# I think that I will use the term non-tonal instead...



## Albert7

Atonality isn't a good term for my usage. I will use the term non-tonal from now on.


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## millionrainbows

Albert7 said:


> Atonality isn't a good term for my usage. I will use the term non-tonal from now on.


In this context, I agree wholeheartedly. After all, we are just guests here.


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## Dim7

Doesn't really change anything IMO.


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## millionrainbows

Albert 7 still hasn't explained exactly why he will not use the term *atonal,* so I will provide some background.

From the book _Serialism_ by Arnold Whittall:

[Attempts in recent decades to replace the negative term *atonal* (i.e. entirely lacking tonality) with the more constructive* post-tonal *have so far failed to provide a cast-iron defence of serial composition against its detractors.

Even as a word, *serialism* can have unpleasant associations, to do with obsessive behavior, which can then be linked with the propensities of composers who prefer to work with arid calculation rather than expressive immediacy.]

Hmm...so the word atonal is used to disparage the music, but it also has some historic resonance, all modernity thought to be 'degenerate' in Schoenberg's home country. So if we can get rid of that word, we'll be killing two birds with one stone.

I'd never thought of the term *serial *in this regard, until I saw this in Whittall's book.

Hmm, perhaps the people who like this music should start listening to it in secret, since I've seen it cause conflict now, and in the past, elsewhere.

Or perhaps, as I've seen suggested several times, a separate forum could be created.

But then, the criteria for what music is 'tonal' or not, would be of paramount relevance, wouldn't it? Suddenly, all of this talk of tonal/atonal would _actually matter._


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## Woodduck

"Non-tonal" is not equivalent to "atonal," in that it might be used of music to which no one ever attaches the term "atonal." 

"Atonal" has come to apply mainly or entirely to music in the Western classical lineage using the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, but avoiding the traditional grounding of chromaticism in the diatonic hierarchical relations (tonic, dominant, subdominant, etc.) and consonace/dissonance hierarchy inherent in the acoustics-based triadic harmony of Western music, a grounding which remains important even in the highly chromatic music of late 19th-century Romanticism. Whatever "atonal" has implied to various people who have used it, that is the meaning it has carried for the people with whom I've associated during the fifty or so years of my musical lifetime. 

We can dislike the imprecision with which words are used, we can point out their etymological problems, and we can regret the negative connotations we feel attaches to them, but although the arguments for getting rid of the word "atonal" may be attractive, merely substituting another word for it won't necessarily make us happy. The first thing you know, people who don't like "non-tonal" music will give that term a "negative connotation" in the minds of people who do like it, and we'll be right back where we started.


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## Richannes Wrahms

I'm not worried about 'atonal'. I'm worried about well paid imbeciles spreading hate of Wagner and Schoenberg and linking them to the Nazis and then saying The Beatles or whatnot pop saved 'old fashioned music', ignoring Darmstadt and promoting blandness. All that on TV, books and Universities.


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## Weston

I would have advocated "uncommon practice" except that it became relatively common during the last 100 years.


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## Celloman

I will use the term "atonal" unabashedly, even if it is a flawed term.

I agree that the word is problematic. But there are many words in the English language that are not taken literally. Why should that keep us from using them on a regular basis?

If most people use the word "atonal" to refer to music with a high level of chromaticism, then by gum, I will use it too.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

I will use words that the composers themselves endorsed or standard music terminology that describes what music is rather than what it isn't.


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## rumleymusic

It is one of those problematic words. Atonal means literally without a tonal center. Anything, even highly dissonant and chromatic music can be perfectly tonal. As an example Alban Berg's 12tone music was perfectly tonal much of the time, Webern's was not, yet we tend to use the blanket term of Atonal to refer to any dodecaphonism.


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## Mahlerian

rumleymusic said:


> It is one of those problematic words. Atonal means literally without a tonal center. Anything, even highly dissonant and chromatic music can be perfectly tonal. As an example Alban Berg's 12tone music was perfectly tonal much of the time, *Webern's was not*, yet we tend to use the blanket term of Atonal to refer to any dodecaphonism.


Why is it not? How is it less tonal than Berg's music?

I think the problem with the word atonal is that it doesn't actually refer to music without a tonal center as the term might imply. I agree that Webern's music is less _triadic_ than Berg's, though I wouldn't say that this makes it less tonal.

I don't think there is such a thing as music that has no tonal center, unless we are talking about music which is not organized by pitch at all.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> I don't think there is such a thing as music that has no tonal center, unless we are talking about music which is not organized by pitch at all.


Then if you are going to say that, then how do you define music "with" a tonal center? How is it organized by pitch? Please be very, very specific and clear. I'd be interested in hearing how you define 'tonal center.'


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## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> Then if you are going to say that, then how do you define music "with" a tonal center? How is it organized by pitch? Please be very, very specific and clear. I'd be interested in hearing how you define 'tonal center.'


It is the pitch or pitches to which a piece gravitates or which its material treats as most important. It can be established in any number of ways, including emphasis or convention (such as hearing a dominant chord to establish a tonic, even when that pitch is not explicitly heard).

At any rate, I believe that the music of Schoenberg and Webern has tonal centers because I can hear them, as clearly as in any other music.


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## millionrainbows

"...then how do you define music "with" a tonal center? How is it organized by pitch? Please be very, very specific and clear. I'd be interested in hearing how you define 'tonal center."



Mahlerian said:


> It is *the pitch or pitches *to which a piece gravitates or which its material treats as most important. It can be established in any number of ways, including emphasis or convention (such as hearing a dominant chord to establish a tonic, even when that pitch is not explicitly heard).
> 
> At any rate, I believe that the music of Schoenberg and Webern has tonal centers because I can hear them, as clearly as in any other music.


That's interesting. So a piece could be called "tonal" by your definition, and not have a definite tone center, but maybe just move through areas of harmonic tension and resolution?

If this is so, then music can still have 'harmonic meaning and movement, goals, etc" and not have a strictly identifiable tone center.

By this set of criteria, this definition of tonality expands way beyond what Woodduck has defined as the characteristics of his more academic tonality, and would include much of the music he has excluded as "atonal" and has characterized as being "less expressive."

If we see tonality in its most basic form as being a "gradient" of sonance, going by degree, then we have a definition of tonality which is in agreement with the harmonic model of tonality, based on consonance/dissonance.

Remember this chart:

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

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

_So, using this, areas of relative tension and relative relaxation could be created, without the need for a single-reference tonal center or note.


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## Woodduck

Millionrainbows:_ "I'd be interested in hearing how you define 'tonal center.'"
_


Mahlerian said:


> It is the pitch or pitches to which a piece gravitates or which its material treats as most important. It can be established in any number of ways, including emphasis or convention (such as hearing a dominant chord to establish a tonic, even when that pitch is not explicitly heard).


But surely _emphasizing_ a certain note to give it importance - whether by repeating it frequently or by making it louder or longer than other notes in a piece or passage - is not enough to establish it as a tonal center. A sense of tonality depends on the perception that other notes in the set (scale) being used function in certain ways _in relation to_ that note. I presume that would be what you've identified as "convention," as in the case of the dominant chord having a relationship with the tonic. Without such conventional relationships, an emphasized note is just an emphasized note, not a tonal center, and there is not necessarily any sense of gravitation toward it purely by virtue of its prominence.


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## Dim7

I don't really agree that all music based on pitch necessarily has "tonal centres" - including some music basically no one would call "atonal". Think about a piece that has a chord progression like this (chord changes every bar) - starting on a minor triad, going up a minor third to a major triad, up a major third to a minor triad etc., like for example Dm - F - Am - C - Em - G - Bm - D - F#m etc.... Starting on the notes of C major scale (but not the tonality of C major really, because nothing is establishing the tone center here), raising one by one each of the scale degrees, eventually cycling through all the minor and major triads of a chromatic scale and coming back to D minor triad and starting again. Obviously diatonic, the chromaticism and the "modulation" (through different diatonic note collections, but again - not really tone centres) being quite mild, but not any tonal centres to speak of. It could basically stop anywhere without feeling less or more natural.


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## Mahlerian

A chord progression in itself is not music. Put it in a context, with voicing, register, and duration, and then ask yourself where the emphases are. Even if we simply just go through from one end to the other, that fact alone will make it seem like a purposeful journey ending at that point. For an analogy, just think about playing the chromatic scale from one C to another. Would you say that has no tonal center as well?

You can find plenty of passages that cycle through every note of the chromatic scale in a very short space of time even in common practice music. It doesn't mean that they have atonal elements, because something that helps work as a part of tonality could hardly be called "atonal."


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## Dim7

Mahlerian said:


> A chord progression in itself is not music. Put it in a context, with voicing, register, and duration, and then ask yourself where the emphases are.


Those factors might make tonal centres more evident, but not necessarily.



Mahlerian said:


> Even if we simply just go through from one end to the other, that fact alone will make it seem like a purposeful journey ending at that point.


I don't know about "purposeful" journey, but I don't think the inevitable fact that we end somewhere implies tonal centre.



Mahlerian said:


> For an analogy, just think about playing the chromatic scale from one C to another. Would you say that has no tonal center as well?


Not so much an analogy as it is the polar opposite of my example. Your example, outside of context and conflicting implications, emphasizes C quite clearly while implying no diatonic scales whatsoever. In a musical context, where there are other implications as well, it would not necessarily establish the tone of centre of C of course, but it might strengthen it if it was already implied.



Mahlerian said:


> You can find plenty of passages that cycle through every note of the chromatic scale in a very short space of time even in common practice music. It doesn't mean that they have atonal elements, because something that helps work as a part of tonality could hardly be called "atonal."


Indeed you can find such passages, and lot of them probably don't imply tonal centres by themselves. I'm not sure they "help work as a part of tonality" - it's just that those pieces overall give a strong impression of tonality, despite some passages, so we don't' think them as "atonal".

Though as I've said earlier, I think that in practice the word "atonal" is *not* used with the meaning "without a tonal centre".


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## Mahlerian

Dim7 said:


> Those factors might make tonal centres more evident, but not necessarily.
> 
> I don't know about "purposeful" journey, but I don't think the inevitable fact that we end somewhere implies tonal centre.


Tonality is heard as much in retrospect as anything else. Whatever ambiguities are present are resolved by which elements are treated as most important.



Dim7 said:


> Not so much an analogy as it is the polar opposite of my example. Your example, outside of context and conflicting implications, emphasizes C quite clearly while implying no diatonic scales whatsoever. In a musical context, where there are other implications as well, it would not necessarily establish the tone of centre of C of course, but it might strengthen it if it was already implied.


I disagree that it is so different. Put in context, the progression you gave would be taken as emphasizing a given center just as much. I don't think that a chromatic scale fragment, even one extending an octave, necessarily implies a tonal center on its starting/ending notes. It's only in musical context that this question matters.



Dim7 said:


> Indeed you can find such passages, and lot of them probably don't imply tonal centres by themselves. I'm not sure they "help work as a part of tonality" - it's just that those pieces overall give a strong impression of tonality, despite some passages, so we don't' think them as "atonal".


The problem is that no element, even a V7-I progression, defines tonality in itself. You're trying to abstract elements used in composition and say that any composition using these elements has the same property as this element. That's not the way music works. Tonality, like any other element, is something that is only a part of a piece in the context of that piece.

The pieces people called "atonal" give me a strong impression of tonality as well. I've been told that that doesn't matter, for some reason.



Dim7 said:


> Though as I've said earlier, I think that in practice the word "atonal" is *not* used with the meaning "without a tonal centre".


Right.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Millionrainbows:_ "I'd be interested in hearing how you define 'tonal center.'"
> _
> But surely _emphasizing_ a certain note to give it importance - whether by repeating it frequently or by making it louder or longer than other notes in a piece or passage - is not enough to establish it as a tonal center. A sense of tonality depends on the perception that other notes in the set (scale) being used function in certain ways _in relation to_ that note.


I don't agree; to me, tonality can be established in as few as one or two notes.

Schoenberg uses this "two-note interval" system and applies it to root movement, and says that certain movements (one root to another, using only two notes) can reinforce or weaken tonality. It's a self-evident harmonic truth to our ears, as well, which is what this idea is really based on: our ears and the sound.

For example, we will always hear a fourth with the top note as being the "root" or center of tonality. Try it for yourself; go to a piano and play a melody in fourths. It invariably sounds "Japanese," with the top note being the center.

Conversely, we will always hear a fifth with the bottom note as "root."

That's why Schoenberg calls a root movement of "a fourth up, identical with a fifth down" a superstrong progression, which reinforces the key.



Woodduck said:


> I presume that would be what you've identified as "convention," as in the case of the dominant chord having a relationship with the tonic. Without such conventional relationships, an emphasized note is just an emphasized note, not a tonal center, and there is not necessarily any sense of gravitation toward it purely by virtue of its prominence.


This time, the "convention" is a "harmonic truth."


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> A chord progression in itself is not music. Put it in a context, with voicing, register, and duration, and then ask yourself where the emphases are. Even if we simply just go through from one end to the other, that fact alone will make it seem like a purposeful journey ending at that point. For an analogy, just think about playing the chromatic scale from one C to another. Would you say that has no tonal center as well?
> 
> You can find plenty of passages that cycle through every note of the chromatic scale in a very short space of time even in common practice music. It doesn't mean that they have atonal elements, because something that helps work as a part of tonality could hardly be called "atonal."


Schoenberg makes a distinction between a succession of chords and a progression of chords.

A progression has a definite goal; a succession does not.


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## millionrainbows

Dim7 said:


> I don't really agree that all music based on pitch necessarily has "tonal centres" - including some music basically no one would call "atonal". Think about a piece that has a chord progression like this (chord changes every bar) - starting on a minor triad, going up a minor third to a major triad, up a major third to a minor triad etc., like for example Dm - F - Am - C - Em - G - Bm - D - F#m etc.... Starting on the notes of C major scale (but not the tonality of C major really, because nothing is establishing the tone center here), raising one by one each of the scale degrees, eventually cycling through all the minor and major triads of a chromatic scale and coming back to D minor triad and starting again. Obviously diatonic, the chromaticism and the "modulation" (through different diatonic note collections, but again - not really tone centres) being quite mild, but not any tonal centres to speak of. It could basically stop anywhere without feeling less or more natural.


Basically, your example is using tonicization to move through a succession of key areas.

Dm-F are related, as Dm is the relative minor (vi) of F, so this establishes F; Am is iii in f, and vi in C, so it has a dual meaning, and puts us neatly in C; and so on. There is a definite pattern of tonal meaning, and a progression by fifths: F-C-G-D, etc. This sound like a cycle of chords used in jazz, or by Bach. It's tonal.


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## millionrainbows

Dim7 said:


> Those factors might make tonal centres more evident, but not necessarily.
> 
> I don't know about "purposeful" journey, but I don't think the inevitable fact that we end somewhere implies tonal centre.


Start and end points do play a factor.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> The problem is that no element, even a V7-I progression, defines tonality in itself. You're trying to abstract elements used in composition and say that any composition using these elements has the same property as this element. That's not the way music works. Tonality, like any other element, is something that is only a part of a piece in the context of that piece.


I don't think tonality depends on large horizontal stretches of activity and contexts. I think tonality can be established instantly, with one note, then two, and so on.


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## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> That seems like a flaw in logic.


It would certainly be logically flawed to argue that a piece is in C major therefore every element of that piece must itself be in C major, or conversely, that the use of elements from a piece in C major will necessarily make another C major piece.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_division
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition



millionrainbows said:


> I don't think tonality depends on large horizontal stretches of activity and contexts. I think tonality can be established instantly, with one note, then two, and so on.


Of course it can. But a chord progression is not itself something that defines a *particular* tonality. No matter how obvious its implications might seem out of context, in context it can mean something completely different.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> I don't agree; to me, tonality can be established in as few as one or two notes.
> 
> Schoenberg uses this "two-note interval" system and applies it to root movement, and says that certain movements (one root to another, using only two notes) can reinforce or weaken tonality. It's a self-evident harmonic truth to our ears, as well, which is what this idea is really based on: our ears and the sound.
> 
> For example, we will always hear a fourth with the top note as being the "root" or center of tonality. Try it for yourself; go to a piano and play a melody in fourths. It invariably sounds "Japanese," with the top note being the center.
> 
> Conversely, we will always hear a fifth with the bottom note as "root."
> 
> That's why Schoenberg calls a root movement of "a fourth up, identical with a fifth down" a superstrong progression, which reinforces the key.
> 
> This time, the "convention" is a "harmonic truth."


I think you mistook my comment as a reply to you, whereas it was a response to Mahlerian's reply to your question of how he defined a tonal center. He said:

_"It is the pitch or pitches to which a piece gravitates or which its material treats as most important. It can be established in any number of ways, including emphasis or convention (such as hearing a dominant chord to establish a tonic, even when that pitch is not explicitly heard)."_

It appears to me that he is describing two different phenomena, but calling them both "tonal centers." I think being "most important" can have different meanings, and that being a center of gravitation is one specific kind of importance. That's why I questioned whether "emphasis" of a pitch is alone enough to establish "tonality."

The tonal center of a passage of music might be the least emphasized tone in it, yet be heard as the center because of the way the other tones function; presumably this would be a case of "convention" trumping "emphasis." Or, a passage might not have an apparent tonal center at all, despite strong emphasis on one particular pitch. In both cases, emphasizing a pitch would not make it a "tonal center," unless we allow that that can mean simply a pitch which is "most prominent" or "most important." That definition is different from one which recognizes a pitch as having "gravitational force."

Emphasizing a pitch - by loudness, position, repetition, or whatever - _might_ create a sense of attraction to that pitch, and it is certainly one of the typical signs of a tonic, but it doesn't seem to be sufficient by itself to establish that pitch as a tonic.


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## millionrainbows

millionrainbows said:


> I don't think tonality depends on large horizontal stretches of activity and contexts. I think tonality can be established instantly, with one note, then two, and so on.


It depends on what else happens, though; if that G7-C has an F# in the bass under it, of course it will weaken the tonality of C.

I don't think it's fair to abstract-out little mechanisms like this and say that they in themselves do not establish tonality, just because you could destroy them in context. By themselves, they do establish tonality. Of course, context can do anything it wants to; it has no general principles or inherent logic which can be extracted as a principle.

All you are really saying is "I can destroy any example of a tonality-establishing mechanism if I choose to, simply by degrading it with an opposing context."

That doesn't give us any general principle, though, except "context can destroy any principle."


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## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> It depends on what else happens, though; if that G7-C has an F# in the bass under it, of course it will weaken the tonality of C.
> 
> I don't think it's fair to abstract-out little mechanisms like this and say that they in themselves do not establish tonality, just because you could destroy them in context. By themselves, they do establish tonality. Of course, context can do anything it wants to; it has no general principles or inherent logic which can be extracted as a principle.
> 
> All you are really saying is "I can destroy any example of a tonality-establishing mechanism if I choose to, simply by degrading it with an opposing context."
> 
> That doesn't give us any general principle, though, except "context can destroy any principle."


Not at all. A V7-I progression (and I'm not speaking of added notes or anything else of that kind) _can_ establish a tonality, but it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> Not at all. A V7-I progression (and I'm not speaking of added notes or anything else of that kind) _can_ establish a tonality, but it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition.


Wow, that was clever, squeezing that V7-I into being context-dependent.

So, if I wrote a short piece that consisted of only V7-I (in the key of C), then it would be tonal, because_ the context of it being in a composition makes it so, _not because the V7-I mechanism in itself creates tonality. Hmmm...


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