaticism, as it affects sonority, or intervallic content formed by cross-relations within the scale collection.

Next, I'll discuss harmonic function, and how it is affected by the addition of notes.

Why did Schoenberg "order" his tone rows? This insured that all 12 would be stated before any repeats occur; it ensured the constant circulation of all 12 notes.


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## Chordalrock

"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."

You could, and should, say that about any melody or passage, not just "scales" (i.e. scale-like passages). Of course, to a certain extent it's possible to find commonalities in pieces of music but, at the end of the day, they are just abstractions, tonality is an illusion.


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## fluteman

I like your music theory posts, music rainbow. They help one see how an increasing retreat from tonality was a central feature of the romantic era, not just the modern. (And for me is the main appeal of late romantic and impressionist music). Charles Rosen's book has some good examples too. Maybe the next subject to look at is meter: To me, polymeter and metric modulation are the hallmarks of the modern era as much as or even more than atonality (or dissonance, to be more precise). Certainly for those of us performing modern music, metric complexity is a far greater challenge than harmonic complexity.


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## millionrainbows

Chordalrock said:


> "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."
> 
> You could, and should, say that about any melody or passage, not just "scales" *(i.e. scale-like passages).*


Well, we ought to assume that a melody is derived from a scale.

I see a scale as an unordered index of notes.

The fact that scales are typically shown as "progressing" from left to right, low to high, is just a convention.

I do not consider a scale to be a musical "entity" like a melody is.

A "scale-like passage?" Yes, I see the distinction, but:

When considering the sonority of a group of notes and intervals, I think the best way is vertically, all at once, as in a chord. Melodies progress through time, and it is harder to hear this. In fact, here is a demonstration of that:








> Of course, to a certain extent it's possible to find commonalities in pieces of music but, at the end of the day, they are just abstractions, tonality is an illusion.


Tonality is a perception, this is true. But is also grounded in empirical facts, which are quantifiable data.

Both perception and empirical data are incomplete, and both are necessary.

As Woodduck said elsewhere (and he's my expert on tonality):

_



...the presence of a tonic or hierarchy of scale degrees...constitute, technically, what tonality is

Click to expand...





…

If someone is hearing "tonal centers," they might at least show us what tones are being called that, where they occur, and how the surrounding harmony functions so as to confer upon them that status. It has to function somehow in relation to a tonic, whether or not that tonic is actually stated; the hallmark of even the most chromatic tonal harmony is the way it plays with, and depends for its effect on, the listener's sense of a harmonic hierarchy, and his expectation that the stability of a tonic, whether or not it ever materializes, is at least possible. Without at least an implied tonic - which in harmonic music means a tonic harmony - there is no tonality.

Click to expand...

_


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## millionrainbows

fluteman said:


> I like your music theory posts, music rainbow. They help one see how an increasing retreat from tonality was a central feature of the romantic era, not just the modern. (And for me is the main appeal of late romantic and impressionist music).


The issue I want to approach now is this: do we view Schoenberg as a "retreat" or "weakening" or "absence" of tonality, or do we see it as an "expansion" of tonality, with new expanded possibilities?

I want to combine the empirical evidence of chromaticism (the increasing number of notes from tonality's original 7) with the idea that Schoenberg "expanded" tonality, rather than "weakened" or "destroyed" it.

This is changing the way I hear this music, as well; I always liked it, and kept listening to it, but now my original "intuition" is combining with my "logical" side, and hearing it as completely "tonal" in every moment.

This is not quite the same as listening to more obviously tonal music; it is very demanding, from moment to moment; but it finally seems to make sense.

This new kind of listening also involves a certain detachment from the idea of total clarity; this is chromatic music, and it is sometimes very fleeting. It also requires faith in your "ear" more so, perhaps, than the brain. Sometimes a passage of music is just a "harmonic entity" which exists unto itself, with no apparent reference.

I also think that Schoenberg changed his way of composing when he entered this chromatic world. He realized that in such an environment, the idea, and presence, of a "tonic" was less and less obvious, and so less and less necessary. The "tonic" could be imagined to be anywhere, and expected to materialize instantly, then disappear.



> Charles Rosen's book has some good examples too.


I just listened to him play the piano, in Stravinsky's "Movements for Piano and Orchestra."








> Maybe the next subject to look at is meter: To me, polymeter and metric modulation are the hallmarks of the modern era as much as or even more than atonality (or dissonance, to be more precise). Certainly for those of us performing modern music, metric complexity is a far greater challenge than harmonic complexity.


Elliott Carter come to mind when I hear this.


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## fluteman

millionrainbows said:


> Well, we ought to assume that a melody is derived from a scale.
> 
> I see a scale as an unordered index of notes.
> 
> The fact that scales are typically shown as "progressing" from left to right, low to high, is just a convention.
> 
> I do not consider a scale to be a musical "entity" like a melody is.
> 
> A "scale-like passage?" Yes, I see the distinction, but:
> 
> When considering the sonority of a group of notes and intervals, I think the best way is vertically, all at once, as in a chord. Melodies progress through time, and it is harder to hear this. In fact, here is a demonstration of that:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tonality is a perception, this is true. But is also grounded in empirical facts, which are quantifiable data.
> 
> Both perception and empirical data are incomplete, and both are necessary.
> 
> As Woodduck said elsewhere (and he's my expert on tonality):


Yes, there is a strong subjective element, approaching the arbitrary, in what intervals one hears as consonant or dissonant. But once your ears, heart and mind accept a system of consonance, I agree that the system necessarily implies a root or tonic. So saying "tonality is an illusion" is probably going too far. All art is based on a system of rules, a logical structure or organization, even subversive art where the idea is to defeat the audience's expectations and break the rules. One could argue generally, "art is an illusion", but only until one learns and accepts its structure. And we humans find beauty in structure. We just don't necessarily agree on which structures are beautiful.


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## millionrainbows

fluteman said:


> Yes, there is a strong subjective element, approaching the arbitrary, in what intervals one hears as consonant or dissonant. But once your ears, heart and mind accept a system of consonance, I agree that the system necessarily implies a root or tonic. So saying "tonality is an illusion" is probably going too far. All art is based on a system of rules, a logical structure or organization, even subversive art where the idea is to defeat the audience's expectations and break the rules. One could argue generally, "art is an illusion", but only until one learns and accepts its structure. And we humans find beauty in structure. We just don't necessarily agree on which structures are beautiful.


Yes, we agree on that. Be sure to watch the Pebber Brown video. His voice gets drowned out by the keyboard in parts, but the demonstration is good. There is a part 2 that will come up after that, if you can last through it.


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## millionrainbows

Diatonic function is based on building triads on each scale step, and ranking them *in order of their consonance to the tonic .
*
The functions of a major scale are:

I - 1:1
ii - 8:9
iii - 4:5
IV - 3:4
V - 2:3
vi - 3:5
vii - 8:15

Their *importance* in establishing the tonality *is to be ranked by the order of consonance to dissonance,* with smaller-number ratios being more consonant.

I - 1:1
V - 2:3
IV - 3:4
vi - 3:5
iii - 4:5
ii - 8:9
vii - 8:15

If we add more notes, we add more functions. With 12 notes, we have 12 functions.

With 12 notes, each pitch can be considered in functional relation to 12 key areas. For example, C could function as I in C, viiº in C#, b7 in D, vi in Eb, etc.

Just as a reference, from WIK:


> The chromatic scale is a musical scale with twelve pitches, each a semitone above or below another. On a modern piano or other equal-temperedinstrument, all the semitones have the same size (100 cents). In other words, the notes of an equal-tempered chromatic scale are equally spaced. An equal-tempered chromatic scale is a nondiatonic scale having no tonic because of the symmetry of its equally spaced notes.


I post this definition because I have seen Woodduck define it as


> the chromatic scale, which consists of a diatonic scale and the additional five half steps. By that definition the chromatic scale exhibits tonal hierarchy, and one can play with chromatic complexities and so weaken or strengthen the feeling of tonality.


I've also heard him say


> The 12-tone scale also contains no inherent structure...Schoenberg's 12-tone music is not based on a hierarchically structured scale.




There is no definitive reason to assume this. In a 12-note scale, any note can be the reference point. Each pitch can be considered in functional relation to 12 key areas, as tonic, or as other. 

Why did Schoenberg order his rows? Firstly, it provides linear, melodic material. But beyond that, why?
With a chromatic scale, a starting point/end point becomes meaningless in tonal terms. Showing scales linearly, with starting and end points, is a convention which also specifies "key." 
Since key is meaningless in a chromatic field of possibilities, ordering the row is a way of giving meaningful structure without suggesting key.

The 12 notes are "there" already, before the row is made. Ordering the row keeps it from being a scale, and thus a definer or limiter of sonority/tonality, provides thematic/linear material, and allows the 12 notes to be "stated" in a comprehensible manner.

It's not necessary for the 12-tone row to function as a scale, because a scale is an inherently "limiting" device which proscribes a key or tonality. Totally chromatic music does not need this.

Scales are not ordered because they are not really linear (that's just a convention); they are a vertical index of harmonic relations to tonic, all at once, as a sonority (see Pepper Brown video above).(I know I'll get flak for this from the CP camp)

Since totally chromatic music has no defined sonority as a key area does, it is a field of possibilities which needs no limited, defined sonority or start/end point.

We see from this that tonality is inherently reductionist. Its scales are limiters. Tonality is defined and separated from the 12-note whole. In chromatic music, this is not necessary.


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## Xinver

millionrainbows said:


> The issue I want to approach now is this: do we view Schoenberg as a "retreat" or "weakening" or "absence" of tonality, or do we see it as an "expansion" of tonality, with new expanded possibilities?


As a concept, I see Schönberg's "atonality" a totally different thing from tonality. I don't see expansion or contraction. Surely Schönberg began expanding tonality with the "free atonality". But when he developed his theory, there was a break point (for me). Like different languages that cannot be translated.



> This is not quite the same as listening to more obviously tonal music; it is very demanding, from moment to moment; but it finally seems to make sense.


I know that many people need a "training" to appreciate atonality (and most never like it).
But other people don't. For me atonality is as "natural" as tonality. When I listen atonal music I don't compare to tonal music. I simply listen to it and I like it or not. In fact, I find some styles of tonal music (classicism) boring.
Well, perhaps this is a different issue about perception.


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## Woodduck

fluteman said:


> I like your music theory posts, music rainbow. They help one see how an increasing retreat from tonality was a central feature of the romantic era, not just the modern. (And for me is the main appeal of late romantic and impressionist music). Charles Rosen's book has some good examples too. Maybe the next subject to look at is meter: To me, polymeter and metric modulation are the hallmarks of the modern era as much as or even more than atonality (or dissonance, to be more precise). Certainly for those of us performing modern music, metric complexity is a far greater challenge than harmonic complexity.


I wouldn't call what happened to harmony in Romantic music a "retreat from tonality," but an _expansion_ of tonality to encompass ever more complex and subtle relationships. So long as the "system" remains basic and implicit - meaning, so long as a tonal center and scale hierarchy are assumed by the listener and composer and those assumptions are primary considerations in the way music is structured - there's been no significant retreat from tonality as such. Nearly all Romantic harmony, and the harmony of much music well into the 20th century, is still rooted in the diatonic major and minor scales (with the increasing addition of modal coloration), despite ambiguities of key which occur in passages where chords can be read as having multiple functions. Ambiguities are only comprehensible with reference to expectations of known tonal relationships and procedures, and no Romantic composer was seeking to abandon comprehensibility. "Nonfunctional" harmonic effects and exotic scales were introduced by Romantic composers primarily for the sake of color and atmosphere; broadly speaking, we can call such effects programmatic.

I don't agree that increasing chromaticism necessarily makes music less tonal; it can do so, but Romantic composers, like composers of earlier times (e.g. Monteverdi, Bach and Mozart) saw chromaticism as an expressive tool, not as an alternative way of structuring music. I think it's interesting that even Wagner, who extended chromaticism farther than anyone else in the 19th century, understood that what he was inspired to do for programmatic purposes (opera being program music writ large) could be abused in other contexts; he said, "For the symphony one writes very differently" - which I take to mean that one takes care to preserve the structural functions of tonality and not indulge in effects which might weaken those functions. Of course Wagner himself had an extraordinary intuitive sense of how to create harmonic effects of extreme expressive power and still maintain comprehensibility (even without the typical forms of absolute music), and his chromatic excursions ultimately and powerfully affirm their diatonic foundations.

Real retreats from tonality didn't occur until the specific expressive effects of dissonance, tonal uncertainty, and coloristic harmony became overriding objectives, and with Debussy in the vanguard this was really a 20th-century development. In the specific world of post-Wagnerian German expressionism, it was the abrogation of the "tonal contract" between composer and listener which compelled Schoenberg to look for a different structural principle not dependent on a scale possessing an assumed tonal hierarchy. But outside that small (though disproportionately influential) musical subculture, tonality remained alive and well.


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## millionrainbows

When I listen to Schoenberg, as I listened to the piano music played by Glenn Gould today, I try to hear tonality. It is becoming easier now, since my intuition and intellect have finally unified into one receptive organ. 

In the Two Piano Pieces Op. 33, I hear a new moment-to moment sense of tonality; I am "hearing in the now," so to speak. Tonality is no longer a drawn-out, linear process of "reading" the music narratively; it is an instantaneous perception of harmonic sonority. Has tonality retreated, or is it in a state of constantly being born anew? I hear "the one note" and I hear it in all places, at all times. It changes; it takes on form, then that form is changed in meaning by the entry of a new note; and it goes on and on. Can I keep up with the kaleidoscope?

"Tonic" is now in every moment, "scale hierarchy" is everywhere like a radiant wheel which rolls through a field of harmonic possibilities. Ahh, the beauty!


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Do we view Schoenberg as a "retreat" or "weakening" or "absence" of tonality, or do we see it as an "expansion" of tonality, with new expanded possibilities?
> 
> I want to combine the empirical evidence of chromaticism (the increasing number of notes from tonality's original 7) with the idea that Schoenberg "expanded" tonality, rather than "weakened" or "destroyed" it.
> 
> This is changing the way I hear this music, as well; I always liked it, and kept listening to it, but now my original "intuition" is combining with my "logical" side, and hearing it as completely "tonal" in every moment.
> 
> This is not quite the same as listening to more obviously tonal music; it is very demanding, from moment to moment; but it finally seems to make sense.
> 
> This new kind of listening also involves a certain detachment from the idea of total clarity; this is chromatic music, and it is sometimes very fleeting. It also requires faith in your "ear" more so, perhaps, than the brain. Sometimes a passage of music is just a "harmonic entity" which exists unto itself, with no apparent reference.
> 
> I also think that Schoenberg changed his way of composing when he entered this chromatic world. He realized that in such an environment, the idea, and presence, of a "tonic" was less and less obvious, and so less and less necessary. The "tonic" could be imagined to be anywhere, and expected to materialize instantly, then disappear.


If we know the "language" of (common practice) tonal music, it's inevitable that we will come to hear all sorts of "hints" of tonality in music which, in addition to utilizing the familiar twelve tones of the chromatic scale, preserves as many of the conventions of counterpoint, voice leading, textural and dynamic structure, etc. as Schoenberg's does. But I would dispute that all these "tonics" that fleetingly materialize and disappear, or don't actually materialize at all, ought to be called "tonality" if they don't serve a perceptible structural purpose.

Tonality, by traditional definition, is systemic; the notes of a scale relate to a tonic in particular, limited ways, and those relationships have constancy beyond the musical moment, give coherence to the music's progress, and can do these things because they are known and expected by the listener. Hearing "tonality" in Schoenberg's (or anybody's) nontonal music seems to me analogous to looking at a white object and seeing colors; light is refracted, and the eye sees, in ways that produce this effect, but the tints perceived have no constructive potential from which an artist can create a picture.

Redefining tonality this way simply defines it out of existence.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> If we know the "language" of (common practice) tonal music, it's inevitable that we will come to hear all sorts of "hints" of tonality in music which, in addition to utilizing the familiar twelve tones of the chromatic scale, preserves as many of the conventions of counterpoint, voice leading, textural and dynamic structure, etc. as Schoenberg's does. But I would dispute that all these "tonics" that fleetingly materialize and disappear, or don't actually materialize at all, ought to be called "tonality" if they don't serve a perceptible structural purpose.


The perceptible structural purpose is within my total focus. Its "nowness" is its purpose, manifest in every fleeting moment. The tonic is not a still reference point; I have entered a new realm, in which the tonic is a moving point, like a cursor, going across fields of meaning.



> Tonality, by traditional definition, is systemic; the notes of a scale relate to a tonic in particular, limited ways…


Yes, I have said this. Tonality at its clearest is also at its most limited.



> ...and those relationships have constancy beyond the musical moment…


Yes, in their most limited form...



> ...and are known and expected by the listener.


Yes, in their most stable and predictable form, this is true.



> Hearing "tonality" in Schoenberg's (or anybody's) nontonal music seems to me analogous to looking at a white object and seeing colors; light is refracted, and the eye sees, in ways that produce this effect, but the tints perceived have no structural functions from which an artist can create a picture.


It is possible to hear this way. The tonal perceptions are fleeting, and change constantly, but they are as real as any other tonality I have heard. Not as defined or lasting, but there.



> Redefining tonality this way simply defines it out of existence.


Not for me; I'm listening to Schoenberg, Elliott Carter, and Roger Sessions in this way now. What you say may be true for 12-note chromatic music which has other goals other than "pitch-meaning," but for these composers, I find that tonality is there in a very subtle, rarefied way. I see them as connected to tonality via their art.


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## fluteman

Woodduck said:


> I wouldn't call what happened to harmony in Romantic music a "retreat from tonality," but an _expansion_ of tonality to encompass ever more complex and subtle relationships.
> 
> ....
> 
> Real retreats from tonality didn't occur until the specific expressive effects of dissonance, tonal uncertainty, and coloristic harmony became overriding objectives, and with Debussy in the vanguard this was really a 20th-century development. In the specific world of post-Wagnerian German expressionism, it was the abrogation of the "tonal contract" between composer and listener which compelled Schoenberg to look for a different structural principle not dependent on a scale possessing an assumed tonal hierarchy. But outside that small (though disproportionately influential) musical subculture, tonality remained alive and well.


But "more complex and subtle relationships" and "more uncertain relationships" or "more ambiguous relationships" aren't so far apart in meaning, are they? It's all a matter of degree. As music becomes more harmonically remote from one key, or tonal center, and the relationship becomes more complex or subtle, or uncertain, or ambiguous, it nears another key. Will there be a modulation into the new key? Or, a return to the original? Or, an extended period of ambiguity, as in, say, the music of Philip Glass? And if, after a very lengthy period of ambiguity, Glass finally and triumphantly resolves on the original key, or on the new one, as he often does, is that conventionally tonal music? To me these are all semantic questions, and I don't worry much about them.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> *The perceptible structural purpose* is within my total focus. *Its "nowness" is its purpose, manifest in every fleeting moment.* The tonic is not a still reference point; *I have entered a new realm*, in which the tonic is a moving point, like a cursor, going across fields of meaning.
> 
> The tonal perceptions are fleeting, and change constantly, but they are as real as any other tonality I have heard. Not as defined or lasting, but there.
> 
> Not for me; I'm listening to Schoenberg, Elliott Carter, and Roger Sessions in this way now. What you say may be true for 12-note chromatic music which has other goals other than "pitch-meaning," but for these composers, I find that tonality is there in a very subtle, rarefied way. I see them as connected to tonality via their art.


"Nowness" is not a structural principle. Not in music, the art of time, in which something comes next, and that something is either related or unrelated to "now." If it's unrelated, there's no tonality.

You have indeed entered a new realm, and it isn't a realm of clear concepts. I think you may have reached your million and first rainbow.

:wave:


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## Woodduck

fluteman said:


> *But "more complex and subtle relationships" and "more uncertain relationships" or "more ambiguous relationships" aren't so far apart in meaning, are they? It's all a matter of degree.* As music becomes more harmonically remote from one key, or tonal center, and the relationship becomes more complex or subtle, or uncertain, or ambiguous, it nears another key. Will there be a modulation into the new key? Or, a return to the original? Or, an extended period of ambiguity, as in, say, the music of Philip Glass? *And if, after a very lengthy period of ambiguity, Glass finally and triumphantly resolves on the original key, or on the new one, as he often does, is that conventionally tonal music? * To me *these are all semantic questions, and I don't worry much about them.*


I don't worry about them either...  I agree: "more complex and subtle relationships" and "more uncertain relationships" or "more ambiguous relationships" aren't far apart in meaning. They all imply tonality. None of them represent a "retreat" from tonality. What is "conventionally tonal" music? Haydn? Why think of tonality in such limited terms?


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## fluteman

Woodduck said:


> I don't worry about them either...  I agree: "more complex and subtle relationships" and "more uncertain relationships" or "more ambiguous relationships" aren't far apart in meaning. They all imply tonality. None of them represent a "retreat" from tonality. What is "conventionally tonal" music? Haydn? Why think of tonality in such limited terms?


Why think of terms at all? Why this fetish about defining and categorizing?


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## Woodduck

fluteman said:


> Why think of terms at all? Why this fetish about defining and categorizing?


Well, if you've figured out a way to think about music without using terms or defining them, I'd be happy to hear about it.


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## Chordalrock

millionrainbows said:


> Well, we ought to assume that a melody is derived from a scale.
> 
> I see a scale as an unordered index of notes.
> 
> The fact that scales are typically shown as "progressing" from left to right, low to high, is just a convention.
> 
> I do not consider a scale to be a musical "entity" like a melody is.
> 
> A "scale-like passage?" Yes, I see the distinction, but:
> 
> When considering the sonority of a group of notes and intervals, I think the best way is vertically, all at once, as in a chord. Melodies progress through time, and it is harder to hear this. In fact, here is a demonstration of that:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tonality is a perception, this is true. But is also grounded in empirical facts, which are quantifiable data.


My point is that a melody can lack some of the possible intervals or notes of a scale or it can contain chromaticism - and these details are what make it a distinct entity just like such details make a "scale" a distinct entity, if you see them as concrete entities progressing through time instead of as unreal abstractions. (The difference is that in a melody, you don't only have intervals progressing exclusively downwards or exclusively upwards, but that's not a fundamental difference.)

"Tonality" is (1) just the listener expecting a cadence now and then, which is borderline subjective because for some listener a passage in Obrecht can lose a sense of a tonic when it wanders too far while for some other listener it doesn't lose it, or tonality is (2) expecting to not hear too much chromaticism ("too much" being again borderline subjective).


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## Guest

millionrainbows said:


> The CP tonal system is based on 7-note scales. Tonality flourishes under this number.
> 
> The more notes that are added, up to 12, the more redundant the index of intervallic possibilities in the scale becomes.
> 
> This is demonstrated empirically by Howard Hanson in his book "Harmonic Materials of Modern Music":


Worth noting that Hanson's book is an exploration of the possibilities of harmony within the 12-tone scale, not an exploration of the infinite possibilities of harmony.



> Since the subject of our study is the analysis and relationship of all of the possible sonorities contained in the twelve tones of the equally tempered chromatic scale, in both their melodic and harmonic implications, our first task is to explain the reasons for basing our study upon that scale. There are two primary reasons. The first is that a study confined to equal temperament is, al-though complex, a finite study, whereas a study of the theoretical possibilities within just intonation would be infinite.




p1 http://www.u.arizona.edu/~gross/Howard.Hanson_bw.pdf

I wonder too whether this is too dated a work to consider useful for an analysis of harmony more generally. Hanson says that since infinite variety is only possible on the trombone, voice and stringed instruments, and that music is played as a concert, there's little point considering options that can't be reproduced by valve and keyboard instruments. (pp1-2)

The development of the synthesiser is one way in which music has been freed from the limitations of harmonic scales since 1960.


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## fluteman

Woodduck said:


> Well, if you've figured out a way to think about music without using terms or defining them, I'd be happy to hear about it.


Learning to listen is vastly different and more important than learning a system of terminology. Babies can understand music before they understand words. And music is universal, terms and definitions are not.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> "Nowness" is not a structural principle. Not in music, the art of time, in which something comes next, and that something is either related or unrelated to "now."


The experience of tonality at its most obvious, involves the passage of time. But this is not what "tonality" actually is;

Tonality, and function, are the relations of the component notes to a tonic. This is a singularity which needs no horizontal development for its existence. The development and narrative came later, and do not define tonality except in that linear sense. 

"Tonality" is vertical sonority, in relation to a singularity, and can be experienced instantaneously, in the now, with no string of narrative expectations. It is heard as consonance or dissonance experienced as self-contained qualities.

Another way to look at this is to consider "directionality" as pertaining to tonality. Starting with one note, we have the ultimate in tonality, i.e., "the one note" of Lamont Young. This has no linear dimension; nothing follows, so it is purely vertical, or harmonic (adjective, not noun). As we add notes, up to 6, tonality strengthens and increases to its point of maximum intervallic variety and strength. As more notes are added, redundancy of intervallic variety sets in, until we reach a "harmonic stasis" of 12 notes. Ironically, we have come full-circle back to vertical stasis, just as we were at "1".



> ...that 'something' is either related or unrelated to "now." If it's unrelated, there's no tonality.


You seem to be saying that if tonality is not linear, involving the passage of time as a connected narrative series of events which is uniform and connected, it is not tonality.

I think that "tonality" is sonority, in relation to a singularity, and is experienced instantaneously, without needing elaboration, or a string of narrative expectations. It is heard as consonance or dissonance experienced as self-contained qualities.

The experience of time is dependent on memory, and doesn't really exist except as a perception of memory. The only thing that really exists is "sound".



> You have indeed entered a new realm, and it isn't a realm of clear concepts. I think you may have reached your million and first rainbow.


You are floating in a linear, narrative form of perception, like a wooden duck. [/QUOTE]


----------



## millionrainbows

Chordalrock said:


> My point is that a melody can lack some of the possible intervals or notes of a scale or it can contain chromaticism - and these details are what make it a distinct entity just like such details make a "scale" a distinct entity, if you see them as concrete entities progressing through time instead of as unreal abstractions.


The vertical dimension is what defines sonority. That's why I posted the Pebber Brown video, to show how he sustains notes on a keyboard to demonstrate this.

Melodies progress through time, and we might forget or overlook them; but we do not forget a sustained chord or vertical field of notes so easily, as long as we are awake and alert.

The passage of time is not necessary in order to perceive sonority and harmonic color.

Time does not really exist except as a perception. In certain situations, one minute can seem like five (esp. when listening to a bad singer like Florence Henderson).



> "Tonality" is (1) just the listener expecting a cadence now and then, which is borderline subjective because for some listener a passage in Obrecht can lose a sense of a tonic when it wanders too far while for some other listener it doesn't lose it, or tonality is (2) expecting to not hear too much chromaticism ("too much" being again borderline subjective).


The experience of tonality at its most obvious, involves the passage of time. But this is not what "tonality"(as a set of relations to a tonic) actually is;

Tonality is sonority, in relation to a tonic singularity, and is experienced instantaneously. This is not to be confused with a string of narrative expectations.

It can be heard as consonance or dissonance experienced as self-contained qualities. It is memory, and the passage of time, which allows to elaborate this sonority.

The "narrative" aspect of tonality, or its progression over stretches of time, is just a way of creating a narrative or story out of what existed before as, and is still essentially, a singularity.


----------



## Woodduck

fluteman said:


> Learning to listen is vastly different and more important than learning a system of terminology. *Babies can understand music* before they understand words. And *music is universal,* terms and definitions are not.


Sorry, I still don't know what you're getting at. I assume we all think music is for listening. But if we also want to talk about it, we have to use terms and we have to define them, or at least say what we mean when we use them. This subforum is "Music Theory," right? If that isn't about systems and terminology, what is it about? Personally, I'm fascinated by the attempt to understand intellectually what it is I'm hearing and feeling when I listen to music. We can never do it completely, but in addition to affording its own intrinsic pleasure it has the potential of sharpening our awareness of what we hear and allowing us to hear more precisely. I hear like an adult, not like a baby.

Sure, music as such is universal, but the elements of a specific musical style are not. They have to be learned, and thinking about them may aid the ear in grasping how they work. A propos the present topic, I think it's pretty easily observed that music without a hierarchically organized scale is far from universal in its comprehensibility or appeal. Why that should be is to me a fascinating question, and the search for answers can lead us in all sorts of directions.


----------



## Guest

millionrainbows said:


> The experience of tonality at its most obvious, involves the passage of time. But this is not what "tonality" actually is;
> 
> [...]
> 
> The experience of time is dependent on memory, and doesn't really exist except as a perception of memory. The only thing that really exists is "sound".





millionrainbows said:


> Melodies progress through time, [...]
> 
> The passage of time is not necessary in order to perceive sonority and harmonic color.
> 
> Time does not really exist except as a perception.


Setting aside the philosophical implications of these statements about time (which, IMO, seem to depart from music and enter the realm of sci-fi, with the emphasis on the fi) music requires the passing of time or else it is not music.


----------



## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> The experience of tonality at its most obvious, involves the passage of time. But this is not what "tonality" actually is;
> 
> Tonality, and function, are the relations of the component notes to a tonic. This is a singularity which needs no horizontal development for its existence. The development and narrative came later, and do not define tonality except in that linear sense.
> 
> *"Tonality" is vertical sonority, in relation to a singularity, and can be experienced instantaneously,* in the now, with no string of narrative expectations. It is heard as consonance or dissonance experienced as self-contained qualities.
> 
> Another way to look at this is to consider "directionality" as pertaining to tonality. *Starting with one note, we have the ultimate in tonality,* i.e., "the one note" of Lamont Young. This has no linear dimension; nothing follows, so it is purely vertical, or harmonic (adjective, not noun). As we add notes, up to 6, tonality strengthens and increases to its point of maximum intervallic variety and strength. As more notes are added, redundancy of intervallic variety sets in, until we reach a "harmonic stasis" of 12 notes. Ironically, we have come full-circle back to vertical stasis, just as we were at "1".
> 
> *You seem to be saying that if tonality is not linear, involving the passage of time as a connected narrative series of events which is uniform and connected, it is not tonality. *
> 
> *I think that "tonality" is sonority, in relation to a singularity, and is experienced instantaneously, *without needing elaboration, or a string of narrative expectations. *It is heard as consonance or dissonance experienced as self-contained qualities.*
> 
> The experience of time is dependent on memory, and doesn't really exist except as a perception of memory. The only thing that really exists is "sound".


We disagree about what tonality is.

Tonality belongs to music, not to sound as such. It's a concept in music, not in acoustics. The fundamental of a tone is merely the fundamental of a tone; it is not the tonic of a tonal system.

I acknowledge that the pitches contained in a single note - its overtones or partials - provide some acoustic basis and raw material for tonal systems. I also agree that consonance and dissonance are basic concepts in both acoustics and music. But the meaning of that polarity is not the same in both: the relationship of the acoustical phenomenon to musical expression is determined by other factors, and the sounding of a single tone will not bring those factors into play. Only the making of music will, and music is and always has been an art of _time._

The clearest evidence of the influence of universally shared acoustical perception on musical structure is probably the dominance of the fifth above the tonic in tonal systems worldwide. But tonal systems differ in the distribution of consonance and dissonance as embodied in their peculiar scales. Consonance and dissonance are intrinsic components of tonal systems, essential components of tonal hierarchies, but tonal hierarchies have complex purposes not fulfilled by sitting in lotus position blissing out on perceptual "singularities." Tonal orientation in music has psychological, physiological, anthropological, aesthetic, and even philosophical significance. Recent studies have investigated its possible evolutionary function. These areas of inquiry are not about "instantaneous" experience. They are about the experience of living as process, and process occupies time. The basic dynamic of tonality is one of departure and return, of destabilization and restabilization, of consonance to dissonance and back, and all the ramifications and implications thereof. It's an image and a re-creation - and through the alchemy of art, an experience - of the basic pulse and pattern of life. Life is movement, and so is music, and so is tonality.

In speaking of tonality as a property of sound, rather than a product of art, you are engaging in reductionist thinking, and overlooking completely the functions and meanings of tonality in actual music. Pointing out that tonal relationships have a basis in acoustical phenomena is nothing new. That's been noticed since - when, the 18th century? Or was it Pythagoras? Acoustics can do very well without having artistic concepts read into it. Sound is only the material of which music and tonality are made.


----------



## Mandryka

millionrainbows said:


> When I listen to Schoenberg, as I listened to the piano music played by Glenn Gould today, I try to hear tonality. It is becoming easier now, since my intuition and intellect have finally unified into one receptive organ.
> 
> In the Two Piano Pieces Op. 33, I hear a new moment-to moment sense of tonality; I am "hearing in the now," so to speak. Tonality is no longer a drawn-out, linear process of "reading" the music narratively; it is an instantaneous perception of harmonic sonority. Has tonality retreated, or is it in a state of constantly being born anew? I hear "the one note" and I hear it in all places, at all times. It changes; it takes on form, then that form is changed in meaning by the entry of a new note; and it goes on and on. Can I keep up with the kaleidoscope?
> P
> "Tonic" is now in every moment, "scale hierarchy" is everywhere like a radiant wheel which rolls through a field of harmonic possibilities. Ahh, the beauty!


Yes I just tried to listen to Schoenberg op 33 and I can see what you're saying, I then tried with Babbitt's Post Partitions and I completely failed!


----------



## fluteman

Woodduck said:


> Sure, music as such is universal, but the elements of a specific musical style are not. They have to be learned, and thinking about them may aid the ear in grasping how they work. A propos the present topic, I think it's pretty easily observed that music without a hierarchically organized scale is far from universal in its comprehensibility or appeal. Why that should be is to me a fascinating question, and the search for answers can lead us in all sorts of directions.


And specific musical styles, even those with a hierarchically organized scale, are also far from universal in their comprehensibility and appeal. What I meant by the comment about babies was, music is a language learned first and foremost by ear, not by written words or notation, and imo it can never fully be reduced to words or written notation. For that reason alone, language parsing debates can rage on without resolution.
Million rainbows has nicely summarized the basics of the western scale, or harmony, or consonance and dissonance in a series of posts, though he hasn't yet touched on systems of temperment. And while that scale is still profoundly important to western music, and has been for at least 600 years, after 1900 it began to yield a little more of the stage, to dissonance, silence, indeterminate sounds, and a wider range of rhythms and timbres, all of which in my opinion reflect the modern industrial and post-industrial/technological/electronic sound environment, (as well as increasing non-western influences). You seem to want to call some of those recently more important elements non-musical, or at least not as central or essential to music as the hierarchical scale. Other writers have argued that rhythm, not scale or tonality, is the most fundamental element of music. I'm not going to resolve questions like that, but I accept a broad concept of music that includes any or all of these elements, basically, a structured set of sounds that communicates through at least partly non-verbal means. Disagree by all means, but the What is music? semantic debate isn't so compelling to me.


----------



## millionrainbows

MacLeod said:


> Setting aside the philosophical implications of these statements about time (which, IMO, seem to depart from music and enter the realm of sci-fi, with the emphasis on the fi) music requires the passing of time or else it is not music.


That's not what I'm saying; you have to equate time with being. Of course I know that time passes. But if you are only here now, then time is memory. What do you think time is? A clock on the wall?


----------



## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> We disagree about what tonality is.


I'm not trying to define tonality, and we both know what it is. It's a narrative.



> Tonality belongs to music, not to sound as such. It's a concept in music, not in acoustics. The fundamental of a tone is merely the fundamental of a tone; it is not the tonic of a tonal system.


I reproduce this blog:
*
New Conceptions of Musical Time**
Linear time:* Music that imparts a sense of linear time seems to move towards goals. This quality permeates virtually all of Western music from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras. This is accomplished by processes which occur within tonal and metrical frameworks.​
*Nonlinear time:* Music that evokes a sense of nonlinear time seems to stand still or evolve very slowly.

Western musicians first became aware of nonlinear time during the late 19th century. Debussy's encounter with Javanese gamelan music at the 1889 Paris Exhibition was a seminal event.

*Moment Form:* broken down connections between musical events in order to create a series of more or less discrete moments. Certain works of Stravinsky, Webern, Messiaen, and Stockhausen exemplify this approach.

*Vertical Time: *At the other extreme of the nonlinear continuum is music that maximizes consistency and minimizes articulation. _Vertical time means that whatever structure that is in the music exists between simultaneous layers of sound, not between successive gestures. _A virtually static moment is expanded to encompass an entire piece. A vertical piece does not exhibit large-scale closure. It does not begin, but merely starts. It does not build to a climax, does not set up internal expectations, does not seek to fulfill any expectations that might arise accidentally, does not build or release tension, and does not end, but simply ceases.
*Minimalism* exemplifies vertical time, but instead of absolute stasis, it generates constant motion. The sense of movement is so evenly paced, and the goals are so vague, that we usually lose our sense of perspective.

I see Schoenberg as the inverse of "minimalism" as described above; it also uses constant motion, but in a different non-harmonic way. In this sense, Schoenberg is "maximalism."
I think the proponents of minimalism might be uncomfortable with this connection.
​


> I acknowledge that the pitches contained in a single note - its overtones or partials - provide some acoustic basis and raw material for tonal systems. I also agree that consonance and dissonance are basic concepts in both acoustics and music. But the meaning of that polarity is not the same in both: the relationship of the acoustical phenomenon to musical expression is determined by other factors, and the sounding of a single tone will not bring those factors into play. Only the making of music will, and music is and always has been an art of _time._


I see what you are saying, but there are other approaches used by Messiaen, and, I think, Schoenberg & Webern to a degree.
Of course, it would be illogical to say that there is no such thing as time.



> The clearest evidence of the influence of universally shared acoustical perception on musical structure is probably the dominance of the fifth above the tonic in tonal systems worldwide. But tonal systems differ in the distribution of consonance and dissonance as embodied in their peculiar scales. Consonance and dissonance are intrinsic components of tonal systems, essential components of tonal hierarchies, but tonal hierarchies have complex purposes not fulfilled by sitting in lotus position blissing out on perceptual "singularities."


With 12 notes, this becomes less relevant. As I said earlier, we came "full circle" from the singularity of 1 to the chromatic condition of 12. In both, the hierarchy has disappeared, and there is an element of "singularity" as applied to perception which is at play.



> Tonal orientation in music has psychological, physiological, anthropological, aesthetic, and even philosophical significance. Recent studies have investigated its possible evolutionary function. These areas of inquiry are not about "instantaneous" experience. They are about the experience of living as process, and process occupies time. The basic dynamic of tonality is one of departure and return, of destabilization and restabilization, of consonance to dissonance and back, and all the ramifications and implications thereof. It's an image and a re-creation - and through the alchemy of art, an experience - of the basic pulse and pattern of life. Life is movement, and so is music, and so is tonality.


Yes, I see what you're saying, and this is true of tonality. But there are other ways of experiencing time in music. Tonality is an art which is "about" time; Moment form, vertical time, and moment time are about discrete events in time.

I remember a clip of John Cage looking directly at the camera, and saying "I see you're interested in history." I don't think anybody got the joke the way I got it, and still probably don't.



> In speaking of tonality as a property of sound, rather than a product of art, you are engaging in reductionist thinking, and overlooking completely the functions and meanings of tonality in actual music.


I think that's the very reason that many listeners don't "get" Messiaen, or Cage, or even Schoenberg. I never said that Schoenberg's 12-tone works were tonal, or sounded tonal to me. I just listen to them as a continuing singularity. Each new moment is different, and offers a possibility of a tonal resting point.



> Pointing out that tonal relationships have a basis in acoustical phenomena is nothing new. That's been noticed since - when, the 18th century? Or was it Pythagoras? Acoustics can do very well without having artistic concepts read into it. Sound is only the material of which music and tonality are made.


I think of it in terms of subject and object; I'm not really interested in "time" as a thing, or object. I'm interested in experiencing time in different ways, and in the nature of how we experience time.
I think that Western tonality has had a monopoly on time, and there is new music which embodies new ways of experiencing time in music. Stockhausen explored this idea in many of his works, and wrote an essay in Die Rhie called "…How Time Passes…"


----------



## millionrainbows

Mandryka said:


> Yes I just tried to listen to Schoenberg op 33 and I can see what you're saying, I then tried with Babbitt's Post Partitions and I completely failed!


I don't think Babbitt was interested in anything other than the different forms a row could take, and in that sense he is very linear. Try listening to intervals only in Babbitt; he wanted intervallic variety. I'll listen to it and get back to you, Mandryrka.


----------



## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Sure, music as such is universal, but the elements of a specific musical style are not. They have to be learned, and thinking about them may aid the ear in grasping how they work. A propos the present topic, I think it's pretty easily observed that music without a hierarchically organized scale is far from universal in its comprehensibility or appeal.


An hierarchy suggests a linear progression, as in an hierarchical pyramid, or in a narrative progression of uniform, continuous, and connected events, which reach a goal.

With Schoenberg, I listen vertically, or moment-to-moment. Then I hear stacks of notes which create harmonic effects, or (as with Webern) I hear intervals in sequence, in small areas and spaces of time, but not as long strings of narrative.



> Why that should be is to me a fascinating question, and the search for answers can lead us in all sorts of directions.


It can, and you seem to be led to that lotus-blossom connection. All I'm saying is that the East has a differently-wired brain, and a lot of composers seemed to have tapped-in to this alternate mode. They probably all sit around in lotus positions and meditate.


----------



## Woodduck

fluteman said:


> And specific musical styles, even those with a hierarchically organized scale, are also far from universal in their comprehensibility and appeal. What I meant by the comment about babies was, music is a language learned first and foremost by ear, not by written words or notation, and imo it can never fully be reduced to words or written notation. For that reason alone, language parsing debates can rage on without resolution.
> 
> Million rainbows has nicely summarized the basics of the western scale, or harmony, or consonance and dissonance in a series of posts, though he hasn't yet touched on systems of temperment. And while that scale is still profoundly important to western music, and has been for at least 600 years, after 1900 it began to yield a little more of the stage, to dissonance, silence, indeterminate sounds, and a wider range of rhythms and timbres, all of which in my opinion reflect the modern industrial and post-industrial/technological/electronic sound environment, (as well as increasing non-western influences).
> 
> You seem to want to call some of those recently more important elements non-musical, or at least not as central or essential to music as the hierarchical scale. Other writers have argued that rhythm, not scale or tonality, is the most fundamental element of music. I'm not going to resolve questions like that, but I accept a broad concept of music that includes any or all of these elements, basically, a structured set of sounds that communicates through at least partly non-verbal means. Disagree by all means, but the What is music? semantic debate isn't so compelling to me.


Hmmm...

I haven't said at any time: 1.) that any musical style is universally comprehensible or appealing; 2.) that tonality is the most fundamental attribute of music; 3.) that dissonance, silence, or indeterminate sounds are not useful or important in music; or 4.) that I think the meaning of music can be "reduced" to words.

Actually, nothing you've said here suggests that your idea of what music is is incompatible with mine. We may of course differ on the significance or value of what we hear.


----------



## millionrainbows

@Mandryka: I think you should listen to "Partitions" and follow it with "Post-Partitions" as intended.






Yes, in both pieces, Babbitt seems less interested in creating harmonic entities, and less interested in creating "phrases" to identify.

The lower-register clusters are often unclear, so I take them as gestural; there is plenty of interval content going on up above. The rhythms are much more chaotic.

The result here is similar to other of his works, like the Piano Concerto. It creates a "static field" of sounds as events. It's really un-connected compared to Schoenberg.

What seems to help me is to think of this as a "stasis" or a dead landscape, or an elephant graveyard. The sound events are like formations or crystals which just "hang there."

I think here, we have entered a world of gestures and singular events which do not "develop" as we normally think music must. This is the stasis I talked about. These are not so much music/syntactical ideas as they are reiterations of a row, and how many permutations he can derive, in order to achieve maximum intervallic variety, and avoid any hint of "reductionist thinking" which might suggest tonality.

Does that make sense? It's pretty "objective" music in this regard, like a form of classicism or formalism. I'm sure there is a row logic behind it all, and this is where the real "development is; in the changing sonorities. I try to identify intervals when I can hear them. A lot of those low bass notes are unclear as to pitch, and the high ones as well, so "pitch" per se seems not to be paramount in his thinking. It must be something very abstract. Is it audible? Could his mother recognize his music if she heard it on the radio? Maybe.


----------



## millionrainbows

fluteman said:


> And specific musical styles, even those with a hierarchically organized scale, are also far from universal in their comprehensibility and appeal. What I meant by the comment about babies was, music is a language learned first and foremost by ear, not by written words or notation, and imo it can never fully be reduced to words or written notation. For that reason alone, language parsing debates can rage on without resolution.
> Million rainbows has nicely summarized the basics of the western scale, or harmony, or consonance and dissonance in a series of posts, though he hasn't yet touched on systems of temperment. And while that scale is still profoundly important to western music, and has been for at least 600 years, after 1900 it began to yield a little more of the stage, to dissonance, silence, indeterminate sounds, and a wider range of rhythms and timbres, all of which in my opinion reflect the modern industrial and post-industrial/technological/electronic sound environment, (as well as increasing non-western influences). You seem to want to call some of those recently more important elements non-musical, or at least not as central or essential to music as the hierarchical scale. Other writers have argued that rhythm, not scale or tonality, is the most fundamental element of music. I'm not going to resolve questions like that, but I accept a broad concept of music that includes any or all of these elements, basically, a structured set of sounds that communicates through at least partly non-verbal means. Disagree by all means, but the What is music? semantic debate isn't so compelling to me.


As far as temperament, that means alterations to a scale within the octave, i.e. minute "adjustments" of scale notes to make certain key areas sound better. The main attempts at temperament were the mean-tone temperaments which attempted to get better major thirds, which were flattened ("sacrificed") by the stacking of fifths (traceable to Pythagoran origins) to generate the scale & tune the keyboards.

Equal temperament, as we have today, is biased toward fifths. Our fifths are only tempered 2 cents flat; that's good, compared to major thirds, which are 14 cents flat.

There are all kinds of equal temperaments; ours is a 12-division equal temperament. But there ca be infinite ways of equally dividing an octave: 7-tone (Thailand), 19, 21, 31, 34, and 54 equal temperaments. Most of these exist for the reason of getting closer to "Just" intervals. The seemingly arbitrary numbers are based on keyboard concepts. If you create an in-tune octave between C and the G in the following octave, then count the notes: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12, then C to G above that is 7 notes. 12+7=19. To A is 21; to the G above that is 31.

"Just" intonation produces perfect intervals, but it doesn't close the octave (it keeps on spiraling up), and it doesn't divide the octave evenly; so it is not an equal tuning.


----------



## fluteman

Woodduck said:


> Hmmm...
> 
> I haven't said at any time: 1.) that any musical style is universally comprehensible or appealing; 2.) that tonality is the most fundamental attribute of music; 3.) that dissonance, silence, or indeterminate sounds are not useful or important in music; or 4.) that I think the meaning of music can be "reduced" to words.
> 
> Actually, nothing you've said here suggests that your idea of what music is is incompatible with mine. We may of course differ on the significance or value of what we hear.


Yes, my idea of what music is is incompatible with yours, not that it much matters. In discussing John Cage's 4'33", you said, among many, many other things, "As to where to draw the line on that slope [for what is not music], I'd start by drawing it at the point where people calling themselves musicians are not making any sound or giving any instructions for the making of sound." Yet, 4'33" does meet my definition of music, even though the only sounds it contains are the indeterminate, random ones the audience happens to hear while the performer remains mute, because it does have one key structural element that your comment doesn't acknowledge or attach any significance to: duration (marked by when the piano keyboard cover is opened and closed). It is, therefore, a "structured set of sounds." And overall, you're consistent in that respect, either understating, or as in this case, completely ignoring, elements that I see as fundamental to the musical experience.
So we plainly disagree as to what music is. To the extent it's a semantic disagreement, I readily concede it's not too interesting, nor are the many other semantic disagreements that would inevitably follow once we fail to agree on what music is. To the extent it's a disagreement of principles or values, I don't expect to convince you of anything. People perceive things differently.


----------



## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> *I'm not trying to define tonality, and we both know what it is. It's a narrative.*
> 
> *Tonality is an art which is "about" time*; Moment form, vertical time, and moment time are about discrete events in time.
> 
> I think that's the very reason that many listeners don't "get" Messiaen, or Cage, or even Schoenberg. I never said that Schoenberg's 12-tone works were tonal, or sounded tonal to me. I just listen to them as a continuing singularity. Each new moment is different, and offers a possibility of a tonal resting point.


From your last long post:

_"Tonality" is vertical sonority, in relation to a singularity, and can be experienced instantaneously, in the now, with no string of narrative expectations._

_Starting with one note, we have the ultimate in tonality...This has no linear dimension; nothing follows, so it is purely vertical, or harmonic._

_I think that "tonality" is sonority, in relation to a singularity, and is experienced instantaneously._

You may not be trying to define tonality, but those statements certainly do _undefine_ it. You ate your cake. You can't have it now!

I do completely (I think) understand your observations about musical styles being more or less linear or narrative, emphasizing the tensions of progression on the one hand, or isolated phenomena and "being in the moment" on the other. We can probably agree that Western music sought and achieved the maximum of narrative force and clarity in the 18th and 19th centuries, and common practice tonality was the primary reason for its uniqueness in this respect. After that period, heavier chromaticism could make the narrative direction less certain, and "total chromaticism" (as in Schoenberg) made music reliant on factors other than tonal directionality (e.g. voice leading, rhythm, dynamics), for cohesiveness in time.

But to what extent did Schoenberg feel that his "pantonal" music was to be heard as linear narrative, as opposed to moment-to-moment sonority? I'm pretty sure he wanted the former, and would have been outraged at anyone suggesting otherwise. That's the traditionalist in him, and I hear the music (in, for example, the Violin Concerto 



 ) exerting itself to create a forceful narrative, enlisting non-harmonic devices in the cause, straining every nerve to overcome the absence of a progressive principle in its harmony. I suspect this inherent contradiction is part of what led Boulez to criticize Schoenberg as not being progressive enough. Thoughts?


----------



## fluteman

millionrainbows said:


> As far as temperament, that means alterations to a scale within the octave, i.e. minute "adjustments" of scale notes to make certain key areas sound better. The main attempts at temperament were the mean-tone temperaments which attempted to get better major thirds, which were flattened ("sacrificed") by the stacking of fifths (traceable to Pythagoran origins) to generate the scale & tune the keyboards.
> 
> Equal temperament, as we have today, is biased toward fifths. Our fifths are only tempered 2 cents flat; that's good, compared to major thirds, which are 14 cents flat.
> 
> There are all kinds of equal temperaments; ours is a 12-division equal temperament. But there ca be infinite ways of equally dividing an octave: 7-tone (Thailand), 19, 21, 31, 34, and 54 equal temperaments. Most of these exist for the reason of getting closer to "Just" intervals. The seemingly arbitrary numbers are based on keyboard concepts. If you create an in-tune octave between C and the G in the following octave, then count the notes: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12, then C to G above that is 7 notes. 12+7=19. To A is 21; to the G above that is 31.
> 
> "Just" intonation produces perfect intervals, but it doesn't close the octave (it keeps on spiraling up), and it doesn't divide the octave evenly; so it is not an equal tuning.


Aha! Nicely done. You didn't mention Werckmeister III, supposedly the temperment used by J.S. Bach, but that is just another "unequal temperment", like just intonation. But notice -- not only are our perfect fifths not really perfect, a slight 2 cents of flatness that accumulates as one builds the scale, but the major third is downright --- dissonant! Imagine if a court musician from imperial China or Japan heard that interval! Ouch! But it sounds just fine to us.


----------



## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> From your last long post:
> 
> _"Tonality" is vertical sonority, in relation to a singularity, and can be experienced instantaneously, in the now, with no string of narrative expectations._
> 
> _Starting with one note, we have the ultimate in tonality...This has no linear dimension; nothing follows, so it is purely vertical, or harmonic._
> 
> _I think that "tonality" is sonority, in relation to a singularity, and is experienced instantaneously._
> 
> You may not be trying to define tonality, but those statements certainly do _undefine_ it. You ate your cake. You can't have it now!


I think that sonority is the essential quality of tonality; CP tonality is simply the development and elaboration of that. For me, the harmonic (vertical) model is what defines tonality, and CP tonality simply extends that instantaneous sensation into a narrative which has a more cerebral dimension, and requires cognition and memory. But the essence of tonality is vertical and instantaneous sensation of sonorities.



> I do completely (I think) understand your observations about musical styles being more or less linear or narrative, emphasizing the tensions of progression on the one hand, or isolated phenomena and "being in the moment" on the other. We can probably agree that Western music sought and achieved the maximum of narrative force and clarity in the 18th and 19th centuries, and common practice tonality was the primary reason for its uniqueness in this respect. After that period, heavier chromaticism could make the narrative direction less certain, and "total chromaticism" (as in Schoenberg) made music reliant on factors other than tonal directionality (e.g. voice leading, rhythm, dynamics), for cohesiveness in time.


I agree. The matter is confused because Schoenberg has a lot of linear aspects, due to his mastery of the tonal narrative, but his 12-tone works are definitely not tonal in the same way (how Mahlerian even managed to get us to consider otherwise is beyond me).

Thus, Schoenberg's harmony must, for me, be experienced in the "now" as moments of instantaneous sonority, as a continuously changing point of 'tonality.' After all, this is chromatic music using a continuous flow of all 12 notes. CP tonality, or key areas, must of necessity be reductionist, and have fewer notes, to establish the key.



> But to what extent did Schoenberg feel that his "pantonal" music was to be heard as linear narrative, as opposed to moment-to-moment sonority? I'm pretty sure he wanted the former, and would have been outraged at anyone suggesting otherwise. That's the traditionalist in him, and I hear the music (in, for example, the Violin Concerto
> 
> 
> 
> ) exerting itself to create a forceful narrative, enlisting non-harmonic devices in the cause, straining every nerve to overcome the absence of a progressive principle in its harmony. I suspect this inherent contradiction is part of what led Boulez to criticize Schoenberg as not being progressive enough. Thoughts?


Yes, I agree. Schoenberg's method was not tonal in nature, so whatever harmonic sensations resulted were the result of craftsmanship and artistry. By calling it "pantonal" he as much as admits that it is not "tonality" in the CP sense.

Still, there is narrative progression; we all hear it.


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## millionrainbows

fluteman said:


> Aha! Nicely done. You didn't mention Werckmeister III, supposedly the temperment used by J.S. Bach, but that is just another "unequal temperment", like just intonation. But notice -- not only are our perfect fifths not really perfect, a slight 2 cents of flatness that accumulates as one builds the scale, but the major third is downright --- dissonant! Imagine if a court musician from imperial China or Japan heard that interval! Ouch! But it sounds just fine to us.


You should go to this site and see Bach's "well-tempered" tuning demonstrated.

Larips.com



> *It appears that Johann Sebastian Bach notated a specific and unequal method of keyboard tuning. He did not express it in our normally-expected modern formats of theory, or numbers. Rather, he drew a diagram that looks like a practical hands-on sequence to adjust the tuning pins, working entirely by ear.*


*

*He was, after all, a practical musician/performer who hauled his keyboards around in a hay-wagon.


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## fluteman

Woodduck said:


> But to what extent did Schoenberg feel that his "pantonal" music was to be heard as linear narrative, as opposed to moment-to-moment sonority? I'm pretty sure he wanted the former, and would have been outraged at anyone suggesting otherwise. That's the traditionalist in him, and I hear the music (in, for example, the Violin Concerto
> 
> 
> 
> ) exerting itself to create a forceful narrative, enlisting non-harmonic devices in the cause, straining every nerve to overcome the absence of a progressive principle in its harmony. I suspect this inherent contradiction is part of what led Boulez to criticize Schoenberg as not being progressive enough. Thoughts?


Yes, I think there is something to this. I don't know if his music was "straining every nerve to overcome the absence of a progressive principle in its harmony", but it's probably fair to say that, other than abandoning the hierarchical scale, he was a conservative traditionalist in many or even most other ways. Someone thoroughly steeped in the music of Mozart to Mahler would quickly recognize ties to those earlier traditions and could easily feel something important was missing and not sufficiently compensated for. It's probably fair to say Boulez advocated a cleaner and more comprehensive break from more of those older traditions. 
But then, the initial innovator often isn't the one to make the most of the innovation.


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## Woodduck

It seems natural that Boulez, the cerebral Frenchman, would have been attracted by the intellectualism of serialism but repelled by the heavy breathing of German Expressionism. He came partly to terms with it later, as a conductor, playing music of the Second Viennese School, Wagner, and Mahler, though his way with the latter two is controversial.


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## millionrainbows

fluteman said:


> Yes, I think there is something to this. I don't know if his music was "straining every nerve to overcome the absence of a progressive principle in its harmony", but it's probably fair to say that, other than abandoning the hierarchical scale, he was a conservative traditionalist in many or even most other ways. Someone thoroughly steeped in the music of Mozart to Mahler would quickly recognize ties to those earlier traditions and could easily feel something important was missing and not sufficiently compensated for. It's probably fair to say Boulez advocated a cleaner and more comprehensive break from more of those older traditions.
> But then, the initial innovator often isn't the one to make the most of the innovation.


Yes, Schoenberg's music is rather "schizophrenic" in this regard; he has one foot in Romanticism, and one foot in modernism. This also makes for irritating examples which people throw out for their agendas, whether traditional or modern. Schoenberg had perhaps inadvertently created music for a new way of perceiving, but kept on writing in the old way. That's why it seems to appeal to both traditionalists and modernists, and can be used in agenda-battles for either side.

I'm listening to John Cage's Etudes Australes, and this is an infinitely better example of "moment time," with no baggage, yet pleasant listening with a sense of mystery.

This is music that is linked to a new way of perceiving, and therefore writing music.


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## millionrainbows

> *millionrainbows*





> _When I listen to Schoenberg, as I listened to the piano music played by Glenn Gould today, I try to hear tonality. It is becoming easier now, since my intuition and intellect have finally unified into one receptive organ.
> 
> In the Two Piano Pieces Op. 33, I hear a new moment-to moment sense of tonality; I am "hearing in the now," so to speak. Tonality is no longer a drawn-out, linear process of "reading" the music narratively; it is an instantaneous perception of harmonic sonority. Has tonality retreated, or is it in a state of constantly being born anew? I hear "the one note" and I hear it in all places, at all times. It changes; it takes on form, then that form is changed in meaning by the entry of a new note; and it goes on and on. Can I keep up with the kaleidoscope?
> P
> "Tonic" is now in every moment, "scale hierarchy" is everywhere like a radiant wheel which rolls through a field of harmonic possibilities. Ahh, the beauty!_






Mandryka said:


> Yes I just tried to listen to Schoenberg op 33 and I can see what you're saying, I then tried with Babbitt's Post Partitions and I completely failed!


I think this demonstrates the "schizo" qualities of Schoenberg: it was music using a method which demanded a new way of perceiving harmony, yet it stayed in the old narrative context.

The narrative aspect of later Schoenberg seems to appeal to traditionalists, while the harmonic aspects demand listening in the "now."

Based on this, it seems obvious that Mandryka does not relate to the Babbitt piece, because it demands total surrender of the narrative to the now. Plus, the Babbitt is from a newer era of the post-war serialists, and they were not interested in "musical syntax" per se, since that language of linear, dramatic gestures is loaded with the older era's baggage.

So, I conclude the Mandryka is not a modernist in this sense, in the way of a new way of perception of music.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> It seems natural that Boulez, the cerebral Frenchman, would have been attracted by the intellectualism of serialism but repelled by the heavy breathing of German Expressionism.


The post-war Darmstadt school completely rejected the Western classical syntax, including German Expressionism, Romanticism, and all other "isms". In fact, they rejected the entire musical syntax of melodies, harmony, phrasing, and rhythm of the old language, up to and including "Modernism" which still contained vestiges of that musical language. That's one reason it's so easy to hear this when it occurs.

Again, Schoenberg still had a grip on the old world language, even though he had enabled a new wave of composers to abandon all that he held dear. That's why he & his music are poor candidates for arguments about what distinguishes one sort of modernism from another; just as the whole-tone scale is used to pose such arguments on the technical level.



> He came partly to terms with it later, as a conductor, playing music of the Second Viennese School, Wagner, and Mahler, though his way with the latter two is controversial.


I don't think Boulez' musical orientation and direction were due to some opposing forces of intellect and Romanticism in his psyche; he simply saw what was in front of him. He & Stockhausen made a quite conscious decision to move away from the Western mindset which had produced WWII and nearly destroyed Europe. Perhaps this direction was in part due to PTSD. :lol:


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> I don't think Boulez' musical orientation and direction were due to some opposing forces of intellect and Romanticism in his psyche; *he simply saw what was in front of him. He & Stockhausen made a quite conscious decision to move away from the Western mindset which had produced WWII and nearly destroyed Europe.*


That's merely how they rationalized their artistic choices. Let's just blow up the opera houses and start over. Very mature.


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## fluteman

Woodduck said:


> That's merely how they rationalized their artistic choices. Let's just blow up the opera houses and start over. Very mature.


But don't you think the whole point of an avant garde movement of any era, or even a single innovative artist, is to challenge convention, even be a bit of a bad boy/girl, and knock over some furniture and break a few dishes? It's a healthy thing -- helps us stay out of ruts and re-evaluate our assumptions. It's no accident that tyrants like Hitler, Stalin and Mao censored and persecuted artistic innovators. They wanted a monolithic society where nobody challenged convention, and applied that principle to theater, music and the visual arts.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> That's merely how they rationalized their artistic choices. Let's just blow up the opera houses and start over. Very mature.


"Let's just blow up the opera houses and start over, before they blow the whole world up with hydrogen bombs" is probably more along the lines of what Stockhausen, Boulez, and the post war gang were thinking. This also affected a whole generation in America, with Bob Dylan, hippies, etc.


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## millionrainbows

fluteman said:


> But don't you think the whole point of an avant garde movement of any era, or even a single innovative artist, is to challenge convention, even be a bit of a bad boy/girl, and knock over some furniture and break a few dishes? It's a healthy thing -- helps us stay out of ruts and re-evaluate our assumptions. It's no accident that tyrants like Hitler, Stalin and Mao censored and persecuted artistic innovators. They wanted a monolithic society where nobody challenged convention, and applied that principle to theater, music and the visual arts.


Yes. I see all genres of music (and changes) as being related in some way to social identity and social forces. It was time to tear down some walls, and challenge the complacent status-quo mentality.

Of course, every genre has a limited life-cycle, and the "bad boys" eventually become assimilated into the category of respectability. Look at Philip Glass; he's a respectable composer of symphonies and operas now. That's a far cry from hauling around electric combo organs and setting up PA systems in lofts.


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## Woodduck

fluteman said:


> But don't you think the whole point of an avant garde movement of any era, or even a single innovative artist, is to challenge convention, even be a bit of a bad boy/girl, and knock over some furniture and break a few dishes? It's a healthy thing -- helps us stay out of ruts and re-evaluate our assumptions. It's no accident that tyrants like Hitler, Stalin and Mao censored and persecuted artistic innovators. They wanted a monolithic society where nobody challenged convention, and applied that principle to theater, music and the visual arts.


Oh sure. That bit about blowing up opera houses is just amusing hyperbole - or is it? Many years later Boulez was still saying that he sometimes wished he could make all the music of the past disappear and start from scratch. Innovators of earlier times - the best example is probably Wagner, who was full of revolutionary talk, but Beethoven's good too - never said things like that. Wagner didn't want to blow up opera houses; he just built a better one, while continuing to pay sincere compliments to Bellini, whose style of opera he was consciously leaving behind. The idea was to improve things, not destroy them and start over.

The rhetoric of change, evolution and revolution reached an unprecedented level in the 20th century, not just in music but in all aspects of life, and artists seemed to define themselves (or be defined by ideological spokesmen) as much by what they were _against_ as by what they were _for_. In many cases they ended up being _against_ almost everything and _for_ almost nothing, so by mid-century we had composers rolling dice and painters exhibiting Campbell's soup cans.

The artistic conservatism of totalitarian political regimes isn't an issue of conservatism as such, but of ideological control. But it does illustrate what tends to happen when the organic process and natural pace of cultural change is disrupted by revolution. The sudden change creates chaos, and a new order can be maintained only by rigid enforcement rationalized by dogma which creates a new conservatism of its own. As I read history, quite a few composers, including prominent ones such as John Adams and George Rochberg, would identify just such a pattern in the wake of the "serial revolution," culminating in the mid-century academic enshrinement of serialism as a "new conservatism" full of rules, subtly and not-so-subtly enforced, to which composers were expected to adhere. Adams, Rochberg and others found it oppressive and took a fresh look at the past they'd been taught to reject.

What I'm saying, essentially, is that an innovative spirit is not to be confused with contempt for the past.


----------



## millionrainbows

> Free atonality originated in the attempt to equalize the value of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, so that they would no longer form an hierarchy of functions so fundamental to the chromaticism of the tonal system. There are two main principles at work here; variation based on the intervallic cell, which serves as the identifiable referential unit and as the means of integrating the musical fabric, and nonrepetition, which may produce an athematic style, a kind of musical stream of consciousness wherein the thread of continuity is generated by momentary associations. -Elliott Antokoletz


Intervallic cells: You can see in Bartok the same kind of cellular thinking which creates localized areas of tone-centricity. This seems to be a natural consequence of using smaller intervals, the incidence of which increases in chromaticism.

Nonrepetition: This aspect of free atonality is in keeping with the idea of "moment time" and the breakdown of narrative linearity, more dependent on awareness of the vertical harmonic dimension for it's sense of harmonic tonality.



> In later atonal compositions, the elements of the cell sometimes have a fixed order, i.e., are serialized, as in the first piece of Schoenberg's Fünf Klavierstücke, Op. 23 (1923). The cell is identifiable in four forms: prime, inversion, retrograde, and retrograde-inversion. The use of an ordered cell in this otherwise nontwelve-tone piece foreshadows his twelve-tone serial idiom immediately; the fifth piece of this opus is one of the earliest works to be based on a twelve-tone series. -Elliott Antokoletz


We can see from this example how serialism developed its principles out of chromaticism, and how the development of serialism did not just suddenly "happen" and was not simply "invented." It developed out of a modernist way of thinking chromatically. It was not as if "a fire was set" which suddenly destroyed all that went before it.


----------



## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Oh sure. That bit about blowing up opera houses is just amusing hyperbole - or is it? Many years later Boulez was still saying that he sometimes wished he could make all the music of the past disappear and start from scratch. Innovators of earlier times - the best example is probably Wagner, who was full of revolutionary talk, but Beethoven's good too - never said things like that. Wagner didn't want to blow up opera houses; he just built a better one, while continuing to pay sincere compliments to Bellini, whose style of opera he was consciously leaving behind. The idea was to improve things, not destroy them and start over.


You are talking as if serialism did not develop historically, and it did; unfortunately, World War II is responsible for obscuring much of this. The Nazis and Soviets did their part to suppress the development of atonal music, and the general worldwide depression after the war discouraged travel and the free dissemination of information and sharing among composers. Schoenberg's music and ideas were actually suppressed in Germany as "Jewish Bolshevism," and in Russia as "bourgoise decadence." As a result, neotonality and neoclassicism dominated the international musical scene in the 1930s and early 1940s.



> The rhetoric of change, evolution and revolution reached an unprecedented level in the 20th century, not just in music but in all aspects of life, and artists seemed to define themselves (or be defined by ideological spokesmen) as much by what they were _against_ as by what they were _for_. In many cases they ended up being _against_ almost everything and _for_ almost nothing, so by mid-century we had composers rolling dice and painters exhibiting Campbell's soup cans.


Yes, but you are leaving out a lot of crucial history in your eagerness to disparage modern art. The crucial period in music is the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s, which was impeded by the events of WWII.

Your assertion that artists are simply 'destructive revolutionaries' is diminished by the fact that this new way of producing music was, in fact, suppressed by the larger power establishment.



> The artistic conservatism of totalitarian political regimes isn't an issue of conservatism as such, but of ideological control. But it does illustrate what tends to happen when the organic process and natural pace of cultural change is disrupted by revolution.


I'm not sure what 'revolution' you are referring to. From my perspective of history, World War II was the impediment to the free expression and dissemination of musical ideas and musical thought. It was disrupted by ideological control.



> The sudden change creates chaos, and a new order can be maintained only by rigid enforcement rationalized by dogma which creates a new conservatism of its own.


Just as the nazis embraced your precious Wagner, it was actually conservatism which was being rigidly enforced, before and leading up to the war. Your, and Rochberg's lament that a "new ideology" had taken over pales by comparison.

This reinforces the idea I put forth in a blog, "The political implications of tonality," and the fact that tonality itself has always represented the conservative power structure; true from the inception of tonality as a tool of the Church and its power, true in Mozart's time, true in Beethoven's time, and true in the early 20th century, when the power establishment felt threatened by the new music.



> As I read history, quite a few composers, including prominent ones such as John Adams and George Rochberg, would identify just such a pattern in the wake of the "serial revolution," culminating in the mid-century academic enshrinement of serialism as a "new conservatism" full of rules, subtly and not-so-subtly enforced, to which composers were expected to adhere. Adams, Rochberg and others found it oppressive and took a fresh look at the past they'd been taught to reject.


The only "enshrinement" of atonal musical thinking that I can see was that the national radio stations of Europe supported the broadcast of such music, and helped establish electronic music. German and French radio in particular helped Stockhausen with electronic music.

In America, modern music did not receive as much help, as radio stations were not government sponsored, so academia was its only outpost. If America was following Europe's lead into serialism, that is certainly not inappropriate, if that's where the "action" was. Rochberg had personal reasons for retreating from serialism, and was a completely individual case of American isolationism. Adams and minimalism were affected by larger non-Western Eastern influences, which took time through the 1960s to germinate; not necessarily as a "reaction" to serialism.

What you are saying seems to be a distortion of the snap-back reaction after WWII, when total ideological power threatened to completely suppress free musical thought.



> What I'm saying, essentially, is that an innovative spirit is not to be confused with contempt for the past.


That becomes a distortion when a Nazi is telling you that "You must listen to Wagner, and you must reject Jewish Bolshevism of Schoenberg."

Musical thought develops naturally when it is unimpeded, and you are seemingly incognizant of the development of these ideas from the 1930s through to the 1950s and beyond.


----------



## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> You are talking as if serialism did not develop historically, and it did; unfortunately, World War II is responsible for obscuring much of this. The Nazis and Soviets did their part to suppress the development of atonal music, and the general worldwide depression after the war discouraged travel and the free dissemination of information and sharing among composers. Schoenberg's music and ideas were actually suppressed in Germany as "Jewish Bolshevism," and in Russia as "bourgoise decadence." As a result, neotonality and neoclassicism dominated the international musical scene in the 1930s and early 1940s.
> 
> Yes, but you are leaving out a lot of crucial history in your eagerness to disparage modern art. The crucial period in music is the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s, which was impeded by the events of WWII.
> 
> Your assertion that artists are simply 'destructive revolutionaries' is diminished by the fact that this new way of producing music was, in fact, suppressed by the larger power establishment.
> 
> I'm not sure what 'revolution' you are referring to. From my perspective of history, World War II was the impediment to the free expression and dissemination of musical ideas and musical thought. It was disrupted by ideological control.
> 
> Just as the nazis embraced your precious Wagner, it was actually conservatism which was being rigidly enforced, before and leading up to the war. Your, and Rochberg's lament that a "new ideology" had taken over pales by comparison.
> 
> This reinforces the idea I put forth in a blog, "The political implications of tonality," and the fact that tonality itself has always represented the conservative power structure; true from the inception of tonality as a tool of the Church and its power, true in Mozart's time, true in Beethoven's time, and true in the early 20th century, when the power establishment felt threatened by the new music.
> 
> The only "enshrinement" of atonal musical thinking that I can see was that the national radio stations of Europe supported the broadcast of such music, and helped establish electronic music. German and French radio in particular helped Stockhausen with electronic music.
> 
> In America, modern music did not receive as much help, as radio stations were not government sponsored, so academia was its only outpost. If America was following Europe's lead into serialism, that is certainly not inappropriate, if that's where the "action" was. Rochberg had personal reasons for retreating from serialism, and was a completely individual case of American isolationism. Adams and minimalism were affected by larger non-Western Eastern influences, which took time through the 1960s to germinate; not necessarily as a "reaction" to serialism.
> 
> What you are saying seems to be a distortion of the snap-back reaction after WWII, when total ideological power threatened to completely suppress free musical thought.
> 
> That becomes a distortion when a Nazi is telling you that "You must listen to Wagner, and you must reject Jewish Bolshevism of Schoenberg."
> 
> Musical thought develops naturally when it is unimpeded, and you are seemingly incognizant of the development of these ideas from the 1930s through to the 1950s and beyond.


I'm afraid you've missed the entire point of my post, and are debating points which I'm not making. What you're talking about is interesting, but it just isn't what I'm talking about. All I'm really addressing is fluteman's question:

_But don't you think the whole point of an avant garde movement of any era, or even a single innovative artist, is to challenge convention, even be a bit of a bad boy/girl, and knock over some furniture and break a few dishes? _

My answer to him is, essentially, "No. I don't think so." The "whole point" of innovation is not to reject something, but to imagine something else. Of course we leave the past as we move into the future, and it's human nature to think that we're improving on it. But that isn't the essence and purpose of innovation.

His point about tyrannical regimes censoring art for ideological reasons is a different subject. I address this second subject by agreeing that, yes, dictators try to enforce artistic conservatism as a means of ideological control. I then note the way in which revolution - radical change - ends up spawning new conservatisms, needed to keep the "revolution" in place. That revolutionaries often become tyrants - in fact are often tyrants at heart, and from the start - is no secret.

This is an irony, and one to keep in mind when we exalt "innovation" for its own sake, in life or in art. A man who says on the one hand that the music of the past should be obliterated, and on the other that any composer who doesn't worship at the new serialist shrine is useless and irrelevant to the "needs" of the time, is as perfect an instance, in the arts, of the "revolutionary despot" as I can imagine.


----------



## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> I'm afraid you've missed the entire point of my post, and are debating points which I'm not making. What you're talking about is interesting, but it just isn't what I'm talking about. All I'm really addressing is flute man's question…


If you're comfortable in approaching the issue of modern music in such a facile way, have at it. Your soapbox has a few structural deficiencies, though. Let's just say I'm just putting out these ideas for the public good.

This is a thread about chromaticism and tonality, and you are digressing off into an area which is less substantive, and yet saying that I am somehow "missing your point." This is all related to what you are saying, and is an attempt to inject some "meat" into the proceedings.

_



But don't you think the whole point of an avant garde movement of any era, or even a single innovative artist, is to challenge convention, even be a bit of a bad boy/girl, and knock over some furniture and break a few dishes?

Click to expand...

_


> My answer to him is, essentially, "No. I don't think so." The "whole point" of innovation is not to reject something, but to imagine something else. Of course we leave the past as we move into the future, and it's human nature to think that we're improving on it. But that isn't the essence and purpose of innovation.


That's all well and good, but these seem like vague stylistic concerns. This 'bad boy' analogy could just as easily be applied to punk rock.



> His point about tyrannical regimes censoring art for ideological reasons is a different subject. I address this second subject by agreeing that, yes, dictators try to enforce artistic conservatism as a means of ideological control. I then note the way in which revolution - radical change - ends up spawning new conservatisms, needed to keep the "revolution" in place. That revolutionaries often become tyrants - in fact are often tyrants at heart, and from the start - is no secret.


Too vague, too general; let's have some historical context, please.



> This is an irony, and one to keep in mind when we exalt "innovation" for its own sake, in life or in art. A man who says on the one hand that the music of the past should be obliterated, and on the other that any composer who doesn't worship at the new serialist shrine is useless and irrelevant to the "needs" of the time, is as perfect an instance, in the arts, of the "revolutionary despot" as I can imagine.


This is too simplistic for me. History is more detailed and nuanced than that. You're sounding like a demagogue. I'm interested in how modern music developed.


----------



## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> If you're comfortable in approaching the issue of modern music in such a *facile* way, have at it. *Your soapbox* has a few *structural deficiencies*, though. *Let's just say I'm just putting out these ideas for the public good.*
> 
> This is a thread about chromaticism and tonality, and you are digressing off into an area which is *less substantive,* and yet saying that I am somehow "missing your point." This is all related to what you are saying, and is *an attempt to inject some "meat" into the proceedings.*
> 
> That's all well and good, but these seem like *vague *stylistic concerns. This 'bad boy' analogy could just as easily be applied to punk rock.
> 
> *Too vague*, too general; let's have some historical context, please.
> 
> This is *too simplistic* for me. History is more detailed and* nuanced* than that. *You're sounding like a demagogue.* I'm interested in how modern music developed.


Great argumentation, million. Call me "facile," "on a soapbox," "structurally deficient," "not substantive,""vague," "simplistic," " demagogic," insufficiently "nuanced," and lacking in "meat."

Impressive. I'm sure the "public good" will be well-served.

We were just discussing insults over in Area 51. I think nathanb needs to read this so he'll understand what they look like. Then maybe he'll have a better grasp of forum dynamics and won't feel so bad.


----------



## KenOC

I'm sure millions is only trying to find a polite way to say, "I disagree with you." Sometimes just the right words are hard to come up with.


----------



## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Great argumentation, million. Call me "facile," "on a soapbox," "structurally deficient," "not substantive,""vague," "simplistic," " demagogic," insufficiently "nuanced," and lacking in "meat."
> 
> Impressive. I'm sure the "public good" will be well-served.
> 
> We were just discussing insults over in Area 51. I think nathanb needs to read this so he'll understand what they look like. Then maybe he'll have a better grasp of forum dynamics and won't feel so bad.


It's just as insulting to have one's detailed response passively written off as "not relevant." That's just a passive way of ignoring a response.

Besides, I stand behind what I said: the line of discussion has gotten shallower and more simplistic; and all those other adjectives. I know that you are capable of much more.

What's KenOC up to? The deadline approaches on my 6-month infraction for what I saw as a trivial comment regarding a person of power; maybe he knows something I don't.


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## millionrainbows

Anyway, back to the topic. Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 2, op. 10 (1907-1908), is the place to start regarding "free atonality." It starts within the parameters of chromatic tonality, it continues toward linear chromaticism, and intervals and motifs determine the structure, replacing tonal functions, which were by this point becoming less & less meaningful and useful.

In the fourth movement, it ends on F#, but it has no key signature, as it had no practical use tonally. He wrote The Book of the Hanging Gardens, op. 15, in the same year. This is a good reference, because these songs were very dissonant, and also foreshadow the move towards atonality. It's important to see how these works grew logically out of existing musical syntax and practices.

Schoenberg said (in Style and Idea) that in these works, a "centralizing power comparable to the gravity exerted by the root" is present. This is seen in Drei Klavierstücke op.11 (1909), where the first piece is generated from a single cell. The triad has been superseded by the cell, and this is how notes are freed from their traditional tonal functions. The cell is B-G#-G, which, intervallic ally, is a minor second (major seventh), m3 (M6), and M3 (m6). He "expands" the cell into larger intervals later (F#-D-C).

In later serial compositions, like Fünf Klavierstücke op. 23 (1923), the cells have a fixed order, as mentioned in the previous post.


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## millionrainbows

Just in case this is boring anyone, we can always go backwards (chronologically) and discuss the precursors to all of this Schoenbergian deviancy, and talk about Richard Strauss' Elektra, a piece which approaches the limits of chromatic tonality. Which, of course, ushered-in the move to free atonality. This era could also include discussions of Schoenberg's Gurrelieder (1901/1910) and Chamber Symphony No. 1, op. 9 (1906) and his String Quartet No. 1 in D major, op. 7 (1905).

Elektra's lietmotif is based on two triads a tritone apart, something Schoenberg used later. Bear in mind that the tritone is not simply a dissonance, but divides the twelve tones of the octave symmetrically. It is also the only interval that, when inverted, keeps both pitches, only reverses them, or turns them "upside down." This served Schoenberg well when he began to employ serial methods, such as hexads in which each note contained its tritone counterpart, so that when inverted, the pitch content (not the order) of the hexad remained the same.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> We were just discussing insults over in Area 51. I think nathanb needs to read this so he'll understand what they look like. Then maybe he'll have a better grasp of forum dynamics and won't feel so bad.


Too bad I missed all that. It sounds exciting, and titillating.

I've been trained well, with infractions. I've resisted horrific onslaughts, like the one in "All music is harmonic..." and came out clean.

An ad hominem is an ad hominem, so call them like you see them, and report them; but please, don't tell me about it. Tell someone with real power.

Just make sure that "being the victim" does not transform your responses into more of the same.

I've got nothing to feel guilty about. I've brought my ideas forth with the intent of clarifying things, not obscuring them and bickering about my pet dislikes.

I think I'll do something nice for myself, like listen to some music after a nice dinner.


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## fluteman

Woodduck said:


> I'm afraid you've missed the entire point of my post, and are debating points which I'm not making. What you're talking about is interesting, but it just isn't what I'm talking about. All I'm really addressing is fluteman's question:
> 
> _But don't you think the whole point of an avant garde movement of any era, or even a single innovative artist, is to challenge convention, even be a bit of a bad boy/girl, and knock over some furniture and break a few dishes? _
> 
> My answer to him is, essentially, "No. I don't think so." The "whole point" of innovation is not to reject something, but to imagine something else. Of course we leave the past as we move into the future, and it's human nature to think that we're improving on it. But that isn't the essence and purpose of innovation.
> 
> [ .... ]
> 
> This is an irony, and one to keep in mind when we exalt "innovation" for its own sake, in life or in art. A man who says on the one hand that the music of the past should be obliterated, and on the other that any composer who doesn't worship at the new serialist shrine is useless and irrelevant to the "needs" of the time, is as perfect an instance, in the arts, of the "revolutionary despot" as I can imagine.


Well, I wasn't suggesting that innovative artists must seek to obliterate the past entirely. There's a balance to be struck between respecting the past and moving beyond it. "Challenging convention" doesn't mean always challenging every aspect of every convention. Shakespeare and James Joyce may have invented some words and linguistic methods, but they still wrote in what was largely recognizable as the English language of their times. Stravinsky's and Schoenberg's music both showed great respect for past musical traditions, much as Beethoven's did.

Of course, the industrial and technological revolutions resulted in a new soundscape, including electrically amplified sounds, and ultimately, electronically programmed sounds. Art is a reflection of life, and the sound of life changed profoundly and rather suddenly in the 20th century. The music of Stockhausen and Boulez merely reflected these changes. The past is being obliterated all the time, whether gradually or suddenly. Those 19th-century opera houses were "blown up", as were the 18th-century palaces before them, even if some of the beautiful buildings remain for tourists to admire.


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## millionrainbows

_



Free atonality originated in the attempt to equalize the value of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, so that they would no longer form an hierarchy of functions so fundamental to the chromaticism of the tonal system. There are two main principles at work here; *variation based on the intervallic cell, which serves as the identifiable referential unit and as the means of integrating the musical fabric,* and nonrepetition, which may produce an athematic style, a kind of musical stream of consciousness wherein the thread of continuity is generated by momentary associations. -Elliott Antokoletz

Click to expand...

_You can see that intervallic cells are not chords, but are intervallic note-groupings. Whatever meaning that highly chromatic, atonally-structured music is going to have, will be the results of melodic factors, or vertical "intervallic" structures which are not necessarily triadic, but are considered for their inner-relation as a cell.

This sort of thinking arose in "sequences" as in Bach, where a figuration or melodic shape moves its way through a scale, creating new harmonic meanings.

In Wagner, although he came from the homophonic world of opera and singing, he used melody to go into new harmonic and chordal (tonal) areas. A singer would sing a beautiful melody, and at the end she goes to a note we did not expect, which is not part of the key; a new chord is placed under it, and suddenly the whole key area has changed.

With diminished chords, this is very easy to do; notes and note-sequences (shapes) which outline the diminished scale can weave their way through a harmonic texture in an endless loop. Some of the chord sequences on Verklarte Nacht have this quality of endlessly looping downward, or upwards; Berg's Op. 1 Piano Sonata also has this "endless loop" quality.

So when music has become exceedingly chromatic, it becomes more interesting, more structured by, and more guided by melodic figurations and "cells" of notes, little "shapes" which weave their way. "Root movement" has become chromatic, and these figurations are actually more interesting than a gradual stepwise descent or ascent of fleeting roots.


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## fluteman

millionrainbows said:


> So when music has become exceedingly chromatic, it becomes more interesting, more structured by, and more guided by melodic figurations and "cells" of notes, little "shapes" which weave their way. "Root movement" has become chromatic, and these figurations are actually more interesting than a gradual stepwise descent or ascent of fleeting roots.


I enjoy this series of posts of yours, and you have touched on this particular theme before. My only caveat would be, there is no reason to stir up controversy by insisting that more chromatic music is necessarily more interesting, though even there I understand your essential point. If I were to make some simple generalizations, I could say that Bach brought counterpoint to a highly advanced, sophisticated level; Mozart did the same with modulation; Beethoven expanded concepts of musical architecture, taking up where Mozart left off at the end of his short life; Chopin through Wagner gradually expanded the use of harmonic ambiguity, though usually with conventional resolutions on a single root; Debussy made use of flexible diminished chords, sevenths and ninths or even elevenths with an increasingly tenuous relation to any root, whole tone and pentatonic scales, etc.; Ives, Stravinsky and especially Schoenberg used unresolved rootless dissonance as a primary technique. But to me they are all equally interesting.


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## millionrainbows

fluteman said:


> I enjoy this series of posts of yours, and you have touched on this particular theme before. My only caveat would be, there is no reason to stir up controversy by insisting that more chromatic music is necessarily more interesting, though even there I understand your essential point.


No, the point was, that in a chromatic field, root movement becomes increasingly meaningless, so these figurations take on a melodic or thematic function almost by necessity. I was not comparing it to tonality.



> If I were to make some simple generalizations, I could say that Bach brought counterpoint to a highly advanced, sophisticated level; Mozart did the same with modulation; Beethoven expanded concepts of musical architecture, taking up where Mozart left off at the end of his short life; Chopin through Wagner gradually expanded the use of harmonic ambiguity, though usually with conventional resolutions on a single root; Debussy made use of flexible diminished chords, sevenths and ninths or even elevenths with an increasingly tenuous relation to any root, whole tone and pentatonic scales, etc.; Ives, Stravinsky and especially Schoenberg used unresolved rootless dissonance as a primary technique. But to me they are all equally interesting.


You seem to be seeing modernism in terms root movement, or tonality, less or more; but forget tonality as a working notion. Think in terms of the 12-note chromatic octave, and how it can be divided symmetrically: 6+6, 3+3+3+3, 4+4+4, 2+2+2+2+2+2, 7+5.

The only real progress in "expanding" tonality crept in via diminished and whole-tone divisions, i.e. symmetric divisions of the 12-note octave. Whatever "root relations" or movements are seen, need to be seen in the light of symmetric divisions and relations.

Bach did this without harmonic restrictions, as his was contrapuntal, and naturally more chromatic than later homophony, able to "suggest" outrageous "chords" without the restrictions of later-codified harmonic thinking in "functions."

Mozart modulated, but as far as he got was diminished sevenths and cycles of fifths, etc. because the classical thinking had already "ossified" into prescribed functions; Beethoven was not homophonic, wrote few operas, so was less restricted, and turned diminished-sevenths into dominant flat-nines, grasped tritone substitutions, saw the projection of fifths-loop which Mozart was stuck in as a chromatic-fifths device, and started projecting smaller intervals for root cycles, like the major and minor third transitions of the Ninth.

Chopin was isolated, and a pianist, so he naturally was outside the box. Like Wagner, he went wherever the melody might lead him, and was not restricted by harmonic block-function chordal thinking (that's for folk guitarists who sing).

Debussy was using symmetric divisions, such as the whole tone sets, non-functional free triadic movement, letting melodic stepwise movement dictate triadic and harmonic root movement, symmetric pentatonic figurations, scales as projections of intervals, unresolved seventh and ninth chords which stand on their own.

I.e., I'm beginning to see root movement and "tonality" as a less and less useful term (and concept), and chromaticism, with its attendant numeric status of 12, as much more useful, because after all, we are now dealing with a 12-note field of play.


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## EdwardBast

millionrainbows said:


> Elektra's lietmotif is based on two triads a tritone apart, something Schoenberg used later.


I believe you are thinking of the axe motive, which uses two minor triads a tritone apart. Elektra's uses the notes E, B, Db, F, Ab,


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## millionrainbows

EdwardBast said:


> I believe you are thinking of the axe motive, which uses two minor triads a tritone apart. Elektra's uses the notes E, B, Db, F, Ab,


Yes, that's right. Not only motives, but Strauss also laid out the root relationships of Elektra in this way.

This was as far as Strauss went harmonically. He later retreated into a neoclassical style, as in Der Rosenkavalier.

Remember that a lot of this is based on diminished seventh chords; they divide the octave symmetrically into 3 chords of 4 notes each (3 X 4 =12), and each note of the chord has a tritone counterpart; C dim 7 = C-Eb-Gb-A, and the tritones are C/Gb, Eb/A, Gb/C, and A/Eb.
The chord is also a projection of the minor third. This interval divides the octave as 3+3+3+3.


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## fluteman

millionrainbows said:


> No, the point was, that in a chromatic field, root movement becomes increasingly meaningless, so these figurations take on a melodic or thematic function almost by necessity. I was not comparing it to tonality.


Well, no, my only point was that earlier composers also did interesting things, even with their relatively narrow working principles of harmony, for example. I'm not too worried about tonality v. atonality, diatonic v. chromatic, or whatever other terms you care to use. Great art can come from all directions.
Remember, though, there is nothing sacred about the 12-tone scale. One could use an 11 or 13-tone scale.


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## EdwardBast

millionrainbows said:


> Yes, that's right. Not only motives, but Strauss also laid out the root relationships of Elektra in this way.
> 
> This was as far as Strauss went harmonically. He later retreated into a neoclassical style, as in Der Rosenkavalier.
> 
> *Remember that a lot of this is based on diminished seventh chords;* they divide the octave symmetrically into 3 chords of 4 notes each (3 X 4 =12), and each note of the chord has a tritone counterpart; C dim 7 = C-Eb-Gb-A, and the tritones are C/Gb, Eb/A, Gb/C, and A/Eb.
> The chord is also a projection of the minor third. This interval divides the octave as 3+3+3+3.


A lot of what? Why are you asking me to remember these perfectly obvious factoids about diminished seventh chords? You have posted this information countless times before. Twelve has a relatively large number of factors. Get over it.


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## millionrainbows

fluteman said:


> Well, no, my only point was that earlier composers also did interesting things, even with their relatively narrow working principles of harmony, for example. I'm not too worried about tonality v. atonality, diatonic v. chromatic, or whatever other terms you care to use. Great art can come from all directions.


The point I want to make is that "modernist musical thinking" shares some important concepts, and one of these is symmetry.



> Remember, though, there is nothing sacred about the 12-tone scale. One could use an 11 or 13-tone scale.


How long did you think about that before you said it? And why do you think that a foot is twelve inches long, and that there are 12 hours in a day, and twelve months in a year? Should you read a book, or stay on the internet? These are the pressing questions of the new generation.


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## millionrainbows

EdwardBast said:


> A lot of what? Why are you asking me to remember these perfectly obvious factoids about diminished seventh chords? You have posted this information countless times before. Twelve has a relatively large number of factors. Get over it.





EdwardBast said:


> I believe you are thinking of the axe motive, which uses two minor triads a tritone apart. Elektra's uses the notes E, B, Db, F, Ab,


I remind you to see beyond thinking of this as a "leitmotif" or "theme." It has deeper structural significance than your reply indicates you are seeing. So I reminded you. Chill out.


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## fluteman

millionrainbows said:


> The point I want to make is that "modernist musical thinking" shares some important concepts, and one of these is symmetry.
> 
> How long did you think about that before you said it? And why do you think that a foot is twelve inches long, and that there are 12 hours in a day, and twelve months in a year? Should you read a book, or stay on the internet? These are the pressing questions of the new generation.


Or, listen to longtime University of Chicago composer Easley Blackwood's Twelve Microtonal Etudes? He uses 13 to 24 note equal tempered scales.


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## millionrainbows

Chromaticism is a much better place to begin to trace the development of modern musical thinking. "Tonality" is not a precise term, as the experience of tonality is partly subjective, and 'tonality' is a matter of degree, not an absolute state.

Chromaticism, in application to Western music's emergence into modernism, will always involve the number 12 and its factors. This is because the chromatic scale, our octave, is divided into 12 parts, an idea that can be traced back to the ideas of Pythagoras, who originated the idea of "stacking" fifths to generate his scale. Carried further, we can generate an entire chromatic scale, which, when corrected, or tempered, gives us 12 notes and fifths which are nearly perfect, only 2 cents flat.

From this we can gather that the 12-note scale is "biased" towards fifths, not thirds. This is a harmonic consideration, and since tonality is based on harmonic qualities of sonance, it is appropriate, since fifths add stability to triads, and also facilitate root-movement by fifths to the nearest, most closely related keys, as in the circle of fifths: C, no sharps, G, 1 sharp, etc.

The fifth is seven semitones. Its inversion, the fourth, is five semitones. Neither 7 nor 5 are factors of 12; we have to go "outside" the octave (60 and 84) to get 5 x 12 = 60, and 7 x 12 = 84.

The other intervals fall within the octave, and are recursive, i.e., they repeat within the octave and divide it with closure.

This is why the diminished seventh chord is the key to "a lot of all this" modern thought: the notion of symmetry is developed from this.

That's why this thread was started: to avoid the "tonal/atonal" issue, which was never resolved until very recently, and chromaticism was agreed upon as a more useful concept. 

Of course, in the wake of all the drama, nobody remembers that, now, but the issue was resolved, as far as I am concerned. This thread will explore that idea.


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## millionrainbows

*Frank Martin is another composer who was thinking chromatically, although he was not a 12-toner.

Martin's technique in the **Petite Symphonie concertante seems to be similar to Bartok, in that he uses the octatonic scale throughout. This scale, also known as the diminished scale, divides the octave into three 4-note diminished seventh chords. Thus, three 'tonic stations' are formed, which gives the effect of 3 constantly shifting, yet unmistakably tonal, centers of activity.

Plus, these diminished sevenths are ambiguous in their meaning as well, giving us more to grasp on-to as making 'tonal sense;'

The diminished seventh on vii in tonality can easily be interpreted as an incomplete V7, and is resolved as if it were. This can create the illusion of V7s which constantly shift and resolve.

The major and minor thirds in this octatonic scale also create an ambiguity of major/minor wherever they appear.

Tritones are also inherent in the octatonic, which creates instability & a desire to move on, as well as a tritonic dominant effect of a major third/flated seventh, which can invert, interchange, and create V7 cycles and chromatic descents of resolution.*


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## fluteman

I'm a fan of Frank Martin, and though he was Swiss, I put him in the post-Debussy French school of Jean Francaix, Jean-Michel Damase, etc. Aside from what you call "constantly shifting, yet unmistakably tonal, centers of activity", imo what most marks these composers is a return to almost ascetic, neo-Baroque and neo-Classical textures. Martin even used the harpsichord, to profound effect imo. That's a major departure from early Stravinsky, Bartok, and of course Debussy himself, all of whom also used the octatonic scale you mention and other techniques of tonal ambiguity but all of whom were still deeply entrenched in late 19th-century romantic traditions. In fact, I'd consider Martin more a follower of Satie than of Debussy, much like Poulenc or Milhaud.
There is so much more to 20th century Modernism than the trend towards "chromaticism" you have been discussing. But I agree that ending the tyranny of the diatonic scale was a profound step.


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## millionrainbows

fluteman said:


> There is so much more to 20th century Modernism than the trend towards "chromaticism" you have been discussing. But I agree that ending the tyranny of the diatonic scale was a profound step.


OK, name some things.


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## fluteman

I already did in the previous post when I mentioned "a return to almost ascetic, neo-Baroque and neo-Classical textures". Other things off the top of my head: increasing influence of non-western traditions (India and Africa for example); use of electronic instruments and sounds and extended techniques for traditional acoustic instruments; sampling, indeterminacy, or other systems not dependent on pitch; and use of structural principles developed beyond, or entirely unrelated to, the sonata form. I'm sure if I consulted my library (of real, physical books) I could give a better answer.
These are all interesting ingredients to add to the stew. Our ears are expanding and we are learning more languages. But for me, that doesn't mean Pergolesi or Couperin are less interesting. It's all interesting, imo.


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## millionrainbows

"A return to almost ascetic, neo-Baroque and neo-Classical textures" sounds stylistic, and vague. Chromaticism carries with it all sorts of implications: symmetry, a return to polyphonic linear thinking instead of block-chord harmony, motivic thinking, cell-centricity, etc.

I'm going to a try as much as possible to steer this discussion away from vagaries, and terms such as "tonality" which turn out to be too general to be of use, yet can be defined by chromaticism at a more precise level.


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## fluteman

millionrainbows said:


> "A return to almost ascetic, neo-Baroque and neo-Classical textures" sounds stylistic, and vague.


Ah, but style matters, my friend. If I'm being vague, that's my fault. Entire books have been written about musical style. I'm not going to try to write one here. But using a harpsichord rather than a piano, as Frank Martin does, or using electronic synthesized sounds rather than acoustic ones, are very significant stylistic choices.


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## millionrainbows

fluteman said:


> Ah, but style matters, my friend. If I'm being vague, that's my fault. Entire books have been written about musical style. I'm not going to try to write one here. But using a harpsichord rather than a piano, as Frank Martin does, or using electronic synthesized sounds rather than acoustic ones, are very significant stylistic choices.


Agreed, but what I'm interested in exploring here is the actual syntax of music; how composers deal with pitch and harmony, and scales. You know, that kind of structural stuff. Chromaticism, that's the key word here.


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## fluteman

millionrainbows said:


> Agreed, but what I'm interested in exploring here is the actual syntax of music; how composers deal with pitch and harmony, and scales. You know, that kind of structural stuff. Chromaticism, that's the key word here.


Yes, of course, I understand what you're doing. My comment was, there's much more to modern music, or any music, than pitch, harmony and scales, important as those (usually) are. I know the dramatic developments in those areas at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries are the subject of long and contentious threads here and elsewhere on the internet. For some reason, the equally dramatic though perhaps more gradual developments in pitch, harmony and scales from 1400 to 1900 aren't as interesting to some people, nor are major 20th century developments in areas other than harmony.
I guess some feel that if music doesn't observe certain rules of harmony that they are accustomed to, it isn't music, and isn't worthy of further examination. I say, those people should be made to sit in a chair listening to nothing for four minutes and 33 seconds. YMMV.


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## millionrainbows

But really, I see the essential components of music to be pitch and rhythm. That's what I'm interested in.


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