# Does atonal music really exist?



## Albert7

For me, the only truly atonal music are Cage's 4' 33" and field recordings like Lopez where there is no true tonal center. Everything else for me is tonal in basis.

So isn't atonality a more complex form of tonality with mathematical strictures?


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## Dim7

I feel that the difference between "extended tonality" and "free atonality" is just a matter of degree. Serialism on the other hand seems to be radically different way of composing from what came before. But I'm not an expert.


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## Baregrass

I would say that there is no such thing as atonality as every sound have its particular tone but, maybe free tone or a dissonant tone would be a way of putting it. Like a flatted 9th chord.


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## Mahlerian

Dim7 said:


> I feel that the difference between "extended tonality" and "free atonality" is just a matter of degree. Serialism on the other hand seems to be radically different way of composing from what came before. But I'm not an expert.


I don't think most people can tell the difference between a "free atonal" piece such as this:






And a serial piece such as this:






Of course, the tonal centers generated by the pitches used in a work may be subverted and left unresolved by the composer (as can be found in tonal pieces ending on the dominant, for example), but from my perspective what's different about the music of the 20th century is that it takes away tonal functionality or downplays it to the point of irrelevance, and this is true of just about every composer from Debussy to Stravinsky to Britten as well as so-called atonal music.


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## Albert7

Okay quick quiz:

tonal or atonal?


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## Dim7

Might make an interesting TC game, "Serial or free atonal?"


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## Guest

OK being a bear of small brain, tonal, atonal and serial mean nothing to me. I've read their definitions in the past (which I've currently forgotten!) but when I listen to music I can't say I'd be capable of distinguishing between them. I'd suspect this is just my ignorance/stupidity/deafness EXCEPT reading around this on this forum it doesn't seem blindingly obvious to others as well...

What's the lowdown guys? Is it "real" or subjective dependent on culture? 
Or am I just talking rubbish?


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## Ramako

It's a term that allows us to group pieces of music with similar characteristics. 'Atonal' music is no more 'atonal' than Baroque music is baroque, or Romantic music is romantic; its just a guide to its primary characteristics. Sure you can find implications of tonal centres in Berg's Violin Concerto (among other pieces), but that doesn't stop it being primarily serial in organisation. Tonal music is organised in a specific hierarchy, and this hierarchy influences the way that the music is heard. Atonal music is not heard in the same way - it just doesn't create the same expectations which are created in tonal music. And its because the music is not primarily guided by these tonal expectations that its called atonal.


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## Mahlerian

Ramako said:


> It's a term that allows us to group pieces of music with similar characteristics. 'Atonal' music is no more 'atonal' than Baroque music is baroque, or Romantic music is romantic; its just a guide to its primary characteristics.


The problem is there are just about no characteristics which you can find linking the methods or the result between say, Xenakis and Sessions, yet both are referred to as "atonal".



Ramako said:


> And its because the music is not primarily guided by these tonal expectations that its called atonal.


It's not nearly so simple. There is a good deal of music in this world, in fact the vast majority of it, that does not rely on tonal expectations of hierarchical relationships, but no one does or would call atonal. Modal music, or music that uses some form of modal organization, seems far more prevalent.

The question is not whether the music called atonal is tonal in a common practice sense (I don't think you'll find many who will argue this except for very specific and cherry-picked examples), but whether it is somehow different from all other music in the history of the universe anywhere.

So-called atonal music is not distinguished by any lack of centricity, but by its consistent deployment of the chromatic scale.


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## Ramako

Mahlerian said:


> The problem is there are just about no characteristics which you can find linking the methods or the result between say, Xenakis and Sessions, yet both are referred to as "atonal".


There is music which is called tonal, for example North Indian _ragas_ and Beethoven, which has precious little in common apart from the fact that it is tonal. That is, they both evince a hierarchy of musical tones, even if the ordering of the hierarchy is different. This hierarchy is, in limited ways, measurable in listeners.

I might be wrong, but Xenakis and Sessions may have in common precisely the fact that they _are_ atonal, i.e. that they do not create a hierarchy. If not, then the term is misapplied.



Mahlerian said:


> It's not nearly so simple. There is a good deal of music in this world, in fact the vast majority of it, that does not rely on tonal expectations of hierarchical relationships, but no one does or would call atonal. Modal music, or music that uses some form of modal organization, seems far more prevalent.
> 
> The question is not whether the music called atonal is tonal in a common practice sense (I don't think you'll find many who will argue this except for very specific and cherry-picked examples), but whether it is somehow different from all other music in the history of the universe anywhere.


If those types of music don't have hierarchies, then they're atonal. Just because the term is usually applied to a specific repertoire doesn't mean it doesn't that it applies no where else in the history of the universe. This admittedly contradicts the spirit of my previous post, however I came back on here to edit it, but since its been quoted I might as well leave it 

Also, modal music is tonal in this sense - it does create a hierarchy. It just happens to be not the same as that of 18th and 19th century (German-speaking?) Europe. I think this is the most useful sense of the word, and there is some good empirical research on the perception of tonality understood in this way (admittedly somewhat common-practice-centred).


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## Mahlerian

Ramako said:


> I might be wrong, but Xenakis and Sessions may have in common precisely the fact that they _are_ atonal, i.e. that they do not create a hierarchy. If not, then the term is misapplied.


Exactly.

Completely non-hierarchical music, as is implied by the term atonal, *does not exist, never will, and never has,* outside of music constructed without tones.

Any music that rests on the basis of organization, whether serial, tonal, modal, or anything else, will generate centricity and hierarchy by means of emphasis and repetition.


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## Ramako

Mahlerian said:


> Completely non-hierarchical music, as is implied by the term atonal, *does not exist, never will, and never has,* outside of music constructed without tones.
> 
> Any music that rests on the basis of organization, whether serial, tonal, modal, or anything else, will generate centricity and hierarchy by means of emphasis and repetition.


We refer to space as a vacuum, not because it is literally empty - far from it, it has numerous things going on in it - but because it is _effectively_ so. As far as I can tell this isn't about the characteristics of the music itself but the way terms are used, a much less interesting (to me) question. It seems you don't dispute that the primary means of organisation in atonal music is not tonal. We frequently label things by their dominant modes. Again, we generally call Western societies democratic even though there are many central non-democratic elements to it (e.g. the legal system, even the political system's democratic aspect is frankly pretty limited). Similarly atonal music is atonal, even though there are non-atonal elements to it (indeed, its organisation runs contrary to our tendency to understand it).

I have no intention to further argue over what degree of pedantry/care we should exercise in our use of language. More interestingly, however, while I was checking I haven't been talking total garbage in this thread, I came across the following interesting result from Krumhansl's _Cognitive Foundations of Musical Pitch_ (1990) on a (somewhat limited) study of Schoenberg's serial music. Listeners to this music attempted to understand it from a tonal point of view (as this is the usual approach) but problems were encountered. Listeners _do_ have tonal expectations at individual points of the music, but these expectations are actually quite contrary from what, music-theoretically, is implied by the music at that stage according to tonal criteria. In her conclusion: "In particular, a basic mismatch may exist between this style's treatment of all 12 chromatic scale pitches equally, and the psychological tendency to relate all pitches to a few stable and unchanging reference pitches".


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## arpeggio

*Bernstein on Schoenberg*

It seems this issue has been addressed in other threads. For example: http://www.talkclassical.com/36289-anti-modernists-have-some-3.html#post812102


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## Albert7

arpeggio said:


> It seems this issue has been addressed in other threads. For example: http://www.talkclassical.com/36289-anti-modernists-have-some-3.html#post812102


Yes but that thread is all wrapped up in emotional gut reactions to "atonal" music; here we are looking for a more scientific, nuanced view of the situation.


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## Guest

I've looked the terms up and they seem to involve psychological aspects (perception, expectation) so that I can't help but think such aspects (as well as societal/cultural) must muddy any attempts to 100% delineate the terminilogy?
Are such terms globally applicable and still retain linguistic value?
Can each term have ONE piece of music given as an example? (that all people would agree with)


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## Mahlerian

Ramako said:


> It seems you don't dispute that the primary means of organisation in atonal music is not tonal.


Yes and no. You are using the word tonal in two different senses.

In the sense that "atonal" music is not written using the particular hierarchies of the common practice tonal music of approximately 1600-1900, yes, it is not a primary means of organization.

In the sense that you seem to be conflating tonal with modal and other kinds of world music, emphatically *NO*, I dispute that conclusion. The point is that the musical organization in common practice tonal music which forms our listening strategies and is not innate by any means is not the only kind of musical organization, and I don't see any reason to say that it is along with those other approaches a "tonal" form of organization which somehow this subsection of contemporary music does not fit into.



Ramako said:


> We frequently label things by their dominant modes. Again, we generally call Western societies democratic even though there are many central non-democratic elements to it (e.g. the legal system, even the political system's democratic aspect is frankly pretty limited). Similarly atonal music is atonal, even though there are non-atonal elements to it (indeed, its organisation runs contrary to our tendency to understand it).


In what way does the organization of "atonal" music run contrary to understanding?

Even if it were true that atonal music were actually defined on the basis of atonality, this implies nothing whatsoever about its construction. Atonal is a catch-all term that gives us absolutely no information about what the music it supposedly describes is or sounds like.

Once again, what do these two have in common, other than a shared quality of not being tonal in the common practice sense? Name a single positive characteristic that one could use to apply to them as well as other "atonal" pieces, one that does not apply to tonal pieces.












Ramako said:


> I have no intention to further argue over what degree of pedantry/care we should exercise in our use of language. More interestingly, however, while I was checking I haven't been talking total garbage in this thread, I came across the following interesting result from Krumhansl's _Cognitive Foundations of Musical Pitch_ (1990) on a (somewhat limited) study of Schoenberg's serial music. Listeners to this music attempted to understand it from a tonal point of view (as this is the usual approach) but problems were encountered. Listeners _do_ have tonal expectations at individual points of the music, but these expectations are actually quite contrary from what, music-theoretically, is implied by the music at that stage according to tonal criteria. In her conclusion: "In particular, a basic mismatch may exist between this style's treatment of all 12 chromatic scale pitches equally, and the psychological tendency to relate all pitches to a few stable and unchanging reference pitches".


You left out the part that the listeners who were familiar with the style of music succeeded just fine in being able to predict pitches, and also the fact that the listening strategies used by those who were not familiar with the styles correlated very strongly with the strategies they used with non-Western music (going by surface features, which expectations the complex, ever changing surface of works such as Schoenberg's would likely frustrate).

At any rate, the book and study cited _assume_ that atonality is a valid concept that describes this music, and in fact defines the "normal" characteristics of music in terms of diatonic functional harmony. As I said, I don't disagree that the music under discussion does not fit into that rubric, but to claim anything based on those findings would seem question-begging.


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## arpeggio

albertfallickwang said:


> Yes but that thread is all wrapped up in emotional gut reactions to "atonal" music; here we are looking for a more scientific, nuanced view of the situation.


I am really not an authority on the subject. I understand some of the theory. I have read many articles over the years and there have been many entries submitted to this forum by individuals whose technical knowledge is greater than mine who make the case that even in the most strict atonal works there is still some semblance of a tonal center.

All I had the time to do was to find one.

If I can think of or stumble on to anymore I will cite them.


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## Ramako

Mahlerian said:


> You left out the part that the listeners who were familiar with the style of music succeeded just fine in being able to predict pitches and also the fact that the listening strategies used by those who were not familiar with the styles correlated very strongly with the strategies they used with non-Western music (going by surface features, which expectations the complex, ever changing surface of works such as Schoenberg's would likely frustrate).


This is because I had no desire to provide further evidence that atonal works function via a different organisation than tonal ones. We would expect listeners familiar with the style to key into this organisation better.



Mahlerian said:


> At any rate, the book and study cited _assume_ that atonality is a valid concept that describes this music, and in fact defines the "normal" characteristics of music in terms of diatonic functional harmony. As I said, I don't disagree that the music under discussion does not fit into that rubric, but to claim anything based on those findings would seem question-begging.


Well, it was very much a kind of curiosity application of results established in an otherwise exceptional book to other kinds of repertoire. The experiment itself holds water though, and the conclusion is couched with all the necessary conditions.



Mahlerian said:


> You are using the word tonal in two different senses.


I think only in the sense just used in the previous paragraph about tonal predictions refers to common practice tonality in my previous post.



Mahlerian said:


> In the sense that you seem to be conflating tonal with modal and other kinds of world music


This is not a conflation: the conflation happens when 'tonality' is conflated with 'common-practice tonality', which happens frequently as the former is a convenient abbreviation. It usually doesn't matter, but it does here since we are discussing a wide range of music. The usage I'm using seems to be the standard one in music psychology, millionrainbows has used it here, and it is the one I imagine most musicologists would give when asked what 'tonality' is as distinct from 'common-practice tonality'. Modal music is tonal, but not common-practice tonal.



Mahlerian said:


> Once again, what do these two have in common, other than a shared quality of not being tonal in the common practice sense? Name a single positive characteristic that one could use to apply to them as well as other "atonal" pieces, one that does not apply to tonal pieces.


I'm not sure why the burden of proof is on me since I am with the traditional view on this. I don't know much about the organisation of the pieces involved, but I suppose the argument would look something like 'the tones are not organised hierarchically', and might be restricted to global or local scales as relevant. They might be here for all I know. They're not in serialism. Sure, signs of tonal organisation exists, but are they really much more than an analytical curiosity? It is perhaps _relevant_ in something like Berg's Violin Concerto, but still not _dominant_ enough to call the piece tonal.

I know that at least one piece of Xenakis (can't remember the name sorry, but I am under the impression it is a standard procedure for him) is stochastically organised such that different areas of sonic pitch are emphasised at different times, but the actual tones themselves are generated randomly within this. Again, calling this tonal would be a misnomer, unless the term was being applied figuratively to the organisation of these larger areas (unless, I suppose, the algorithm to produce the tones within the areas was statistically weighted), but this would not be a particularly strict usage of the term.

Even in serial music, 'tonal'-style expectations are created in stylistically attuned listeners at individual points of the piece, in as much as a ordering of expected tones exists. Perhaps a better, if cumbersome, term might be 'circular-tonality', but atonal doesn't seem a misnomer in as much as these expectations are created merely through the serial ordering of the tones, and do not govern the whole piece invariantly. Relatively invariant expectations do not govern even short passages, since the row is constantly shifting.

Of course, modulation in tonal music creates a similar effect, but ignoring Schenker (and Schoenberg), who would say the home tone governs throughout, then still large passages are governed by a single frame of reference, making the application of the term not unjustified. Progressive tonality has a meaning only because we understand the tonality of the piece to shift over its course - in what sense is this definition of tonality relevant to music accurately called atonal? Without the concept of a tonality, our understanding of this music would be significantly impoverished. You have yet to convince me that it is otherwise with atonal music, properly called (I agree that the term 'free atonal' is problematic, and not particularly helpful to understanding the pieces often put under it).


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## Mahlerian

Ramako said:


> This is because I had no desire to provide further evidence that atonal works function via a different organisation than tonal ones. We would expect listeners familiar with the style to key into this organisation better.


You have provided no evidence whatsoever. You have simply continued to assert that they do.



Ramako said:


> Well, it was very much a kind of curiosity application of results established in an otherwise exceptional book to other kinds of repertoire. The experiment itself holds water though, and the conclusion is couched with all the necessary conditions.


But what does it prove? Those listeners who were unfamiliar with the music chose listening strategies that were not correlated with the musical argument, but rather with the surface, while those familiar with the style were able to recognize the salient features of the style.

This doesn't necessarily prove that the music is truly atonal, and this wasn't what the book set out to prove. It could simply be a different kind of organization that doesn't respond well to such testing. I think that a sample of one of Schoenberg's tonal works wouldn't fare much better.



Ramako said:


> I think only in the sense just used in the previous paragraph about tonal predictions refers to common practice tonality in my previous post.


The point is that you are saying that all of these musics are tonal, and then using the characteristics of common practice tonality in particular (modulation, hierarchical progressions) to justify your argument that atonality is not tonal. According to your definition of tonal, these things are not necessary at all for tonality to exist.



Ramako said:


> This is not a conflation: the conflation happens when 'tonality' is conflated with 'common-practice tonality', which happens frequently as the former is a convenient abbreviation. It usually doesn't matter, but it does here since we are discussing a wide range of music. The usage I'm using seems to be the standard one in music psychology, millionrainbows has used it here, and it is the one I imagine most musicologists would give when asked what 'tonality' is as distinct from 'common-practice tonality'. Modal music is tonal, but not common-practice tonal.


There are plenty of quotes one can find to the contrary:

From Wiki:
"However, "[a]s a categorical label, 'atonal' generally means only that the piece is in the Western tradition and is not 'tonal'" (Rahn 1980, 1), *although there are longer periods, e.g., medieval, renaissance, and modern modal musics to which this definition does not apply*.."

From Lansky and Perle, for the New Grove Dictionary:
"Atonality thus roughly delimits a wide range of compositional practices whose only features are the absence of the normative and interrelated procedures of tonality and of the basic concept of serialism. It remains to be seen to what extent atonality is a useful or relevant musical category."

(Tonality in the second quote here refers to the system of major-minor common practice tonality.)



Ramako said:


> I'm not sure why the burden of proof is on me since I am with the traditional view on this. I don't know much about the organisation of the pieces involved, but I suppose the argument would look something like 'the tones are not organised hierarchically', *and might be restricted to global or local scales as relevant*. They might be here for all I know. They're not in serialism. Sure, signs of tonal organisation exists, but are they really much more than an analytical curiosity? It is perhaps _relevant_ in something like Berg's Violin Concerto, but still not _dominant_ enough to call the piece tonal.


The burden of proof is on you to defend the statements you make. The fact is that this is not a settled matter. Atonality is still not defined in any consistent way.

In fact, your definitions are not traditional. The word atonality existed before any of the music you call atonal was written, and it meant the exact same thing: music without tonal hierarchy. After that, the word was applied in the 1920s to Debussy, Strauss, Reger, Mahler, Stravinsky, Scriabin, and all sorts of other names not associated with it today.

Why does a piece need to use a limited subset of the chromatic scale, though? I am aware that this was the practice in music composed before Schoenberg, but I am not aware that using the entire chromatic gamut with some consistency means that the music in fact generates no pitch hierarchy whatsoever.

In other words, I understand the distinction you're making, but I don't think that it is a distinction that justifies the term "atonal" as opposed to a "tonality" that includes all modal and world musics.



Ramako said:


> I know that at least one piece of Xenakis (can't remember the name sorry, but I am under the impression it is a standard procedure for him) is stochastically organised such that different areas of sonic pitch are emphasised at different times, but the actual tones themselves are generated randomly within this. Again, calling this tonal would be a misnomer, unless the term was being applied figuratively to the organisation of these larger areas (unless, I suppose, the algorithm to produce the tones within the areas was statistically weighted), but this would not be a particularly strict usage of the term.


You already aren't using the term very strictly when you claim that modal music is tonal, aren't you?



Ramako said:


> Even in serial music, 'tonal'-style expectations are created in stylistically attuned listeners at individual points of the piece, in as much as a ordering of expected tones exists. Perhaps a better, if cumbersome, term might be 'circular-tonality', but atonal doesn't seem a misnomer in as much as these expectations are created merely through the serial ordering of the tones, and do not govern the whole piece invariantly. Relatively invariant expectations do not govern even short passages, since the row is constantly shifting.


Listeners do not hear serial music on the basis of a row, they hear it on the basis of how it is constructed. A piece of music may focus on one part of the row and make that into a point of attraction. And what about serial music that is diatonic?








Ramako said:


> Of course, modulation in tonal music creates a similar effect, but ignoring Schenker (and Schoenberg), who would say the home tone governs throughout, then still large passages are governed by a single frame of reference, making the application of the term not unjustified. Progressive tonality has a meaning only because we understand the tonality of the piece to shift over its course - in what sense is this definition of tonality relevant to music accurately called atonal? Without the concept of a tonality, our understanding of this music would be significantly impoverished. You have yet to convince me that it is otherwise with atonal music, properly called (I agree that the term 'free atonal' is problematic, and not particularly helpful to understanding the pieces often put under it).


Schenker would not have agreed that modal and world musics are tonal. Schoenberg, as you know, considered the term atonality nonsense and preferred "pantonal".

Yes, so-called atonal music does not have modulation. Neither do lots of other kinds of music which you do not consider atonal. Like those musics, though, music called atonal can have shifting points of attraction and emphasis.

Once again, I state that the word atonal tells us nothing significant about a piece of music:

1) It does not tell us as listeners how to listen to it.
2) It does not tell us how it was constructed.
3) It does not tell us a single thing about its harmonic organization, outside of its non-conformity to the tonal norms of 19th century music.
4) It does not tell us a single thing about its melodic/motivic dimension.
5) It does not tell the composer what he or she needs to do to write it (I don't know how many amateur compositions I've heard that try to be clever by writing "atonal" music that is just random notes; trust me, atonal music doesn't sound random).


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## JohnDWhite

albertfallickwang said:


> Okay quick quiz:
> 
> tonal or atonal?
> 
> George Crumb - Vox Balaenae


Great piece! I've not hear it before.


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## Ramako

............ Apologies wrong formatting


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## Ramako

Mahlerian said:


> You have provided no evidence whatsoever. You have simply continued to assert that they do.


I am not sure what to say...



> Me: This is because I had no desire to provide further evidence that *atonal works function via a different organisation* than tonal ones.
> 
> 
> 
> You: You have provided no evidence whatsoever. You have simply continued to assert that they do.
> 
> 
> 
> You in the same post: *It could simply be a different kind of organization* that doesn't respond well to such testing.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Moving on...



Mahlerian said:


> There are plenty of quotes one can find to the contrary:


Naturally it is not _the_ standard usage (I certainly did not claim such), but it is not so outlandish as all that - the meaning I am using is just obscured by the more standard Western-canon-oriented musicological questions (early music vs common-practice, common-practice vs post-common-practice). Besides, I have made clear in what sense I am usually using it, and that is all that ought to be relevant.



Mahlerian said:


> Yes, so-called atonal music does not have modulation


I am saying that modulation in common-practice tonal music is something akin to the techniques of atonality, or at least moving in that direction. You have imputed to me the opposite meaning, and I would normally apologise for being unclear, but actually reading it again it is pretty plain what I am saying so I think you are at fault for misreading me.



Mahlerian said:


> I don't think that it is a distinction that justifies the term "atonal" as opposed to a "tonality" that includes all modal and world musics.


This was a claim you made in an early post, and I did not address it because its not relevant. I don't care about classifying all music ever written, but in finding out whether there is music which can be classified as the one or the other.



Mahlerian said:


> The point is that you are saying that all of these musics are tonal, and then using the characteristics of common practice tonality in particular (modulation, hierarchical progressions).


I have at no point stated I am talking about the kind of hierarchical progressions that are found in common-practice tonality. Hierarchy is plain in many types of _tonal_ music (e.g. various Christian chants, North Indian _ragas_). I have already addressed modulation. Your criticism is wholly based on misreading.



Mahlerian said:


> Once again, I state that the word atonal tells us nothing significant about a piece of music:
> ...
> 2) It does not tell us how it was constructed.


I have made the limited claim that the dominant mode of organisation in atonal music is non-hierarchical. In the case of serial music it is actually counter-hierarchical. I have provided evidence for this claim by explaining that serial music and statistically generated music confounds a hierarchical organisation of the tones, unless such a thing was written in to these methods. In this latter case, the question arises as to how significant these (perhaps timbral, registral, dynamical etc.) methods are for understanding the piece. My guess is sometimes very significant, other times, pretty insignificant. You have not countered this claim. Actually, the burden of proof _is_ much more strongly on you, because you are making a logically much more sweeping claim - that the term has _no_ application - whereas I am just claiming it has _some_. I am not interested in whether its standard application is correct, but in whether there is such a thing as atonal music - which you'll find is what the OP asks.

Certainly atonal music (taking atonal to mean non-common-practice-tonal) exists - this much is plain, but it is also applies to a vast number of different musics. It is also fairly plain that atonal music, which I guess I shall refer to as non-hierarchical music to avoid confusion, does not, beyond a highly limited number of cases, strictly exist. It is also clear that there are many pieces in which non-hierarchical methods of organisation significantly out-shadow hierarchical ones, and that this music correlates significantly (if not totally) with the standard usage of the term. I have convinced myself of this, and since you don't seem to be interested in alternative points of view I will not be back to continue this conversation - or indeed to the forum. I had forgotten how little debate has to do with the topic under discussion, and how much to do with the egos involved (which is a general criticism of the medium, not of you specifically, and certainly including me). I am not attached to the term atonal, and have suggested there are probably better terms, and probably now prefer non-hierarchical in order to avoid the kind of confusion we have encountered. I stand by my previous understanding of the term tonality for myself, but if you want you can have it. You can consider this a dialectical victory for this reason. However, I feel I have come to a better understanding that there is a valuable distinction in there and that I have gotten closer to it.


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## clavichorder

This is not getting into the technical aspect of the question, but I recently listened again to Britten's violin concerto. What sounded atonal to me 5 years ago, sounds more like an extension of late romantic harmony now, with a certain coolness influenced by Shosty and Britten's usual style. Chromaticism and colorfully non functional tonality sounds clearly that to me now. Dutilleux's work even sounds very tonally informed. Point is, you can "get adjusted."


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## Mahlerian

In the part you quoted, you may read the sentence as "It could simply be a different kind of *tonal* organization that doesn't respond well to such testing." That's what I meant.

My thoughts parallel this writer's:
http://www.thinkingapplied.com/tonality_folder/tonality.htm

I'm not trying to drive you away, Ramako, and I'm not intending to be condescending in any way.


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## Richannes Wrahms

Many authors have said that the possibility of atonality entered music as soon as modulation was invented, atonality really meaning constant modulation.

I personally have come not to care for the labels, as pointed out already, it seems to be a language problem.

If we define 'Tonal' as music with 'Function' and 'Function' as 'Degrees of tension' then practically all music is tonal because the brain will always distinguish subtle differences within a piece (or inside/between a melody/motif/gesture). You may metaphorically call the highest tension point 'dominant' and the relaxation point 'tonic' (or dominant space and tonic space, polyfunctionality, etc)

If we define 'Tonal' as music with 'Function' but 'Function' and 'Degrees of tension' as in common practice (scale degrees, certain chord progressions, etc) then only the music that relies on those procedures is 'Tonal'. 
*
This is the Music Theory forum, if we want to continue this discussion at a more concrete level it would be nice (for example) to take a shot of a score and try to find out why you hear the way you hear (for example: marking what you hear as nuclear tones in an 'atonal' melody, rhythmical emphasis, register changes, cadence-like patterns, local key centers, or apparent lack of any of that)*

; nice to see older members around, from is a topic much worth discussing than this. :tiphat:


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## Guest

Richannes Wrahms said:


> I personally have come not to care for the labels, as pointed out already, it seems to be a language problem.


Yes, here's the thing. When I hear music I am able to apply certain labels: This is trad jazz, this is old delta blues, this is 80s pop, this is Gregorian chant, this is Indian classical etc etc. But I am unable to label, hear, discern "serial", "atonal"...

Why would that be? Insufficient technical understanding? My listening history/exposure?


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## Albert7

Is the best way to discern whether a piece is serial or non-serial in nature is to look at the original score rather than listening to it?


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## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> The problem is there are just about no characteristics which you can find linking the methods or the result between say, Xenakis and Sessions, yet both are referred to as "atonal".


Why should there be? Any term defined by absence, that is, by the qualities its referents lack rather than those they possess, is not going to be much good for classification, beyond making the single grand distinction for which it is designed. And it is unlikely it will do that particularly well.



Mahlerian said:


> The question is not whether the music called atonal is tonal in a common practice sense (I don't think you'll find many who will argue this except for very specific and cherry-picked examples), but whether it is somehow different from all other music in the history of the universe anywhere.


Once again, why? The term's _raison d'etre_ is to make a single distinction within a specific style, that is, precisely in a common-practice sense. Why would one expect more of it?



Mahlerian said:


> So-called atonal music is not distinguished by any lack of centricity, but by its consistent deployment of the chromatic scale.


It is not defined by any positive quality, the deployment of the chromatic scale or anything else. It is defined by the (relative) absence of a kind of hierarchic organization specific to a certain style when applied to works in the tradition of that style and that style alone. How much apparent and largely subjective absence makes something atonal? Who knows? Is the term of much use? Not to me. Does it make the fine distinctions I tend to find useful in talking about and comparing different styles? No. Does it serve a useful function for many people not interested in fine distinctions? Decidedly yes. That is what (and all) it is for.


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## millionrainbows

Tonal music, in the most general sense of the term_ (see Harvard Dictionary of Music)_ is "tonal" because it is centered around *a fundamental tone and its subservient divisions or "harmonics." *

These divisions of the octave might be arbitrary, as in any equal-tempered scale (such as our 12-tone ET, or any equal division: 5, 7, 21, 31, 42, etc).

These divisions of the octave might be unequal within the octave, as in attempts to achieve more perfect intervals, as in Pythagoran or mean-tone temperament.

In other words, these divisions might be based on harmonic principles (small-number, non-reducible intervals such as 2:3, 3:4, etc), and/or they might be based on "ballpark" attempts to create perfect intervals within the octave.

Or they might be totally arbitrary, based on geometric or numerical divisions. Any ET division would fit here. 7-tone ET (Thailand), 12-tone ET, etc.

Our 12-note octave is* both* an attempt at perfect harmonic intervals, and a ballpark, arbitrary division, as ET finally won out.

*What they all have in common is the octave, 2:1. This creates a recursive, or cycling, hierarchy. The octave provides a "1" as a reference, from which we create fractional divisions (2:3, 3:4, 4:5, etc.) 
*
These fractions are in relation to the whole octave, as "1". This is simple math.

This is how an "hierarchy" is created; all of the fractional divisions are related subserviently to "1," the octave, or keynote.

Atonal music is simply music which has no tonal center. This would mean chromaticism, which is derived from increasingly tenuous sense of tonality caused by the addition of more notes, reaching 12, or by systems which are _non-hierarchical,_ meaning systems in which "in-octave" scale divisions and references are abandoned, as explained in detail above.

These "non-tonal" systems have no "1" reference, and the divisions do not refer to a "1" or tonic note; they become interval-distances with no reference. Therefore, tonal inversion is not possible, and notes do not retain their hierarchical identity as "place-holders" in the octave.

Whereas in tonality, G up to C is a fourth, and C up to G is a fifth, and these are inversions because they both refer to C as tonic, in serial methods intervals are seen as quantities only; C up to G is "7", and when inverted, C down to F is "7." These are equivalences in serial theory, but have no tonal meaning, as C-G and its inversion F-C do not both refer to C.

The same with triads: in tonality, C-E-G, E-G-C, and G-C-E are all heard as C major triads.
In serial terms, the inversion of C-E-G (0,4,7) is C-Ab-F (0,-4,-7), which are not tonal equivalents; they are a C major triad and an F minor triad, respectively.


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## isorhythm

All words are ultimately provisional.

Tables and chairs have many similarities, and there are objects, like ottomans, that blur the boundary between these two linguistic categories.

And yet, we have no trouble using the words "table" and "chair" to distinguish between them in everyday life.

There are many pieces about which I can say they are in the key of __ and write nice Roman numerals under them, and all or nearly all other people would agree. These are tonal. There are other pieces where I could say they're in mode __ and as a result they will definitely begin and end with certain pitches. These are modal.

There are yet other pieces where I could do neither. I see no problem with calling them atonal.

Edit - this was implied, but I should be clear. There are pieces in which I can identify tonal or modal elements but can't confidently say that they're in a key or mode. These pieces don't fit in the above neat taxonomy. But their existence doesn't stop me from saying that Beethoven's 5th is in C minor and Webern's Variations for Orchestra is atonal.


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## Albert7

Lulu last night was 12 tone but very melodic. By my standard it is not atonal.


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## millionrainbows

isorhythm said:


> There are many pieces about which I can say they are in the key of __ and write nice Roman numerals under them, and all or nearly all other people would agree. These are tonal. There are other pieces where I could say they're in mode __ and as a result they will definitely begin and end with certain pitches. These are modal.
> 
> There are yet other pieces where I could do neither. I see no problem with calling them atonal.
> 
> Edit - this was implied, but I should be clear. There are pieces in which I can identify tonal or modal elements but can't confidently say that they're in a key or mode. These pieces don't fit in the above neat taxonomy. But their existence doesn't stop me from saying that Beethoven's 5th is in C minor and Webern's Variations for Orchestra is atonal.


 For me, the meaning of "atonal" is only useful in describing music in which this is a relevant issue;_ "atonal" being used to describe a type of music in which pitch is the primary "syntactical reference" of the music,_ and_ in which tonality has been purposely abandoned or avoided_, using a non-hierarchical system which builds this into the structure of the music itself, or music which, through increasing chromaticism, has become so _ambiguously_ tonal that the term "tonality" is no longer meaningful, apparent or demonstrable through analysis of root movement or tonal areas.

Debussy would use triads and other harmonic devices in non-functional ways, ignoring the rules of _traditional _tonality. I would hesitate to call his music "atonal" because it does imply tonal centers in its use of tonal devices, such as triads, scales, and modes. Scales and modes are "in octave" sets of notes which imply a starting note, or key note.

For me, the proper use of the term "atonal" is in music which is atonal to the point of using all 12 notes continuously, which in essence amounts to a "special case" use of 12-note sets. Music which uses "sets" of notes derived from the chromatic set can also be called "atonal." This is serialism, and Elliott Carter.

Tonal hierarchies are best seen on a circle, because they are recursive (repeating). Non-hierarchical systems are best seen on a straight number line.


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## isorhythm

millionrainbows said:


> For me, the meaning of "atonal" is only useful in describing music in which this is a relevant issue;_ "atonal" being used to describe a type of music in which pitch is the primary "syntactical reference" of the music,_ and_ in which tonality has been purposely abandoned or avoided_, using a non-hierarchical system which builds this into the structure of the music itself, or music which, through increasing chromaticism, has become so _ambiguously_ tonal that the term "tonality" is no longer meaningful, apparent or demonstrable through analysis of root movement or tonal areas.


I agree with this; when I hear the word "atonal" I don't think of, say, Takemitsu or Xenakis. Nonetheless I'd say that music _could_ be described as atonal. The important thing is for everyone in a conversation to agree on definitions, since there are no universally accepted definitions.


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## Mahlerian

Agreeing with Richannes Wrahms that a discussion should focus on examples, I have found a description that attempts to prove the atonality of a piece, in this case the first of Webern's Five Movements for String Quartet, op. 5, as a contrast to the "pantonality" of the Adagio of Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta.

https://archive.org/stream/tonalityinmodern00reti_0#page/92/mode/2up






The first part of his discussion focuses on the first few bars and their canonic imitation. Reti claims that there is no aurally meaningful pattern in the harmonic relations thus produced, and the few consonances that arise are thrown in haphazardly.

I catalogued the relationship between these two lines (a canon a ninth lower) at every point, adding in the pizzicato chords.

B-D-Af-*E-D# M7*
*C#-G dim5*
*F-G# m9+8va*
F#-E m7

B-D-G#-C-_D-A P5
G-Bf m3_
Af-G M7

G#-B-F-A-F-F# m9
*E-D# M7*

C-Ef-A-C#-*C#-G dim5
F-G# m9+8va*

Not only are these relationships not haphazard, or the consonances thrown in randomly, the consonances are isolated to a brief moment in the exact center, around which we have a sequence of mostly major sevenths and minor ninths that follows a very specific and identical pattern at the beginning and end, *down to using the exact same notes*.

Furthermore, his further contention (pp97-98) that the reference interval C-C# is sounded at the end before being "annulled" by the final pizzicato chord is also wrong. For one thing, the full motif, as sounded in the cello at the beginning and referenced by all of the instruments at the end, is C-C#-B, *which is exactly where the violin moves in the last chord*.

In fact, the final chord:
D-F-Bf-C-C#-D#-G#-B

Also includes within itself those reference pitches, C and C#, at its exact center between two triads, B-flat major and G# minor. Far from annulling a tonal quality, this chord emphasizes the same points of reference as the rest of the movement. One merely has to accept that non-triadic sonorities may be fixed points of reference.


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## Albert7

Wow, mahlerian great explanation! (wish that I were more technically inclined here...)


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## millionrainbows

Tonality and atonality are terms best used in reference to each other, as systems which negate each other.

To best understand atonality, which could be anything without a tonal center, we must first understand and define what tonality is.


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## millionrainbows

The Webern op. 5 Five Pieces for String Quartet were written before his adoption of "the system," but I would still characterize it as "atonal", since it does not use any hierarchical structures (scales, harmonic functions) of tonality.

Here we are in a haunting, expressive world, in which elements have been pared down to the essential, approaching abstraction. This is part of the late romantic aesthetic, in which music evokes strange, complex, almost indefinable emotions (or states of being), and which influenced Schoenberg's Op. 11 piano pieces and his Five Pieces for Orchestra op. 16, although he would probably not admit it.

If this piece were to be analyzed, it would not be analyzed tonally, in terms of root movement or function; we have already entered a more abstract world. We would use set theory, and analyze it in terms of pitch-class; sets manifested at various levels as melodic motives, as vertical sonorities, and as structural elements governing the larger spans of the composition.

We are in a world of "expressive abstraction," in which structural elements are free to function non-harmomically, and "atonally," yet they serve the composer's intention of creating continuity, creating mood, and being structural elements.

That doesn't make it "tonal." This is atonal music, yet it is very expressive, haunting, and sonorous.

https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/...iTransformationalStructuresV10.pdf?sequence=1










It's atonal because it exhibits no harmonic function in relation to a key center; it has no discernible root movement; and it's based on motivic cells which are derived from the chromatic set;


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## Mahlerian

Modal music doesn't use scales or hierarchical functional harmony either, nor does it exhibit root movement in the same way as tonal music. Is it atonal by your view?

What is abstract about this music?

At any rate, your argument for the Webern piece being atonal (on the basis of its not having root progressions or using subsets of the chromatic scale rather than the whole thing consistently) are not the same as those I was arguing against in the book I cited. The book said that it was aural arbitrariness, an actual breaking of the links from tone to tone, that made it atonal, and literally so.

It is this that atonal means if taken literally, not the use or lack of use of "scales and root progressions", neither of which define nor are limited to tonal music.


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## Dim7

Mahlerian said:


> Modal music doesn't use scales


What?!  If I write in the E phrygian mode, it doesn't use scales?


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> Modal music doesn't use scales or hierarchical functional harmony either, nor does it exhibit root movement in the same way as tonal music. Is it atonal by your view?
> 
> What is abstract about this music?


First, you'll have to explain what you mean by "modal music," because, in my acceptance of a broad definition, "modal" music uses modes, which are scales. Scales are recursive, and fit into an octave, and have a beginning note which implies a key center.

Much folk music is modal, and John Coltrane's jazz is "modal," and Miles Davis' *Kind of Blue* album is "modal."

As far as " hierarchical functional harmony," almost any scale or mode can be made to have functions, in relation to its starting note;

*D dorian *can be used to construct triads on each step: D-F-A (minor i), E-G-B (minor ii), F-A-C (minor iii), G-B-D (major IV), A-C-E (minor V), B-D-F (dim vi), and C-E-G (major VII).

Many popular tunes are based on harmonic functions of modes: Santana's *Evil Ways* uses a i-minor/IV major chord change as its basis; many rock songs use the (flatted) VII-I progression (The Kinks' *You Really Got Me*), which could be analyzed as mixolydian.

Modality, with harmonic function based on the scale steps, is ubiquitous, everywhere, and common knowledge to anyone with ears who has ever listened to a radio.

What kind of hermetic, academic definition are you using to describe "modal music"? Some kind of strict Gregorian chant from a textbook?


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## millionrainbows

Dim7 said:


> What?!  If I write in the E phrygian mode, it doesn't use scales?


Mystifying, isn't it? This is the way academics develop a specialized lingo to keep out the riff-raff.


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## Mahlerian

Dim7 said:


> What?!  If I write in the E phrygian mode, it doesn't use scales?


First, you are confusing the modern use of mode with the traditional one.

Second, a mode really is treated differently than a scale. In common practice period music, a scale is not simply a collection of notes, but the generator of specific relationships between chords.


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## Dim7

Mahlerian said:


> First, you are confusing the modern use of mode with the traditional one.
> 
> Second, a mode really is treated differently than a scale. In common practice period music, a scale is not simply a collection of notes, but the generator of specific relationships between chords.


Are the whole-tone scale and the octatonic scale not scales then?


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## Mahlerian

Dim7 said:


> Are the whole-tone scale and the octatonic scale not scales then?


Neither was used very much in common practice period music, for the very reason that their use is antithetical to tonal hierarchy.

In the modern use of scale to mean any collection of notes, they are scales, of course, but so is the "chromatic scale".


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## Albert7

Is it generally possible to hear something and not get mixed up between 12 tone and something exotic like mixolydian?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixolydian_mode


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## millionrainbows

Dim7 said:


> Are the whole-tone scale and the octatonic scale not scales then?


Yes; any octave-spanning collection of notes can act like a scale.

The problem with the whole-tone scale and the octatonic scale is that they do not have a stable fifth which would reinforce a sense of tonality, so these scales have a "built-in" instability.

Plus, these scales are symmetrical, meaning that the "functions" or relations within the scale remain the same, regardless of which note is the starting point.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> First, you are confusing the modern use of mode with the traditional one.


The traditional definition of "mode" is therefore irrelevant to this discussion.



Mahlerian said:


> Second, a mode really is treated differently than a scale. In common practice period music, a scale is not simply a collection of notes, but the generator of specific relationships between chords.


Any scale or mode can generate specific relationships ("functions") between chords, as explained above.


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## millionrainbows

albertfallickwang said:


> Is it generally possible to hear something and not get mixed up between 12 tone and something exotic like mixolydian?


Yes, easily. The characteristics of the mixolydian are the flatted seventh, and a major third. Almost all blues music has a mixolydian sound. The flatted seventh is present on all three basic chords of any blues tune: I7/IV7/V7.

It's even easy to hear chromatic scales, using all 12 notes, as being tonal, as Miles Davis does all the time. All he did was put a bass line and a groove under it, and the 12 notes became tonal.


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## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> The traditional definition of "mode" is therefore irrelevant to this discussion.


Isn't it still applicable when we're dealing with pre-tonal modal music?



millionrainbows said:


> Any scale or mode can generate specific relationships ("functions") between chords, as explained above.


Any scale or mode generates relationships, but not every scale generates the _specific_ relationships of functional tonality. 12-tone music generates relationships between notes as well. It's not as if the syntactic bonds from note to note stop existing the moment one applies a tone row.



millionrainbows said:


> It's even easy to hear chromatic scales, using all 12 notes, as being tonal, as Miles Davis does all the time. All he did was put a bass line and a groove under it, and the 12 notes became tonal.


I don't hear that example as any more tonal than the Webern above. It definitely is more distant from the harmonic thinking of Brahms and Bach than Webern.


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## Guest

I feel like I've stumbled into a room where economists are discussing a fundamental economic issue. And of course, no one agrees on the definition of the fundamentals.

(closes door behind him)...


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> Isn't it still applicable when we're dealing with pre-tonal modal music?


If I wanted to discuss 'pre-tonal modal music' I'd start a thread on it. With my general definition of 'tonality' (Harvard Dictionary of Music), even 'pre-tonal' music can be heard as 'tonal,' with a tone center.



Mahlerian said:


> Any scale or mode generates relationships, but not every csale generates the _specific_ relationships of functional tonality.


If you include the minor scales of major/minor tonality, then that includes about every function on every step there is. Even if not, what's so complicated or esoteric about the dorian mode having a IV major function? Is that supposed to be 'radical?'



Mahlerian said:


> *12-tone music generates relationships between notes as well.* It's not as if the syntactic bonds from note to note stop existing the moment one applies a tone row.


I said "Any scale or mode can generate specific relationships ("functions") between_* chords,*_ as explained above", not *notes.*

12-tone is essentially* melodic,* not harmonic. Therefore, it's going to generate illusory "harmonic" relationships as the result of the intersection of contrapuntal lines, not chord function. The same goes for "pre-tonal" modal music; it was based on melodic lines, not chord relationships or functions (a.k.a. harmony).



Mahlerian said:


> I don't hear that example as any more tonal than the Webern above. It definitely is more distant from the harmonic thinking of Brahms and Bach than Webern.


The constant bass line makes it very tonal; Miles Davis was trying to evoke the 'folk' modalities of African music, in order to "de-Westernize" it. If anthing, the Miles Davis example is more "folk" or ethnic than anything Western.


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## millionrainbows

The real problem in defining and using the term "atonal" is that people have failed to define "TONAL."


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## Rhombic

albertfallickwang said:


> Okay quick quiz:
> 
> tonal or atonal?


That composition is wonderful!! The end is tonal, but the rest of it isn't entirely tonal.
George Crumb is impressive.


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## Dim7

I think my definition of "tonal in the broad sense" used to be "doesn't sound like complete garbage". If you had played Schoenberg's Piano Concerto to me I would have probably called it tonal


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## Albert7

Wondering if this video helps with this issue?


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## Mahlerian

albertfallickwang said:


> Wondering if this video helps with this issue?


Nope. It's a combination of conflating "atonality" with 12-tone technique, claiming that the reason for 12-tone technique was to write atonal music (which is of course false, given that Schoenberg didn't believe atonal music existed or could exist), and also combining both of these with "dissonance" and irregular rhythm/meter, which are not particularly related except that they are associated with the music of Schoenberg and those who followed him.

If anything, it just continues to confuse the issue.


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## Mahlerian

Dim7 said:


> I think my definition of "tonal in the broad sense" used to be "doesn't sound like complete garbage". If you had played Schoenberg's Piano Concerto to me I would have probably called it tonal


I feel that when most people use the term atonality it means something like "aural nonsense".

Of course, using that definition, _nothing_ by the Second Viennese School is atonal to me.


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## Albert7

Mahlerian said:


> I feel that when most people use the term atonality it means something like "aural nonsense".
> 
> Of course, using that definition, _nothing_ by the Second Viennese School is atonal to me.


Apparently there was an anecdote that went and I quote:

Michiel Schuijer's superb study of pitch-class (PC) set theory begins with an anecdote:

In the late afternoon of October 24, 1999, about one hundred people were gathered in a large rehearsal room of the Rotterdam Conservatory. They were listening to a discussion between representatives of nine European countries about the teaching of music theory and music analysis. It was the third day of the Fourth European Music Analysis Conference… Most participants in the conference (which included a number of music theorists from Canada and the United States) had been looking forward to this session… A late visitor entered the room, and seated himself on a chair in the middle of the front row. He listened for a while to the discussion, his face expressing growing astonishment. Then he raised his hand and said:

"You guys are discussing methods of analyzing twentieth-century music. Why don't you talk about pitch-class sets?"

He was American. The chairman, a professor from the Sorbonne, was quick to respond:

"We do not talk about pitch-class sets, because we do not hear them!" [pp 1,2]

http://www.classical.net/music/books/reviews/1580462709a.php

Since I am bad at music theory, what is pitch class set theory?


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## Albert7

Also will these two books help out:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300021208?redirect=true&tag=classicalnet&pldnSite=1

http://www.classical.net/music/books/reviews/0131898906a.php


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## Dim7

Traditionally tonal vs. unorthodox, highly-chromatic tonality / atonality, this is pretty significant difference IMO. But whether music has "tonal centres" or not does not in my opinion affect the "accessibility" of a piece all that radically really. Schoenberg's piano concerto may not have tonal centres and bartok's piano concertos may have tonal centres, but IMO they are about as accessible.
The inaccessibility of stereotypical "atonal" music has to do with a lot of factors, of which "atonality" and "dissonance" are the least significant as far as I'm concerned. It's more the jagged pointillist rhythms, and the "melodies" that jump like crazy and most importantly the lack of obvious themes. Luckily not all "atonal" music is like that.


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## Mahlerian

Dim7 said:


> Traditionally tonal vs. unorthodox, highly-chromatic tonality / atonality, this is pretty significant difference IMO. But whether music has "tonal centres" or not does not in my opinion affect the "accessibility" of a piece all that radically really. Schoenberg's piano concerto may not have tonal centres and bartok's piano concertos may have tonal centres, but IMO they are about as accessible.


On this point, I agree, even though there *are* tonal centers in Schoenberg's music, including the Piano Concerto. They're just not articulated in the same way as they would be in a common practice piece (or in Bartok).



Dim7 said:



> The inaccessibility of stereotypical "atonal" music has to do with a lot of factors, of which "atonality" and "dissonance" are the least significant as far as I'm concerned. It's more the jagged pointillist rhythms, and the "melodies" that jump like crazy and most importantly the lack of obvious themes. Luckily not all "atonal" music is like that.


Schoenberg wrote exactly one athematic piece: Erwartung. It's also an operatic warhorse, often staged together with Bartok's similar opera, Bluebeard's Castle.

All of the rest of his works feature tightly knit thematic/motivic development. Webern's works are a bit different, I'll grant, but once one becomes used to the style, the frequently returning points of reference become apparent.

The problem for accessibility is that the themes are not repeated, but rather in a state of constant change. Some people have difficulties with Mahler (especially later Mahler) for similar reasons; I note the number of times I've heard that the Eighth Symphony is formless or meandering when in reality it's one of the most focused pieces I know.


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## millionrainbows

Albert7 said:


> Apparently there was an anecdote that went and I quote:
> 
> Michiel Schuijer's superb study of pitch-class (PC) set theory begins with an anecdote:
> 
> In the late afternoon of October 24, 1999, about one hundred people were gathered in a large rehearsal room of the Rotterdam Conservatory. They were listening to a discussion between representatives of nine European countries about the teaching of music theory and music analysis. It was the third day of the Fourth European Music Analysis Conference… Most participants in the conference (which included a number of music theorists from Canada and the United States) had been looking forward to this session… A late visitor entered the room, and seated himself on a chair in the middle of the front row. He listened for a while to the discussion, his face expressing growing astonishment. Then he raised his hand and said:
> 
> "You guys are discussing methods of analyzing twentieth-century music. Why don't you talk about pitch-class sets?"
> 
> He was American. The chairman, a professor from the Sorbonne, was quick to respond:
> 
> "We do not talk about pitch-class sets, because we do not hear them!" [pp 1,2]
> 
> Since I am bad at music theory, what is pitch class set theory?











http://amzn.com/0300045379

This book contradicts that. While it may be true that we don't necessarily hear 12-note rows, pitch class theory includes *every possible set *of notes, from 2 (dyads) on up. It's easy to hear dyads, only two notes. I do this in listening to Webern all the time.

For more on pitch class theory, refer to this textbook by John Rahn (which doesn't exist, BTW) or look it up on WIK.










http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Set_theory_(music)&oldid=645158412


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## Albert7

Thanks for the references, millionrainbows... I will check it out the links.

Someone doing a pitch analysis on Morton Feldman and that looked hard!

http://www.cnvill.net/mfsani3/mfsani3.htm

I am puzzled at the paper here... so will need help here .


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## millionrainbows

Albert7 said:


> Thanks for the references, millionrainbows... I will check it out the links.
> 
> Someone doing a pitch analysis on Morton Feldman and that looked hard!
> 
> http://www.cnvill.net/mfsani3/mfsani3.htm
> 
> I am puzzled at the paper here... so will need help here .


That's an interesting link. Apparently, it is difficult to get much out of an atonal pitch-class analysis of Feldman, because each note is so isolated and it's hard to find groupings of notes which relect any kind of method other than intuition.

The author makes an attempt to group notes by looking at the sustain pedalings. Feldman liked to compose at the piano with the pedal down in order to hear remnants of other notes and how they affect perception of present notes), and this yielded some "supergroups" which could be links to Feldman's thinking.

...but on the whole, his compositional style resists such analysis; probably because his intent was to *evade* such grouping patterns, and create music which consists of "isolated moments" which are truly isolated.

This type of pitch-set analysis works better when examining serial or 12-tone works, in terms of uncovering what sets were used, and in what ways: sub-groupings, smaller units, etc. This can give clues as to the structure of the music, and what interval groupings are emphasized; but like Feldman, it can only reveal statistics, and not the "musical logic" behind good music.


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## millionrainbows

While I do not dispute that Wagner and Liszt and others were heading for a more chromatic territory, enabled by the inherent features of a Pythagoran 12-note octave division, their vision was still tonal, in a broad, flexible sense. Bartok I can see as being an outgrowth of this, but Schoenberg and company were actually* in opposition *to a sense of tonality. Yes, their 12-tone music was *atonal* in the fullest sense, not just an outgrowth of Late-Romantic chromaticism.

Schoenberg's music is beautiful, but it does not create an overriding sense of tonality; in fact, in that regard, it is harmonically disorienting. The 12-note system ensures that no tonal center will be emphasized, due to the ordering and cycling of all 12 notes. It is a method designed to *avoid* a sense of tonality.

Even serial methods are better at creating localized tonal effects. At least with serial set theory, one can use *unordered* sets ans smaller subsets. The 12-tone method always uses *all twelve notes,* and worse, it puts them in a specific order, forcing them to be melodic and "unharmonic." This was a system definitely designed to "murder" any sense of tonality.

Harmony, and a sense of tonality, however fleeting and localized, depends on the use of *unordered* sets; sets which are an "index" of pitches, like scales, which can be drawn from freely, and thus create, by their emphasis, an "interval vector" which creates a sense of tonality, or sonority.


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## millionrainbows

It's funny how Mahlerian, when asked what "tonality" is, has a very restricted definition, which includes only the Western major/minor system of common practice, and _excludes broader definitions of tonality_ as found in folk & ethnic musics, or any music with a tonal center;

Yet, when confronted with the term "atonality," is ready to say that *everything* is tonal, even Schoenberg, Webern and serialism!

Heard any good tonal Boulez lately? :lol:


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## millionrainbows

Albert7 said:


> For me, the only truly atonal music are Cage's 4' 33" and field recordings like Lopez where there is no true tonal center. Everything else for me is tonal in basis.


Duhh, yeah, if the music has "tones" in it, then it's tonal! (sarcasm)



Albert7 said:


> So isn't atonality a more complex form of tonality with mathematical strictures?


Yeah, they're both "tonal" because they both have "tones!"


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## millionrainbows

Sure, serialism is "tonal;" it just changes keys every note! There's tonal centers all over the place! On every beat, sometimes more often!


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## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> It's funny how Mahlerian, when asked what "tonality" is, has a very restricted definition, which includes only the Western major/minor system of common practice, and _excludes broader definitions of tonality_ as found in folk & ethnic musics, or any music with a tonal center;
> 
> Yet, when confronted with the term "atonality," is ready to say that *everything* is tonal, even Schoenberg, Webern and serialism!
> 
> Heard any good tonal Boulez lately?


Equivocation will get you to win an argument in form only by muddying the content.

For me, tonality is a specific way of treating harmony which is separate from modal music, world music, and post-tonal music of all kinds.

*Your* definition of tonality is broad and includes modal music, world music, and post-tonal diatonic music. I just think there's no musical reason to exclude post-tonal chromatic music as well, especially when, as in the music of Boulez and Schoenberg, it's closely related in treatment to tonality, and far more so than Indian music or gamelan, for example, especially as it _*does*_ have tonal centers, despite your repeated assertions that a tone row nullifies any sense of one, which is just plain wrong.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> For me, tonality is a specific way of treating harmony which is separate from modal music, world music, and post-tonal music of all kinds.
> *Your* definition of tonality is broad and includes modal music, world music, and post-tonal diatonic music. I just think there's no musical reason to exclude post-tonal chromatic music as well...


You'd better define "Post tonal chromatic music." If it's anything like your definition of tonality, it is probably different from what I think it is.

Yes, my definition of tonality is broad, but simple: it is any music which exhibits a tonal center, and is organized around a tonal center.

A lot of Debussy I would include in this, since his music is based on harmonic principles, and uses tonal devices (scales, modes, triads, arpeggios, some functions). Debussy wasn't using a "system," either.

Also, take note that just because music doesn't exhibit "function," as in CP tonality, that doesn't mean it's not tonal.

*ANY scale can have triads built on each step which will exhibit their own function in terms of relation to the key note, in terms of increasing or decreasing dissonance.
*
But *Schoenberg* _(after the earlier 5 Stücke, Op. 23 (1920-23), which employs a 12-tone row only in the final Waltz movement, and the Serenade, Op. 24, which uses a single row in its central Sonnet)_ used "the system" exclusively when he wrote the *Op. 25 Suite for piano.*



Mahlerian said:


> ...especially when, as in the music of Boulez and Schoenberg, *it's closely related in treatment to tonality...*


*Treatment* has nothing to do with tonality; that's a *stylistic* feature. Just because Schoenberg used a G/Db tritone relation as a kind of allusion to a I/V doesn't make it tonal. Just because he parodied Baroque dance forms doesn't make it tonal; that's stylistic and form-related, and has nothing to do with establishing a tonal center.



Mahlerian said:


> ... it's closely related in treatment to tonality..*.*and far more so than Indian music or gamelan, for example, especially as it _*does*_ have tonal centers...


Localized moments of tone-centricity do not count as "tonality." Just because you put a low B in the bass, doesn't make it in the key of B, or even a B chord. Our ears hear lower bass notes as "fundamentals," with higher notes on top as "harmonics" or as subservient in fuction to that bass note. *This is "harmonic hearing," not tonality.*

You have confused your ear's tendency to hear "harmonically" with "tonality." The two are not the same.

You actually assert that _Boulez and Schoenberg are more tonal than North Indian raga?_ *I must laugh!*



Mahlerian said:


> ...despite your repeated assertions that a tone row nullifies any sense of one, which is just plain wrong.


You better start giving us some reason why, other than "because I said so."

Tone rows are ordered, and no note can be repeated until all 12 are used. This is a built-in structural feature of rows (unlike unordered scales, which are an index) that insures that the music will be chromatic, and will use all 12 notes all the time. This degrades any sense of tonality, since the more notes you have, the more redundant the harmonic content (interval vector) becomes. More notes make more appearances, and interval relations within the set begin to repeat (redundancy), and no distinct tonality emerges, it just gets denser, cloudier, and more redundant tonally.

If you *really* want to establish a sense of tonality, use *less* notes. Increasing chromaticism degrades tonality. That's a simple given fact, which all composers know.

Acid test: I'm listening to the* Op. 25 Suite,* and it doesn't sound like it has a tone center. I hear aggregates of sound, and fleeting moments of tone centers, but there is no consistent or overriding sense of tonality established, and that's what Schoenberg intended.

But it's not tonal; you couldn't analyze it in terms of tonal function.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> Equivocation will get you to win an argument in form only by muddying the content.
> For me, tonality is a specific way of treating harmony which is separate from modal music, world music, and post-tonal music of all kinds.* Your* definition of tonality is broad and includes modal music, world music, and post-tonal diatonic music.


What's muddying the water is that you are not talking specifically about tone centers or *'tone-centric music,'* and *tone-centric* would include any *tone-centered* music: modal, world, folk, or 'post-tonal.'

That's because *'atonal' simply means 'music having no tonal center.'*

The term *'atonal'* refers to a negation of a tone center, regardless of the kind of music. Atonality has no tone center, and is the opposing dialectic term to any tone-centered music, regardless of genre or type; that includes *modal, world, folk, or any music having a tone-center.*


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## millionrainbows

The real question should be: why might we hear atonal music as being tonal?


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## Richannes Wrahms

Doesn't the flute melody that opens 'L'artisanat furieux' of 'Le marteau sans maître' have a tone center (B)?


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## ArtMusic

I read this interesting way of putting it, quote: "Atonal" developed a certain vagueness in meaning as a result of its use to describe a wide variety of compositional approaches that deviated from traditional chords and chord progressions. Attempts to solve these problems by using terms such as "pan-tonal", "non-tonal", "multi-tonal", "free-tonal" and "without tonal center" instead of "atonal" have not gained broad acceptance.


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## Rhombic

I have thought about a procedure to determine whether pure atonality exists:
1) Select a method to determine atonality in a quantitative way (correlation between notes? no idea how to do this)
2) Given a piece of music, is it possible to compose a more atonal piece of music?
3) This yields (probably) white noise as the clear winner.


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## millionrainbows

ArtMusic said:


> I read this interesting way of putting it, quote: "Atonal" developed a certain vagueness in meaning as a result of its use to describe a wide variety of compositional approaches that deviated from traditional chords and chord progressions. Attempts to solve these problems by using terms such as "pan-tonal", "non-tonal", "multi-tonal", "free-tonal" and "without tonal center" instead of "atonal" have not gained broad acceptance.


Yes, the generality of the term 'atonal' can be problematic, unless we remember that it means 'music with no tonal center.'

This also requires that we use it to oppose a broad definition of 'tonal,' which includes any kind of tone-centric music, such as 'world,' 'ethnic,' and folk music forms.

The two terms mentioned, 'pan-tonal' and 'multi-tonal' refer to forms of tonality, in which tone-centricity (tonality) is not exclusive, and is combined with modern/geometric/systematic methods of using the 12-note collection.

"Free tonal" is a non-existent term.

From *WIK,* we see that there is a range of definition which narrows _(this is something we should all remember when dealing with definitions). 
_
(quote:*)

Atonality* *in its broadest sense* *is music that lacks a tonal center, or key*. _Atonality_, in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale function independently of one another.

*More narrowly, the term atonality describes music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies that characterized classical European music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries...* (this seems to be Mahlerian's favorite definition...-ed.)

*More narrowly still, *the term is sometimes used to describe* music that is neither tonal nor serial,* especially the pre-twelve-tone music of the Second Viennese School, principally Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and Anton Webern. (this is often described as "free atonality' -ed.)

However, as a categorical label, 'atonal' generally means only that the piece is in the Western tradition and is not 'tonal', although there are longer periods, e.g., medieval, renaissance, and modern modal musics to which this definition does not apply. Serialism arose partly as a means of organizing more coherently the relations used in the pre-serial 'free atonal' music. ... *Thus many useful and crucial insights about even strictly serial music depend only on such basic atonal theory.*
(end quote)

These 'general' and basic atonal principles are what I keep referring to as 'general modernistic approaches' which are not strictly serial, but involve symmetry, and different ways of using the 12-note octave.


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## millionrainbows

Rhombic said:


> I have thought about a procedure to determine whether pure atonality exists:
> 1) Select a method to determine atonality in a quantitative way (correlation between notes? no idea how to do this)
> 2) Given a piece of music, is it possible to compose a more atonal piece of music?
> 3) This yields (probably) white noise as the clear winner.


In the end, your ear is the best guide, if you have a good ear. Thus, I can hear African or Morrocan music as being tonal or 'tone-centric'. Thus, "tonality" in its most general sense is universally applicable to even non-Western forms of music.

This is because tonality is based on a harmonic hierarchy, and tones always have a fundamental pitch with subservient harmonics. Our ears will always hear tones in this way, thus Mahlerian's insistence that he hears *all *music as being tonal.

"Atonality," in whatever sense we use the term, is *not* a universally applicable term (as I see it), and is derived from Western concepts; thus, it would be somewhat incongruous to describe a form of Chinese or Japanese music as being 'atonal', although in a certain sense this might be true.


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## Dim7

Isn't the "more narrow" wikipedia definition (music that is not common-practice or functional-tonal) the wider definition for atonality?  Obviously the first defintion - something without tonal centre and/or key (esp. if we think non-western, such as indian scales as "keys") is more narrow?


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## MoonlightSonata

Dim7 said:


> Isn't the "more narrow" wikipedia definition (music that is not common-practice or functional-tonal) the wider definition for atonality?  Obviously the first defintion - something without tonal centre and/or key (esp. if we think non-western, such as indian scales as "keys") is more narrow?


Yes, the second definition seems the widest to me.


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## Dim7

The argument that atonality doesn't exist because even in 12-tone music there will be always slight emphasis over some notes over others strikes me as a bit silly. A lot of useful concepts can be "deconstructed" that way. There's no such thing as a forest because there's no exact point that an area is big enough and dense with trees to be counted as a forest! I think it is possible to make music (with definite pitches) in which it is pretty much meaningless to think in terms of tonal centres. Mahlerian may perceive tonal centres in all of Schoenberg's, Webern's and Boulez's serial works, but as far as I know such perception is not universal among composers nor among experienced listeners of such music.

That said more I'm listening to music called "atonal" I'm finding the atonal vs. tonal distinction less and less useful. As I said the reason why Schoenberg is perceived "difficult" compared with non-diatonic tone-centric composers like Bartok has little to do with tone centricity itself. And obviously there's also the high level of subjectivity in deeming something "atonal".


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## norman bates

Dim7 said:


> The argument that atonality doesn't exist because even in 12-tone music there will be always slight emphasis over some notes over others strikes me as a bit silly. A lot of useful concepts can be "deconstructed" that way. There's no such thing as a forest because there's no exact point that an area is big enough and dense with trees to be counted as a forest! I think it is possible to make music (with definite pitches) in which it is pretty much meaningless to think in terms of tonal centres. Mahlerian may perceive tonal centres in all of Schoenberg's, Webern's and Boulez's serial works, but as far as I know such perception is not universal among composers nor among experienced listeners of such music.
> 
> That said more I'm listening to music called "atonal" I'm finding the atonal vs. tonal distinction less and less useful. As I said the reason why Schoenberg is perceived "difficult" compared with non-diatonic tone-centric composers like Bartok has little to do with tone centricity itself. And obviously there's also the high level of subjectivity in deeming something "atonal".


by the way, if there are still tonal center there's no need of any serialist method that should be considered a total failure from a theoretical point of view. Because if the result of using restraints is eliminate tonality and the music still has detectable tonal centers, free atonality then has the same result with those that at the point are just useless and arbitrary restraints to the freedom of the composer (at least, if his scope is not to compose algorithmic music).


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## Dim7

The point of 12-tone method is not to eliminate tone-centricity. That was already done in the 2nd Viennese School style of "free atonality" (if we assume that it can be done at all, that is). The point is to create unity, analoguous to keys/scales, in this highly chromatic music.


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## norman bates

Dim7 said:


> The point of 12-tone method is not to eliminate tone-centricity. That was already done in the 2nd Viennese School style of "free atonality" (if we assume that it can be done at all, that is). The point is to create unity, analoguous to keys/scales, in this highly chromatic music.


what kind of unity? It's a bit too abstract as a concept.


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## Dim7

In dodecaphony you have basically 4 different orders of intervals and all these orders are related to each other (prime form, inversion, retrograde, retrograde-inversion). Isn't that rather obvious kind of unity?

When I first read about how 12-tone music works it looked like an incredibly restrictive system. It's like you have only 4 melodies you can use! Of course it doesn't actually work like that, because you can play each note of the tone row in any octave, and you can play succeeding notes at the same time, and the rhythm is totally free.


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## Mahlerian

Dim7 said:


> The argument that atonality doesn't exist because even in 12-tone music there will be always slight emphasis over some notes over others strikes me as a bit silly. A lot of useful concepts can be "deconstructed" that way. There's no such thing as a forest because there's no exact point that an area is big enough and dense with trees to be counted as a forest! I think it is possible to make music (with definite pitches) in which it is pretty much meaningless to think in terms of tonal centres. Mahlerian may perceive tonal centres in all of Schoenberg's, Webern's and Boulez's serial works, but as far as I know such perception is not universal among composers nor among experienced listeners of such music.


The fact that you and/or others do not perceive something is not evidence that it does not exist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

The fact that composers of so-called atonal music avoid or disparage the term, the fact that the term offers nothing in terms of helping a listener to understand how the music does in fact work, and the fact that what is in fact perceived as "atonal" depends on the individual leads me to believe that the term is not in fact descriptive of a meaningful distinction, especially as I cannot perceive such a distinction myself. I cannot hear two notes without hearing the relationship between them and inferring some musical consequence. The idea of "atonality" was supposed to be that musical consequences are meaningless, because the syntactical relations between tones have been nullified, but it is in fact not true that the use of the chromatic scale as the basis for a musical language does any such thing.



Dim7 said:


> That said more I'm listening to music called "atonal" I'm finding the atonal vs. tonal distinction less and less useful. As I said the reason why Schoenberg is perceived "difficult" compared with non-diatonic tone-centric composers like Bartok has little to do with tone centricity itself. And obviously there's also the high level of subjectivity in deeming something "atonal".


I don't consider Bartok any more or less tone-centric than Schoenberg.

And the last part is telling. If there were such a thing as "atonality," meaning "lacking the property of tonal centricity," wouldn't it be the case either that a piece or section of music is, in fact, atonal, or it is not, without middle ground? If centricity is present to any degree, then obviously it cannot be atonal.



norman bates said:


> by the way, if there are still tonal center there's no need of any serialist method that should be considered a total failure from a theoretical point of view. Because if the result of using restraints is eliminate tonality and the music still has detectable tonal centers, free atonality then has the same result with those that at the point are just useless and arbitrary restraints to the freedom of the composer (at least, if his scope is not to compose algorithmic music).


No, because the point of serialism is *not* to eliminate tonality. It's to create music.


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## norman bates

Mahlerian said:


> No, because the point of serialism is *not* to eliminate tonality. It's to create music.


this is nonsense. Serialism is a technique, used to achieve a certain effect, that was that of suspend tonality, plain and simple. If not, there would be any difference with the music that existed before Schoenberg. It seems to me that you have to much problems with the word "atonality" as it was that the main reason of its impopularity for a century. Anyway theorists like Allen Forte used the term:


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## Mahlerian

norman bates said:


> this is nonsense. Serialism is a technique, used to achieve a certain effect, that was that of suspend tonality, plain and simple. If not, there would be any difference with the music that existed before Schoenberg. It seems to me that you have to much problems with the word "atonality" as it was that the main reason of its impopularity for a century. Anyway theorists like Allen Forte used the term:
> 
> View attachment 68133


No, serialism is a technique for ordering notes and helping in the structuring of a piece.

There are in fact diatonic serial pieces which use the method for a completely different kind of music:






Schoenberg's music _is_ different from much of what came before in its relative avoidance of sonorities traditionally considered consonant, such as triads (though of course they do appear frequently by implication or statement), and in its fusion of horizontal and vertical elements (which had been done to some extent before, but not nearly as thoroughly). It is not different in terms of the kinds of notes used (he never employed microtones, for example), nor, indeed, in terms of the way they are used (for themes, harmonic contrast, and so forth).

It _is_ also different from the common practice period in that pieces are not "in a key" as such, but this is a more specific thing than what we are talking about. Modal music is not "in a key," either.

Forte is taking the term atonal because it has commonly been used to apply to this music in the past as a convenient way of describing it. Furthermore, the way he is using the term is different from what we have been discussing, and more closely related to what I refer to as "post-tonal" music.



Allen Forte said:


> One need only remark that among the major works in this repertory are Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra Op. 16 (1909), Webern's Six Pieces for Large Orchestra Op. 6 (1910),* Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring (1913)*, and Berg's Wozzeck (1920).
> 
> The inclusion of Stravinsky's name in the list above suggests that atonal music was not the exclusive province of Schoenberg and his circle, and that is indeed the case. Many other gifted composers contributed to the repertory: *Alexander Sciabin, Charles Ives, Ferruccio Busoni, and Karol Szymanowski*--to cite only the more familiar names.


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## norman bates

Mahlerian said:


> Schoenberg's music _is_ different from much of what came before in its relative avoidance of sonorities traditionally considered consonant,


you can do that in many ways. You don't need his method to make dissonant music. He was looking for something that allowed him to avoid tonal centers (than you can call it post-tonal, pantonal or whatever other politically correct term you want to use but I can't see how it can change that.
I'm okay with the use that Forte uses, it's actually a lot less confusing.


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## Mahlerian

norman bates said:


> you can do that in many ways. You don't need his method to make dissonant music. He was looking for something that allowed him to avoid tonal centers (than you can call it post-tonal, pantonal or whatever other politically correct term you want to use but I can't see how it can change that.
> I'm okay with the use that Forte uses, it's actually a lot less confusing.


I'm not trying to justify his method or anything else. The only thing that truly matters to me is the music that resulted from it. That it could have been done otherwise is not the point; it was not his goal to do what you are implying he was trying to do.

When Schoenberg talks about a "tonal centre," he means something that controls an entire composition, as here:

"in the works of Strauss, Mahler, and, even more, Debussy, one can already observe reasons for the advance of new formal techhniques. Here it is already doubtful, as I have shown in my Harmonielehre, whether there is a tonic in power which has control over all these centrifugal tendencies of the harmonies. Certainly, there are still methods employed to establish a tonality, there are even cadences concluding sections which move into the most remote relations of a tonality. *But the problem is not whether this number of tonalities can still admit unification, but whether they are controlled by a centre of gravitation which has the power to permit their going astray because it has also the power of recalling them.* It is obvious to the analyst that here compositional methods have been in function which substitute for the missing power of the harmony."

In this sense, Schoenberg's music does renounce keys and centers. It makes no attempt to state that a piece is in C major or C minor at any point, let alone that it is the basis of the composition. No, the music draws upon elements of all keys and uses the chromatic scale as its basis, hence his term "pantonality." It is constructed on the musical, the tonal properties of the motives chosen for a given work.


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## millionrainbows

Dim7 said:


> Isn't the "more narrow" wikipedia definition (music that is not common-practice or functional-tonal) the wider definition for atonality?  Obviously the first defintion - something without tonal centre and/or key (esp. if we think non-western, such as indian scales as "keys") is more narrow?


The definitions of 'atonality' go from general (wide) to more specific (narrow). Therefore, the most general definition of 'atonality' is 'music with no tonal center.' That seems simple enough, and I accept it as a given.


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## millionrainbows

Dim7 said:


> The argument that atonality doesn't exist because even in 12-tone music there will be always slight emphasis over some notes over others strikes me as a bit silly. A lot of useful concepts can be "deconstructed" that way.


I agree.

Even with intervals (two notes), the ear will hear 'tonally,' wanting to hear one of the notes as a 'tonal center.' Schoenberg talks about this in his textbook Structural Functions of Harmony, in which he classifies root movements, using the interval distance as the guide to how the key will be made stronger or weaker. This is in my blog "Root Movement."

A fourth will always be heard by the ear as "root on top," whereas the fifth is always heard as "root on bottom."

Thus, we can see that even in music like Bartok or Webern, intervals which are derived from the series might be heard as being 'tonal' momentarily; but this is not structurally true, and does not sustain its effect except locally.

The music is not really tonal if it is series-derived, and not derived from a tonal hierarchy.


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## millionrainbows

norman bates said:


> ...if...the music still has detectable tonal centers, free atonality then has the same result with those that at the point are just useless and arbitrary restraints to the freedom of the composer.


I disagree. The ear might be drawn to certain sounds as 'tonal' because they 'make sense' in a harmonic way to our ears- even though the sounds are _*not*_ tonal.

For example, a low bass note can be placed under any kind of pitch-construct, and be heard as a 'root,' even though it is not.

The ear wants to hear from low to high, and low bass notes are usually always heard as 'the bottom' or 'root' of a pitch group.


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## millionrainbows

Dim7 said:


> The point of 12-tone method is not to eliminate tone-centricity. *That was already done in the 2nd Viennese School style of "free atonality" *(if we assume that it can be done at all, that is). The point is to create unity, analoguous to keys/scales, in this highly chromatic music.


So, you agree that *tonality (tone-centricity) was eliminated earlier,* via the use of chromaticism in 'free atonality.'

Yes, *the 12-tone method also created unity*, and as Mahlerian said earlier, the 12-tone method was used to *'codify'* the practices already in place, of extreme chromaticism.

*But it did also continue the negation of tonality *by forcing the use of all 12 notes before the next note could be used; and by 'ordering' the set, thus insuring that it could not be used as a scale, or free index, of notes.


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## Dim7

millionrainbows said:


> The definitions of 'atonality' go from general (wide) to more specific (narrow). Therefore, the most general definition of 'atonality' is 'music with no tonal center.' That seems simple enough, and I accept it as a given.


But the second, more "narrow" defintion would include music with tonal centres, just as long as it would not be common practice type of tonality:

"More narrowly, the term atonality describes music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies that characterized classical European music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries..."

Which sounds like the more general definition. Not that I want to get caught on this trivial thing....


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## millionrainbows

norman bates said:


> *what kind of unity?* It's a bit too abstract as a concept.


Melodic unity, mainly. Also, intervallic unity, and 'motivic' or thematic unity.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> The fact that you and/or others do not perceive something is not evidence that it does not exist.


Conversely, the fact that you perceive tonality does not mean that it was intended, or 'exists' except in your perception.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> I cannot hear two notes without hearing the relationship between them and inferring some musical consequence.


Yes, just as I said, we always hear intervals as having a 'base' or tonal center. But this is fleeting. To be tonal, music has to sustain a sense of tonality over a broader range, not just locally, or in isolated spots.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> The idea of "atonality" was supposed to be that musical consequences are meaningless, because the syntactical relations between tones have been nullified, but it is in fact not true that the use of the chromatic scale as the basis for a musical language does any such thing.


I disagree with that interpretation.

Atonal and highly chromatic music tends to erode our sense of tonality, by adding more and more notes, up to 12, but it does not render musical consequences *'meaningless' *except in a general tonal sense.
In highly 'free atonal' and serial music, syntactical relations between tones have been 'nullified' in a _*tonal *_sense, since there is no longer any clear-cut sense of root movement, harmonic function, or overall tonality; that tonal syntax is now ambiguous or 'meaningless' in terms of root movement and function; but *the note relations still have a melodic meaning.

*Yes, music can still retain its meaning, even though it is not structured with the tonal hierarchy.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> I don't consider Bartok any more or less tone-centric than Schoenberg.


I do, because Bartok was not a serialist. A lot of his devices are like Debussy's in that they are derived harmonically, with the free use of scales and chords. Serialism would have restricted this freedom.



Mahlerian said:


> And the last part is telling. If there were such a thing as "atonality," meaning "lacking the property of tonal centricity," wouldn't it be the case either that a piece or section of music is, in fact, atonal, or it is not, without middle ground? *If centricity is present to any degree, then obviously it cannot be atonal.*


I disagree with that statement. Tonality can be seen as a matter of degree. It's not black and white. Debussy and Bartok are examples of this.

As I've said before, localized, fleeting tonal effects do not constitute real tonality, or produce a sustained tone-centric effect to the degree that it could be classified or perceived as tonality.



Mahlerian said:


> No, because the point of serialism is *not* to eliminate tonality. It's to create music.


I don't think so.


----------



## millionrainbows

norman bates said:


> this is nonsense. Serialism is a technique, used to achieve a certain effect, that was that of suspend tonality, plain and simple. If not, there would be any difference with the music that existed before Schoenberg. It seems to me that you have to much problems with the word "atonality" as it was that the main reason of its impopularity for a century. Anyway theorists like Allen Forte used the term:
> 
> View attachment 68133


That's true; Alan Forte is America's most respected theorist, and established the music theory curriculum at Yale. "Atonal theory" is now a commonly used term.


----------



## millionrainbows

Dim7 said:


> But the second, more "narrow" defintion *would include music with tonal centres, just as long as it would not be common practice type of tonality:
> *
> "More narrowly, the term atonality describes music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies that characterized classical European music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries..."
> 
> Which sounds like the more general definition. Not that I want to get caught on this trivial thing....


No, the second, more narrow definition is referring to *common practice tonality,* which is restricted to major-minor scales and traditional functions. It does not include "all music with tonal centers." That's why it's more narrow than the first definition.

You need to define 'tonality,' because it has general and more narrow definitions as well.


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## Dim7

Atonality as not-"CP-tonality" would include both Indian music and Schoenberg.

Atonality as lack of tonal centre would only include Webern/Schoenberg/Boulez etc. if anything at all thus it would be more narrow.

If definition is a negation of something, more narrow the negated thing is wider the definition.


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## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> I disagree with that interpretation.
> 
> Atonal and highly chromatic music tends to erode our sense of tonality, by adding more and more notes, up to 12, but it does not render musical consequences *'meaningless' *except in a general tonal sense.
> In highly 'free atonal' and serial music, syntactical relations between tones have been 'nullified' in a _*tonal *_sense, since there is no longer any clear-cut sense of root movement, harmonic function, or overall tonality; that tonal syntax is now ambiguous or 'meaningless' in terms of root movement and function; but *the note relations still have a melodic meaning.
> 
> *Yes, music can still retain its meaning, even though it is not structured with the tonal hierarchy.


It's not an "interpretation," it's what the term was invented to mean. That its meaning has altered over time is clear, especially since the word predates any of the music you call atonal.

That its meaning is not well understood by most others is clear from the confusion that results in every single one of these discussions, as well as from the contradictory definitions given in the Wikipedia article you cite (you do notice that it differentiates modal and tonal music, right?).



millionrainbows said:


> Conversely, the fact that you perceive tonality does not mean that it was intended, or 'exists' except in your perception.


I don't care if it was or was not intended. That there is not a single center that generates root progressions is also of no consequence, because there are likewise no such centers in early modal music or monophonic music. The notes speak for themselves, and their harmonic relations, though they may differ from those of common practice tonality, continue to operate and define points of attraction.


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## millionrainbows

> Originally Posted by *Mahlerian:* No, because the point of serialism is *not* to eliminate tonality. It's to create music.





> Originally Posted by *norman bates*: This is nonsense. Serialism is a technique, used to achieve a certain effect, that was that of suspend tonality, plain and simple. If not, there would be any difference with the music that existed before Schoenberg. It seems to me that you have to much problems with the word "atonality" as it was that the main reason of its impopularity for a century. Anyway theorists like Allen Forte used the term:





Mahlerian said:


> No, serialism is a technique for ordering notes and helping in the structuring of a piece.
> 
> There are in fact diatonic serial pieces which use the method for a completely different kind of music...


But by *ordering *those notes, 12-tone and serial music distinguishes itself in a crucial way from other 'harmonic' music, even music which uses 'atonal' set theory techniques as described by Forte.



Mahlerian said:


> Schoenberg's music _is_ different from much of what came before in its relative avoidance of sonorities traditionally considered consonant, such as triads...


Schoenberg's music in large part avoids sonorities by being forced to be melodic, not harmonic. The 12-tone method is a special case of set theory, which uses ordered sets.

According to the definition of an ordered pitch interval, the concept of an ordered pitch interval is purely melodic. It cannot be applied to a simultaneity, and therefore differs from the concept of 'unordered pitch interval' in that it is not potentially harmonic.



Mahlerian said:


> ...and in its fusion of horizontal and vertical elements...


Speaking strictly of the 12-tone method, according to its stated rules, it didn't fuse the two, because _rows are ordered in that system._



Mahlerian said:


> ...It (the 12-tone method) _is_ also different from the common practice period in that pieces are not "in a key" as such, but this is a more specific thing than what we are talking about. Modal music is not "in a key," either.


That's terminology. Modal music is still 'tone centric,' and that net result is the same aural effect as being in 'a key.'



Mahlerian said:


> Forte is taking the term atonal because it has commonly been used to apply to this music in the past as a convenient way of describing it. Furthermore, the way he is using the term is different from what we have been discussing, and more closely related to what I refer to as "post-tonal" music.


Forte uses the term 'atonal' because that's what it means: music *structured* without using a tonal hierarchy, and *heard *without a sense of 'tonality' or key center, but heard only in terms of *sonorities.*

As far as actually hearing the effects of 'atonal' music, we can hear it as_* sonorities,*_ but *not *as being tone-centric. In atonal theory, unordered pitch class intervals are described and defined as if they were simultaneities. From _*Ear Training for Twentieth Century Music (Friedman),*_ we see:

_"...the same unordered pitch class interval includes the motion from pitch class 1 to pitch class 2, the motion from pitch class 2 to pitch class 1, and the sonority of pitch classes 1 and 2 sounding simultaneously.

Instead of thinking of an unordered pitch class interval as a measurable distance between two notes,* it may be more helpful to think of it as a type of sonority, analogous to its "color," or timbre."*_

We can hear it as a *sonority,* but* NOT* as being *tonal *or tone-centric.


----------



## millionrainbows

> Originally Posted by *Mahlerian*: Schoenberg's music _is_ different from much of what came before in its relative avoidance of sonorities traditionally considered consonant...





norman bates said:


> *...you can do that in many ways. You don't need his method to make dissonant music. He was looking for something that allowed him to avoid tonal centers* (than you can call it post-tonal, pantonal or whatever other politically correct term you want to use but I can't see how it can change that.
> I'm okay with the use that Forte uses, it's actually a lot less confusing.


I agree totally. Although Schoenberg was an Expressionist, that does not *totally* account for why his music is more dissonant than normal. By *ordering *the row, he avoided harmony and harmonic function, and forced contrapuntal lines.

Post-tonal, or pan tonal music, might use _*un*_ordered sets, which would make it sonorous, having a harmonic dimension, but not tone-centric.


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## millionrainbows

My main point is that in most modern and 'post-tonal' music, music can still be heard as having _sonority _and having a _harmonic dimension,_ without being structured as, or being heard as, 'tonal' or 'tone-centric.'

Unordered sets are similar to scales and modes, in that they allow free* un*ordered use of the notes as an 'index' of relations, in which every note related to the others. This is similar to tonality, in which every note is related to the key note, except in this case, there is no 'key' note, and therefore no set of 'functions' as in tonality. Every sonority has an equal value, and can be used as the overall basis for a composition.

You could use a 'diatonic set" such as C-D-E-F-G-A-B as the set, but emphasize B-C-G as the main sonority. This is quite dissonant, and in tonality would be considered unusable, too dissonant, or inferior to C-E-G. Nonetheless, this triad has a sonority, and could be the basis of an entire composition, with the use of transposition, inversion, and retrograde procedures.

Additionally, unordered sets can have an *'interval vector,'* which is a six-number list of all possible intervals in the set. This is basically a list of what *sonorities* will be present in using the set.

Ordered sets do not have interval vectors, because they are ordered, and there is no relation among all notes of the set. The ordered row is strictly melodic, and has no sonorous vertical dimension.


----------



## double

yes  of course


----------



## Andreas

I'm sure many know this, but you can find a conversation with Alban Berg from 1930 on Google with the promising title "What is Atonality?". That's quite some time ago, but the controversy at its core may not have moved a great deal since then.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> In this sense, Schoenberg's music does renounce keys and centers. It makes no attempt to state that a piece is in C major or C minor at any point, let alone that it is the basis of the composition.


It's good to *finally *hear Mahlerian say this.



Mahlerian said:


> No, the music draws upon elements of all keys and uses _*the chromatic scale*_ (?-ed.) as its basis, hence his term "pantonality." It is constructed on the musical, *the tonal properties of the motives* (?-ed.) chosen for a given work.


I think that could be stated in a clearer way. Since there is no longer any overriding centricity, or tonality, I'd rather hear this: *"It is constructed on the musical, the sonorous properties of the motives chosen for a given work."*

---Also 'the chromatic scale' is an unordered set of twelve notes, which can be drawn upon like an 'index' of notes.

---A 'twelve-tone row' is an ordered set, which has no vertical harmonic dimension, but is strictly melodic.

As anyone who has looked into "atonal theory" knows, unordered sets have an "interval vector" which is a list of the possible intervals in a set. These are best thought of as "sonorities." This is basic to atonal theory, that one can create "areas of sonority" by using certain unordered sets. For example, the 'pentatonic' set of C-D-E-G-A is, in set theory, (0,2,4,7,9), and its interval vector is (0,3,2,1,4,0), meaning that it has (l-r) zero m2, 3 M2, 2m3, 1M3, 4p4, and 0 tritones. This reveals that the interval of 4/5 will be most present, with M2 second, and m3 third, with one M3 (C-E). There are no tritones or minor seconds. Therefore, this is a very consonant set, not only for what it contains, but for what it does *not *contain.

With *ordered* sets (like Schoenberg's rows), there is no interval vector, or sonority, or harmonic dimension, because ordered sets are *strictly melodic, *if we stick to the defined properties of such sets.

So if Schoenberg is using his "ordered rows" to create vertical sonorities, or chords, he is "cheating" because he is using unordered sets.

Or perhaps we should not say "cheating," but instead* recognize that he is using an aspect of set theory, or 'atonal theory' when he uses unordered sets to create a harmonic dimension.*


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> It_ (Schoenberg's music) is_ also different from the common practice period in that pieces are not "in a key" as such, but this is a more specific thing than what we are talking about.* Modal music is not "in a key," either.*


It's not? Almost every beginning music theory student knows this text (below). In chapter 17 (of my edition), there is a chapter entitled "Modal Music," and the melodies are all written with key signatures. A Dorian is written with one sharp, the signature for G Major, since A Dorian is one of its modes. Statements like "Modal music is not in a key" are deliberately misleading and obscure, if not downright incorrect.












Mahlerian said:


> Forte is taking the term atonal because it has commonly been used to apply to this music in the past as a convenient way of describing it. Furthermore, the way he is using the term is different from what we have been discussing, and more closely related to what I refer to as "post-tonal" music.


No; Forte is using the term "atonal" because it means _'music which is not constructed with a tonal hierarchy.'_ In other words, atonal music is not constructed like tonal music. Atonal music uses _sets_ of notes (ordered and unordered) which have *sonority,* but no overriding centric tonality.

In the case of strictly serial music, atonal theory can be used to analyze the *ordered tone-rows* in terms of *ordered sets.*

In the case of 'freely atonal' music (meaning atonal music which uses no system), it can be analyzed in terms of *unordered sets.*

*Unordered sets* can include *any* scale, tonal or atonal, including the octatonic scale, whole tone scale, or chromatic scale, and approach them as harmonic entities (unlike serial rows, which are ordered). The 'atonal' approach, when dealing with an otherwise familiar tonal scale, would be used when the music, in its use of the scale, presents no tonality or tone-centricity.

Thus we see that atonal music can have a sonority and a harmonic dimension, and sound very musical to the ear, although it presents no tonal hierarchy or tonal center. It may center around localized "seeds" of pitches, and have a distinctive sound or sonority, but this would not be seen as a tonal center; only a 'sonorous' construct.


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## Albert7

Andreas said:


> I'm sure many know this, but you can find a conversation with Alban Berg from 1930 on Google with the promising title "What is Atonality?". That's quite some time ago, but the controversy at its core may not have moved a great deal since then.


This is the link: http://courses.unt.edu/josephklein/files/berg.pdf


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## millionrainbows

Albert7 said:


> This is the link: http://courses.unt.edu/josephklein/files/berg.pdf


I read this, and it confirms several things I've said, but mainly that 12-tone music is polyphonic by nature, and melodic. Also Berg speculates that what people are crying out for in tonality, is not a keynote relationship, but concord; a sensual consonance of basic triads. I think this is correct; it explains why Debussy is so well-liked and accepted by otherwise traditional, tonal listeners. It also points out that 'tonality' and keynote relationships are not required to produce sensual, or sonorous music; that 'atonal' music can sound very appealing.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Berg speculates that what people are crying out for in tonality, is not a keynote relationship, but concord; a sensual consonance of basic triads. I think this is correct; it explains why Debussy is so well-liked and accepted by otherwise traditional, tonal listeners.


_I tell you, this whole hue and cry for tonality comes not so much from a yearning for a keynote relationship as from a yearning for familiar concords-let us say it frankly, for the common triads. And I believe it is fair to state that no music, provided only it contains enough of these triads, will ever arouse opposition even if it breaks all the holy commandments of tonality. - Alban Berg
_
The appeal of tonal music is not merely sensual; it does not lie merely in the fact that people find triadic harmony "pretty." The power of expression inherent in a complex system of tonal relations, as developed during the common practice period (up to the early 20th century) of Western music, has no parallel in any other music. By "power of expression" I refer to the degree and variety of tensions and dynamically charged forces of which tonal harmony is capable, ranging from the most perfect sense of repose to the most extreme feelings of instability, suspense, and irresolution. Expressive power in those arts which proceed temporally (including the dramatic and choreographic arts as well as music) is largely a matter of changing tensions, and tension achieves its greatest potential for force and meaning by deviation from, and in relation to, a norm or base level, which in Western tonal harmony inheres in a tonic. Moreover, not only the complex hierarchical nature of such harmony, but also the wide range of consonance/dissonance possible using the 12-note division of the octave, allows for the evocation, suggestion, representation, or expression of an immense range of aspects of human emotional, sensory, and conceptual experience.

I may be speaking largely for myself (though I imagine many would feel as I do) when I say that post-tonal music speaks less powerfully to me, in general, than tonal music due to the loss of that above-described expressive range, more than to the mere absence of relaxing consonant harmonies, although such harmonies do represent one essential pole of the harmonic effects - namely their stable base - of which tonal music is composed. I can't speculate on how much humans may possess an innate preference for consonant harmony over dissonant; I'm sure that given a choice of listening to perfect fifths or minor seconds as ambient music, most people would choose the former. But it cannot be correct to say that this is the main principle underlying a lack of sympathy with atonal music. Twelve-tone, fully chromatic, un-tonal-centered music renounced a great deal more than major triads. What it renounced is the the thing that even the most tonally far-flung music - even the most radical chromaticism of Wagner, which by stretching tonality only affirmed it decisively - relied upon to express a range of affect which is impossible without that stated or implied place of centeredness and repose from which excursions into the remotest hinterlands of agony and ecstasy can venture, and to which they can return. The structure of tonality was an aural analogue to the dynamic of affect - in fact, I will venture to say, for the dynamic of life itself, constantly aspiring, cycling from repose to activity to repose, unceasingly from cradle to grave. Music utilizing the tones of the scale without a comprehensive hierarchy may have an expressive character of its own, and of course still has the non-harmonic elements of music to work with, but it has left a vast range of potential - and for me fundamental - significance behind.


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## SeptimalTritone

^ Woodduck, I thank you sincerely for your above post.

I do think that atonal music may lack the tension-resolution (dissonance-to-consonance) of tonal romantic music.

But there's so much beauty and power to be gained with the freer harmonic palette.






I find this work extremely sensitive, like the poetic and spiritual utterances of the raw neurons firing through the mind.


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## Woodduck

SeptimalTritone said:


> ^ Woodduck, I thank you sincerely for your above post.
> 
> I do think that atonal music may lack the tension-resolution (dissonance-to-consonance) of tonal romantic music.
> 
> But there's so much beauty and power to be gained with the freer harmonic palette.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I find this work extremely sensitive, like the poetic and spiritual utterances of the raw neurons firing through the mind.


I completely agree that non-tonal harmony has its own potentialities. There are certain atonal works I find fascinating and enjoyable. A favorite is Webern's 5 Pieces for string Quartet.

I wasn't talking only about Romantic music, by the way. I mentioned Wagner only to make the point that even the tonal music we often speak of as threatening the tonal system and leading to its breakdown depended totally on the principles of that system for its power of expression. Wagner's (and Mahler's, by the way!) power derived from the very tonality he pushed to the brink, a point not made often enough. The entire score of _Parsifal_, with it's extreme chromatic subtlety and its harmonic journey to the edge of the abyss, is an exploration of that paradox, and an affirmation of tonality as the alpha and omega of harmony.

Right now I'm listening to Webern's magnificent _Passcaglia_ walk that trembling edge of tonality. Amazing music.


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## Torkelburger

> The power of expression inherent in a complex system of tonal relations, as developed during the common practice period (up to the early 20th century) of Western music, has no parallel in any other music.


Unfortunately, this opinion is quite prevalent on this site, which is quite understandable being a classical music forum, however, it is one I strongly oppose due to its Ethnocentric foundation and its insensitivity or willful ignorance of non-Western music. This may come as a shock to you, but non-Europeans developed modes, very complex rhythms, and even triads, (sub-Saharan Africa in particular) prior to any contact with any Europeans completely on their own to express themselves and one could argue "parallels" other music in that power of expressiveness. It is an error to equate complexity with expressiveness anyway. Many people today seeking spiritual enlightenment and expressiveness bypass classical music altogether and can get what they need just from listening to "simple" Aboriginal music, for example. This reminds me of the debates I've had about modes in which my opponent, infatuated as you are with Westerners discovery of the major/minor system called the major scale "normal" probably without even realizing he said it, as if all other culture's scales are "abnormal". People from those other "abnormal" cultures may find that quite offensive. This is Ethnocentrism at its core. Please, educate yourself and be more sensitive to other cultures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism


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## Woodduck

Torkelburger said:


> Unfortunately, this opinion is quite prevalent on this site, which is quite understandable being a classical music forum, however, it is one I strongly oppose due to its Ethnocentric foundation and its insensitivity or willful ignorance of non-Western music. This may come as a shock to you, but non-Europeans developed modes, very complex rhythms, and even triads, (sub-Saharan Africa in particular) prior to any contact with any Europeans completely on their own to express themselves and one could argue "parallels" other music in that power of expressiveness. It is an error to equate complexity with expressiveness anyway. Many people today seeking spiritual enlightenment and expressiveness bypass classical music altogether and can get what they need just from listening to "simple" Aboriginal music, for example. This reminds me of the debates I've had about modes in which my opponent, infatuated as you are with Westerners discovery of the major/minor system called the major scale "normal" probably without even realizing he said it, as if all other culture's scales are "abnormal". People from those other "abnormal" cultures may find that quite offensive. This is Ethnocentrism at its core. Please, educate yourself and be more sensitive to other cultures.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism


If you would like to supplement my musical knowledge in some specific way, address the particular points I have made, or even address the general subject of tonality vs. atonality, that would be welcome. Lecturing me on my presumed ethnocentric insensitivity and ignorance of non-western music, and sending me a link to the wikipedia article on the subject of ethnocentricity to set me straight, is not.

Condescension toward individuals is not less offensive than condescension toward cultures.


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## Torkelburger

Woodduck said:


> If you would like to supplement my musical knowledge in some specific way, address the particular points I have made, or even address the general subject of tonality vs. atonality, that would be welcome. Lecturing me on my presumed ethnocentric insensitivity and ignorance of non-western music, and sending me a link to the wikipedia article on the subject of ethnocentricity to set me straight, is not.
> 
> Condescension toward individuals is not less offensive than condescension toward cultures.


There is no need to address a particular point. All you've done is defined arbitrary traits to meet your "power of expression" label and then showed Western music to satisfy those arbitrary traits. It's a classic syllogism. I could do the same with any style of music. Define a set of arbitrary traits to meet my arbitrary "power of expression" label and then show music X to satisfy those arbitrary traits. Big deal.

Traits A, B, C give music "power of expression"
Western music has traits A, B, and C
Therefore, Western music has "power of expression"

There is no need for the offensive qualifier, "…more than any other music." (implying non-Western) you tacked on at the end. That's just your Ethnocentrism talking.


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## Mahlerian

Woodduck, you've said a lot, but it still depends on tonality actually having been renounced by so-called atonal composers, which it never was. Berg says so in the essay you quoted. Nothing was renounced at all, merely developed.

I find the music of the 20th century as emotionally and musically compelling as anything from the 19th. It is merely less familiar.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> The appeal of tonal music is not merely sensual; it does not lie merely in the fact that people find triadic harmony "pretty."...By "power of expression" I refer to the degree and variety of tensions and dynamically charged forces of which tonal harmony is capable, ranging from the most perfect sense of repose to the most extreme feelings of instability, suspense, and irresolution....such harmonies do represent one essential pole of the harmonic effects - namely their stable base - of which tonal music is composed...Twelve-tone, fully chromatic, un-tonal-centered music renounced a great deal more than major triads. What it renounced is the the thing that even the most tonally far-flung music - even the most radical chromaticism of Wagner, which by stretching tonality only affirmed it decisively - relied upon to express a range of affect which is impossible without that stated or implied place of centeredness and repose from which excursions into the remotest hinterlands of agony and ecstasy can venture, and to which they can return.


These reasons sound to me more like _stylistic_ reasons, rather than being a consequence of _inherent qualities_ of sound, of tonality, or tone-centeredness itself.

Sonance (consonance/dissonance) is an _inherent_ characteristic of all pitched sound, starting with any two notes forming an interval.

So, in a way, this view bolsters what Berg was saying, without recognizing that this same principle of sonance can also be achieved with atonal means, using dyads and sets of notes to create sonority and tension.

To quickly make my point, *Samuel Barber's Piano Sonata op. 35* creates all sorts of tensions, resolutions, and dramas, all while being decidedly modernistic in its approach. While not 'atonal' in a strong sense, it nonetheless uses techniques unfamiliar to the tonal era.

The _"...range of affect which is impossible without that stated or implied place of centeredness and repose from which excursions into the remotest hinterlands of agony and ecstasy"_ is more a result of _narrative exposition over time_ as it is of simple vertical sonance.

Travel to different key areas does create difference in mood, but I see this as an artifact of tonality which is_ conceptual and cerebral in nature,_ an _artifice of style and aesthetic_, decidedly 19th century, literary/narrative in nature, and not an _essential _aspect of structural aspects of music, such as sonance, or of the worn-out 'tonality vs. tonality' debate.



Woodduck said:


> "...Twelve-tone, fully chromatic, un-tonal-centered music renounced a great deal more than major triads. What it renounced is the the thing that even the most tonally far-flung music - even the most radical chromaticism of Wagner, which by stretching tonality only affirmed it decisively - relied upon to express a range of affect which is impossible without that stated or implied place of centeredness and repose...


This horizontal, narrative aspect of tonal music, spoken of here, is the principle of 'major triads' (sonority) but simply stretched-out over a longer time-line, creating a 'narrative' of tension and return, which is _an after-the fact expression, over time, of the basic quality of sonority, _or harmonic effects.

In tonality, as in all music, vertical sonance (harmony) came first, and the vertical 'functions' were added later.

Yes, tonality is wonderful in its ability to create long stretches of tension and resolution, but so can atonality (backwards, and wearing high-heels).

I think what is being touted here as so enamouring is simply a stylistic, narrative approach. Music changed, and so did novels and painting. Landscapes are great, but there are other forms of exposition that are just as appealing and involving.

This has nothing to do with any inherent characteristics of tonality, or of the 'tonality vs. atonality' issue.


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## Woodduck

Torkelburger said:


> *There is no need to address a particular point.* All you've done is defined arbitrary traits to meet your "power of expression" label and then showed Western music to satisfy those arbitrary traits. It's a classic syllogism. I could do the same with any style of music. Define a set of arbitrary traits to meet my arbitrary "power of expression" label and then show music X to satisfy those arbitrary traits. *Big deal.*
> 
> Traits A, B, C give music "power of expression"
> Western music has traits A, B, and C
> Therefore, Western music has "power of expression"
> 
> There is no need for the offensive qualifier, "…more than any other music." (implying non-Western) you tacked on at the end. That's just your Ethnocentrism talking.


Again, if you have anything real to offer on this subject I would be happy to hear it. "There is no need to address a particular point" tells me you have no interest in doing anything here except judging me on a statement you've chosen to construe in a manner which allows you to vent your own peculiar set of indignations. It's unlikely anyone here is interested in those. We may, however, be interested in your ideas about music.

I am, by the way, not unfamiliar with, and am immensely impressed by, the classical music of India, and have done a fair amount of listening to other world musics. You are presumptuous in discounting my level of respect for them. I am not educated enough in them to discuss them technically. However, this thread is about a particular aspect of Western music. Perhaps, now that you have expressed your disagreement with me, you can turn your attention to it, or find a thread more to your liking.


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## Torkelburger

The point I'm trying to make is that the power of expression inherent in a complex system of tonal relations, as developed during the common practice period (up to the early 20th century) of Western music, has parallels in other music. There is no need to place Western music on its own pedestal in this regard. That's all I'm saying.


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## Woodduck

Torkelburger said:


> The point I'm trying to make is that the power of expression inherent in a complex system of tonal relations, as developed during the common practice period (up to the early 20th century) of Western music, has parallels in other music. There is no need to place Western music on its own pedestal in this regard. That's all I'm saying.


I would love to know more about any kind of music that you believe can rival the expressive range of Western tonal music, as well as your reasons for thinking so.


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## Torkelburger

Woodduck said:


> I would love to know more about any kind of music that you believe can rival the expressive range of Western tonal music, as well as your reasons for thinking so.


Sure, here's one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_sub-Saharan_African_harmony


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## Woodduck

_Mahlerian writes: Woodduck, you've said a lot, but it still depends on tonality actually having been renounced by so-called atonal composers, which it never was. Berg says so in the essay you quoted. Nothing was renounced at all, merely developed.

I find the music of the 20th century as emotionally and musically compelling as anything from the 19th. It is merely less familiar._

The idea that tonality, in the sense of a hierarchical system of harmonic relations organized around a tonic (which is what I was discussing), was never renounced by Schoenberg and company is absurd. Passing moments of harmonic tension-relaxation or shifting degrees of importance felt among pitches being sounded in a fundamentally non-hierarchical idiom do not count as tonality in this sense. If "tonal" phenomena occur only on a momentary scale and are heard because of the nature of perception and not because they are basic constructive principles of the idiom, the music cannot meaningfully be called "tonal."

Non-tonal music certainly has its own expressive possibilities, but the renunciation of the "consonant/tonic" polarity in typical 12-tone music is a decisive factor in circumscribing its expressive range. Fundamentally tonal music may utilize extremes of dissonance, rapidly shifting tonal centers, and suspension of tonal expectations to achieve expressive effects, and the distance in "sonance" between such extremes and the stable consonant/tonic base is very wide. This allows the effect of tonal "gravitation" to operate through various harmonic "levels" and over varied spans of time, with varied expressive effect. But in music which is determined to avoid reference to such a stable pole, the harmonic range is necessarily narrowed in the direction of dissonance, and the sense of tonal gravity is not present to exercise its wide and diverse potential for expression. The possibility of sustained chromatic complexity in such music, freed from the need to refer to a tonic or to points within a tonal structure, has its own characteristic effects, but in my experience those effects foreclose a great deal of emotional territory. I don't believe that various musical styles are just different ways of saying the same things. Webern and Mozart are, emotionally, worlds apart, and the presence or absence of tonality is a primary reason for it. Which music is more emotionally "compelling" is a matter of taste. The real question is, does music rooted in tonality (which encompasses Monteverdi and Mahler) or music which uses the twelve notes of the chromatic scale but intentionally avoids tonality, offer a greater range of expressive possibilities. I say the former.

Of course this wasn't exactly the object of my post, which was really to say that Berg was wrong! Resistance to atonal music is more than a desire for sweet harmony. It's a desire for a _range_ of harmony, from the most relaxed to the most tense and intense, for the affect-carrying interplay between the poles of that range, for the sense of "going somewhere," of leaving home and coming home, and for the ultimate sense of balance which a logically interrelated system resting on a tonic conveys.

None of this is in any way meant to judge non-tonal music as "bad." I'm only trying to describe what, in my perception, makes it different, and to say why Berg seemed not to understand perceptions such as mine - which, by the way, are not exclusive to me.


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## Mahlerian

Woodduck said:


> The idea that tonality, in the sense of a hierarchical system of harmonic relations organized around a tonic (which is what I was discussing), was never renounced by Schoenberg and company is absurd.


Counter-intuitive as it might seem to you, it's true. Developing new forms of expression out of a system is not the same thing as renouncing it, and in fact the music of the Second Viennese School embraces many of the facets of tonality you claim it rejects.



Woodduck said:


> Webern and Mozart are, emotionally, worlds apart, and the presence or absence of tonality is a primary reason for it.


Mozart and Webern aren't as far apart as you imagine, and the fact that atonality is a complete misnomer is a good part of why people mistakenly think they are.



Woodduck said:


> The real question is, does music rooted in tonality (which encompasses Monteverdi and Mahler) or *music which uses the twelve notes of the chromatic scale but intentionally avoids tonality*, offer a greater range of expressive possibilities. I say the former.


You haven't described anything I recognize by that second part.

Tonal and post-tonal music both offer the full range of expressive possibilities.



Woodduck said:


> Resistance to atonal music is more than a desire for sweet harmony. It's a desire for a range of harmony, from the most relaxed to the most tense and intense, for the affect-carrying interplay between the poles of that range, for the sense of "going somewhere," of leaving home and coming home, and for the ultimate sense of balance which a logically interrelated system resting on a tonic conveys.


Clearly it isn't. Post-tonal music offers a wider range of harmony, with the concomitant increase in the number and variety of ways tension and resolution can be employed and the kinds of "home" that we can accept.



Woodduck said:


> None of this is in any way meant to judge non-tonal music as "bad." I'm only trying to describe what, in my perception, makes it different, and to say why Berg seemed not to understand perceptions such as mine - which, by the way, are not exclusive to me.


Okay, so you and a lot of other people are wrong, not just you.

You're not trying to say post-tonal music is bad, just that it's emotionally stunted and musically unnatural. You'll forgive me if I'm not much placated.


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## Woodduck

Mahlerian said:


> Counter-intuitive as it might seem to you, it's true. Developing new forms of expression out of a system is not the same thing as renouncing it, and in fact the music of the Second Viennese School embraces many of the facets of tonality you claim it rejects.
> 
> Mozart and Webern aren't as far apart as you imagine, and the fact that atonality is a complete misnomer is a good part of why people mistakenly think they are.
> 
> Tonal and post-tonal music both offer the full range of expressive possibilities.
> 
> Post-tonal music offers a wider range of harmony, with the concomitant increase in the number and variety of ways tension and resolution can be employed and the kinds of "home" that we can accept.
> 
> You're not trying to say post-tonal music is bad, just that it's emotionally stunted and musically unnatural. You'll forgive me if I'm not much placated.


1.) Nothing I have heard or read convinces me that 12-tone music should be regarded as tonal.

2.) You don't know exactly how far apart I think Webern and Mozart are, though it's clear I think they're farther apart than you think they are.

3.) No music offers the "full range" of expressive possibilities. Every sound and every combination of sounds offers its own. Musical styles are not interchangeable. That's why we listen to different types of music.

4.) If you find more expressive variety in 12-tone music than in tonal music from the last five hundred years, I won't argue with you.

5.) I won't try to placate you, but I will forgive you. :angel:


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## dgee

Woodduck has written a lot here and it is a reasonable effort in the vein of the usual "non-tonal music is not for me and not good imo" that litter the web from the most belligerent amateur efforts to those supported by all sorts of carefully wrought evidence. So, cool story bro, that's nice dear, etc

Interesting questions might be:

Why do I and others enjoy a range of music, "tonal" and not? Why do I and others find a range of expressiveness across music of all compositional underpinnings?
Are we wired differently? Are we looking for something different from other music fans? Are we even fundamentally disconnected from the purity of our natural urges? And if so, why? How?

I'd like to see someone have a crack at these questions - under the theory of "atonal" being "different", why do people like it?


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## Woodduck

dgee said:


> Woodduck has written a lot here and it is a reasonable effort in the vein of the usual "non-tonal music is not for me and *not good* imo" that litter the web from the most belligerent amateur efforts to those supported by all sorts of carefully wrought evidence. So, cool story bro, that's nice dear, etc
> 
> Interesting questions might be:
> 
> *Why do I and others enjoy a range of music, "tonal" and not?* Why do I and others find *a range of expressiveness across music of all compositional underpinnings?*
> Are we wired differently? Are we looking for something different from other music fans? Are we even fundamentally disconnected from the purity of our natural urges? And if so, why? How?
> 
> I'd like to see someone have a crack at these questions - under the theory of "atonal" being "different", why do people like it?


I would never say that non-tonal music is "not good."

Certainly all kinds of music (well, all serious kinds) are capable of a range of expression.

I enjoy many kinds of music and even some "atonal" music. In fact I would rather hear some Webern than five tons of second-rate classical symphonies, or than this Mahler 9th, 1st movement, which I'm listening to right now and whose overwrought and long-winded "expressiveness" had me wanting to slit my wrists about ten minutes ago (I'm past twenty minutes now and would shoot Abbado if he weren't just an image on YouTube).

My initial post was rather generalized, I admit (as was the Berg quote I was criticizing), but not as much as you think. As for others' opinions on the topics in question, I don't speak for them nor they for me. So watch those generalizations!

Twenty-six minutes and fifty seconds... Whew. Carrying a two-note motif that far should be a crime.


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## Albert7

I don't find tonal music any prettier than non-tonal music. I think that it's embedded mostly in the Western music history perhaps??? Probably an individual thing mostly.


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## Marschallin Blair

Torkelburger said:


> Unfortunately, this opinion is quite prevalent on this site, which is quite understandable being a classical music forum, however, it is one I strongly oppose due to its Ethnocentric foundation and its insensitivity or willful ignorance of non-Western music. This may come as a shock to you, but non-Europeans developed modes, very complex rhythms, and even triads, (sub-Saharan Africa in particular) prior to any contact with any Europeans completely on their own to express themselves and one could argue "parallels" other music in that power of expressiveness. It is an error to equate complexity with expressiveness anyway. Many people today seeking spiritual enlightenment and expressiveness bypass classical music altogether and can get what they need just from listening to "simple" Aboriginal music, for example. This reminds me of the debates I've had about modes in which my opponent, infatuated as you are with Westerners discovery of the major/minor system called the major scale "normal" probably without even realizing he said it, as if all other culture's scales are "abnormal". People from those other "abnormal" cultures may find that quite offensive. This is Ethnocentrism at its core. Please, educate yourself and be more sensitive to other cultures.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism


It in fact does not come as a shock to me as much as the fact that sub-Saharan Africa never developed the wheel. . . "_prior to any contact with the Europeans completely_."


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## Marschallin Blair

Mahlerian said:


> Woodduck, you've said a lot, but it still depends on tonality actually having been renounced by so-called atonal composers, which it never was. Berg says so in the essay you quoted. Nothing was renounced at all, merely developed.
> 
> I find the music of the 20th century as emotionally and musically compelling as anything from the 19th. It is merely less familiar.


I can see how an argument can be made for so much twentieth century music being 'theoretically and structurally' compelling, certainly- just not 'emotionally compelling.'


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## Mahlerian

Marschallin Blair said:


> I can see how an argument can be made for so much twentieth century music being 'theoretically and structurally' compelling, certainly- just not 'emotionally compelling.'


I'm not arguing for anything. I'm merely explaining my own experience. I don't care for any music that is merely compelling on an intellectual level, much less merely a theoretical one.


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## Marschallin Blair

Mahlerian said:


> I'm not arguing for anything. I'm merely explaining my own experience. I don't care for any music that is merely compelling on an intellectual level, much less merely a theoretical one.


And with that, Mssr. Mahlerian, I have absolutely no cavil or complaint. _;D_


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## Guest

Mahlerian said:


> I don't care for any music that is merely compelling on an intellectual level, much less merely a theoretical one.


I should hope nobody does!


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## Albert7

Mahlerian said:


> I'm not arguing for anything. I'm merely explaining my own experience. I don't care for any music that is merely compelling on an intellectual level, much less merely a theoretical one.


Actually I enjoy both music that are mere intellectual exercises without any emotional tenor and emotional involving pieces. Which is how electroacoustic music grabs my attention.


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## Albert7

Mahlerian said:


> I'm not arguing for anything. I'm merely explaining my own experience. I don't care for any music that is merely compelling on an intellectual level, much less merely a theoretical one.


Actually I enjoy both music that are mere intellectual exercises without any emotional tenor and emotional involving pieces. Which is how electroacoustic music grabs my attention.


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## Guest

Albert7 said:


> Actually I enjoy both music that are mere intellectual exercises without any emotional tenor and emotional involving pieces. Which is how electroacoustic music grabs my attention.


Just because you don't detect doesn't mean it's not there.

Blair's emotional range =/= Albert's emotional range =/= My emotional range.


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## Marschallin Blair

nathanb said:


> Just because you don't detect doesn't mean it's not there.
> 
> Blair's emotional range =/= Albert's emotional range =/= My emotional range.


Sure, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, certainly.

But then again, I think I have a pretty huge spread when it comes to 'emotional response' (just ask my friends- Ha. Ha. Ha.)- and Schoenberg's _Five Pieces for Orchestra_ just doesn't make the cut.


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## Guest

Marschallin Blair said:


> Sure, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, certainly.
> 
> But then again, I think I have a pretty huge spread when it comes to 'emotional response' (just ask my friends- Ha. Ha. Ha.)- and Schoenberg's _Five Pieces for Orchestra_ just doesn't make the cut.


Your emotional range =/= My emotional range.


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## Marschallin Blair

nathanb said:


> Your emotional range =/= My emotional range.


Right.

And my 'blonde-hair-blue-eyes-tall-and-ectomorphic-intelligence-quotient-fingerprints-and-DNA-phenotype' isn't 'yours' either.

But thanks for the thought. _;D_

I can respond to love and drama and wonder- but sterility and negation leave me cold.

So Schoenberg rarely gets an invite from me.


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## Guest

Marschallin Blair said:


> I can respond to *some* love and drama and wonder


FYP, hon. Don't worry, I read the whole thing.


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## Marschallin Blair

nathanb said:


> FYP, hon. Don't worry, I read the whole thing.


Well, 'fix' it right, then: 'Hon' is capitalized with a tiara on top.

_;D_


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> ...The idea that tonality, in the sense of a hierarchical system of harmonic relations organized around a tonic (which is what I was discussing), was never renounced by Schoenberg and company is absurd. Passing moments of harmonic tension-relaxation or shifting degrees of importance felt among pitches being sounded in a fundamentally non-hierarchical idiom do not count as tonality in this sense.
> 
> If "tonal" phenomena occur only on a momentary scale and are heard because of the nature of perception and not because they are basic constructive principles of the idiom, the music cannot meaningfully be called "tonal."


But the idea of harmonic sonance developing and changing over time, and tension, and resolution, are not exclusive to tonality simply because all of these factors revolve around a tonic note. Tonality is simply an hierarchy in which all the members of an unordered set (i.e. scale, or mode) all relate to a key note. Removing the key note, or having it rapidly change, or even eliminating it entirely, does not give tonality any sort of advantage.



Woodduck said:


> Non-tonal music certainly has its own expressive possibilities... Fundamentally tonal music may utilize extremes of dissonance, rapidly shifting tonal centers, and suspension of tonal expectations to achieve expressive effects, and the distance in "sonance" between such extremes and the stable consonant/tonic base is very wide. This allows the effect of tonal "gravitation" to operate through various harmonic "levels" and over varied spans of time, with varied expressive effect.


True, and you have described the beauty and power of much effective tonal music. But...



Woodduck said:


> ...but the renunciation of the "consonant/tonic" polarity in typical 12-tone music is a decisive factor in circumscribing its expressive range...
> ...in music which is determined to avoid reference to such a stable pole, the harmonic range is necessarily narrowed in the direction of dissonance, and the sense of tonal gravity is not present to exercise its wide and diverse potential for expression.


I don't think atonal music has to be 'narrowed in the direction of dissonance.' Also, the 'narrowed harmonic range' you speak of can also be seen as a diversity of sonority. This fact bolsters what Berg said; that tonalist crave consonance, at the expense of harmonic diversity.



Woodduck said:


> The possibility of sustained chromatic complexity in such music, freed from the need to refer to a tonic or to points within a tonal structure, has its own characteristic effects, but in my experience those effects foreclose a great deal of emotional territory.


I think Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra proves the opposite; that new, unidentifiable feelings, emotions, and 'states of being' can be expressed with atonal methods.



Woodduck said:


> I don't believe that various musical styles are just different ways of saying the same things. Webern and Mozart are, emotionally, worlds apart, and the presence or absence of tonality is a primary reason for it. Which music is more emotionally "compelling" is a matter of taste.


I disagree, and particularly with the notion that emotion is somehow 'tied' to tonality, or reference to a key note. Yes, 'taste' will tell us what we like, but objectifying this into a 'given theorum' that tonality is more naturally effective is a gross overstatement.



Woodduck said:


> The real question is, does music rooted in tonality (which encompasses Monteverdi and Mahler) or music which uses the twelve notes of the chromatic scale but intentionally avoids tonality, offer a greater range of expressive possibilities. I say the former.


I can't disagree with that, but I think it's a totally subjective matter.



Woodduck said:


> Of course this wasn't exactly the object of my post, which was really to say that Berg was wrong! Resistance to atonal music is more than a desire for sweet harmony. It's a desire for a _range_ of harmony, from the most relaxed to the most tense and intense, for the affect-carrying interplay between the poles of that range, for the sense of "going somewhere," of leaving home and coming home, and for the ultimate sense of balance which a logically interrelated system resting on a tonic conveys.


Then I think that Berg's statement is misconstrued. The desire for consonance is a purely sensual phenomenon, resulting from the way our ears hear harmonically. This is a purely vertical effect. This desire for consonance can also be present in any music.

The extrapolation of this vertical, harmonic effect, stretched out over time in the form of harmonic function, is an after-the fact structural effect. This is the stylistic, narrative nature of CP tonality.



Woodduck said:


> None of this is in any way meant to judge non-tonal music as "bad." I'm only trying to describe what, in my perception, makes it different, and to say why Berg seemed not to understand perceptions such as mine - which, by the way, are not exclusive to me.


Still, the net result seems to many to be a criticism of atonal music, due to horizontal, developmental factors which are time-constructs possible in all music, and not necessarily tied to tonality and its extrapolation of the primal vertical 'key note' harmonic relation (arbitrarily stretched out over time and turned into 'horizontal function).

The primacy of the vertical harmonic model is present in all music. Sonance is present in any note by itself (fundamental and its harmonics) or by any two or more notes which sound as a 'sonance.' Tonality has no exclusive claim to this vertical primacy.



Woodduck said:


> ...in music which is determined to avoid reference to such a stable pole, the harmonic range is necessarily narrowed in the direction of dissonance, and the sense of tonal gravity is not present to exercise its wide and diverse potential for expression...


In set theory, which is atonal in nature, _all possible sets of notes_ are considered, and diatonic scales are just one subset of this enormous room full of possibilities.

You can make music which is _more consonant_ with this method, in terms of pure sonance.

For example, the set C-D-E-G-A-B, a pentatonic set, is more consonant than a C major scale for the fact of what it leaves out: "F."

The "F" in a C major scale forms a tritone with "B," which is a very unstable interval.

Thus, we see that a C diatonic scale is inherently more unstable than the pentatonic without the "F." This makes the diatonic scale 'restless' and asymmetric, resulting in a desire to modulate to different key areas. Actually, the _weaknesses_ of tone-centricity inherent in the tonal scales (majors and esp. minors) caused the eventual _weakening _of tonality that you seem to lament.

Once again, I see the definition of CP tonality being overstated, and stretched beyond its proper limits, at the expense of other kinds of music.


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## Woodduck

The idea of harmonic sonance developing and changing over time, and tension, and resolution, are not exclusive to tonality simply because all of these factors revolve around a tonic note. *Tonality is simply an hierarchy* in which all the members of an unordered set (i.e. scale, or mode) all relate to a key note. *Removing the key note, or having it rapidly change, or even eliminating it entirely, does not give tonality any sort of advantage.*

I don't think hierarchy is a trivial principle (re your "simply a hierarchy"). Life depends fundamentally on hierarchy. Thought is hierarchical. Values are hierarchical. The structure of physical reality exhibits hierarchies everywhere. We seek fundamentals and want to know how things relate and in what order of importance, and what is included in what, and dependent on what. This is deeply rooted in neurological, psychological, and physiological reality. Hierarchical structures of one sort or another exist, so far as I can see, in nearly all of the world's art and music (12-tone music being the first music I know of to eschew hierarchy consciously and purposefully in favor of a linear ordering principle). Why should we be surprised that a keynote has "some sort of advantage" in allowing art to express aspects of life?

I disagree...particularly with the notion that emotion is somehow 'tied' to tonality, or reference to a key note. Yes, 'taste' will tell us what we like, but objectifying this into a 'given theorum' that tonality is more naturally effective is a gross overstatement.

I don't claim that emotion is "tied" to tonal hierarchies, merely that dispensing with hierarchy dispenses with a very basic element of the way we perceive reality, as I've described above, and thereby cuts off the expressive possibilities which an aural analogue to that universal, underlying psycho/physical experience allows. Certainly any combination or succession of sounds may have expressive possibilities, but unless the set of tones being utilized includes a fundamental or base to which other tones all relate (whether long- or short-term, but more than momentarily), and in expected ways, the maximal degree of stability and resolution, and thus the maximal deviation from it and the maximal inducement of the felt need to return to it, cannot be achieved. There can be varying degrees of felt instability/stability without such a base, but the full range of the continuum is not available, and the ordering of experience within that continuum, if it is to be both maximally comprehensible and truest to the hierarchical processes of reality and consciousness, must itself be hierarchically based.

I think Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra proves the opposite; that new, unidentifiable feelings, emotions, and 'states of being' can be expressed with atonal methods.

I don't question for a moment that things can be expressed with atonal methods, or that these things may be "new" or "unidentifiable" (depending, I suppose, on who is doing the identifying). But I do contend that not everything can be expressed by music which retains the twelve tones of the chromatic scale but dispenses with a hierarchical system which gives them functional relationships to a base. As I said in an earlier post, no style of music can express everything; as we turn from one kind of music to another, some expressive possibilities are gained, and some are lost - which is a major reason why we want to hear different kinds of music. Whatever "new and unidentifiable" things atonal music can express, it is inevitable that there are some "old" and perhaps also, ultimately, unidentifiable things that it cannot express, and these must comprise whatever "things" - emotional qualities - are dependent on hierarchical structures. Just what these are is obviously an important question. We may make some reasonable stabs at answering it, but I think a lot must be conjectural, and can't be invariable in any case. Another time (maybe).

I think that Berg's statement is misconstrued. The desire for consonance is a purely sensual phenomenon, resulting from the way our ears hear harmonically. This is a purely vertical effect. This desire for consonance can also be present in any music.

Yes, presumably, the desire for consonance can pertain to any music. But that's because the desire for consonance, in the largest sense, is present in life itself. Consonance is simply the stable end of the polarity of living experience, the "base" from which tension and action depart and to which they return in a cycle which continues as long as life persists. In music, consonance has a sensual aspect, but it is _not_ "purely" sensual. It is symbolic and expressive - or rather, potentially so, depending on its stylistic and syntactic function. Consonance/dissonance is relative in any syntactic context - any given harmony may or may not seem to require or suggest resolution - but in tonal music the consonance of the tonic is absolute. This is why I say that Berg's statement _"I tell you, this whole hue and cry for tonality comes not so much from a yearning for a keynote relationship as from a yearning for familiar concords-let us say it frankly, for the common triads. And I believe it is fair to state that no music, provided only it contains enough of these triads, will ever arouse opposition even if it breaks all the holy commandments of tonality"_ is not the whole truth, and may even be a little disingenuous. The pleasure of tonal music, as Berg should know, is not the pleasure of floating blissfully and stupidly in a sea of triads, but of experiencing - in whatever harmonic context, simple or complex - tonality itself, including pre-eminently the assurance of knowing that tension, no matter how extreme, is ultimately resolvable. Audiences that flock to _Tristan und Isolde_ - and did in Berg's time as well - are not looking for triads; they love knowing that the resolution which they are constantly denied but which awaits them at the end gives meaning to the tortured journey they willingly undergo. Wagner knew better than anyone how to affirm the power of tonality, not in spite of, but _by means of_, the most extreme tests of its cohesive and expressive power. This is too often omitted from the "historical inevitability of atonality" script of Modernism.

The fact that the arts, including the musics, of the world have almost universally incorporated hierarchical principles in their structures, while hierarchy is also a fundamental aspect of reality and of human perception and functioning, is unlikely to be either accident or coincidence. The expressive powers of music derive from a complex of factors involving both intrinsic properties of sound and the perception of sound, but both sound and perception must be patterned in order for meaning to be conveyed and expression to occur. And those patterns must somehow be perceived as corresponding to patterns in reality - in physical reality, in thought, in emotion. If I am correct in saying that hierarchy is a _fundamental_ pattern that human beings perceive in reality, internal and external, and if music's specific expressive qualities reside in its analogous relationship to structures of internal and external reality, it is reasonable to suppose that music which is tonal and hierarchical can more fully represent the continuum of the dynamics of life, the cycle of tension/resolution, action/repose, which is present in all activity and all affect, as well as the hierarchical structures of the world and of consciousness which give order and comprehensibility to the movements of that cycle, than can music which eschews hierarchy as a basic principle.


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## Albert7

I am no music scholar but I definitely that Schoenberg's works move me very much. My ears are attuned to all types of sonic experiences.


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## Guest

I wrote a fragment of a piano piece recently and explained to my lover the rhythmic series, the melodic function, the indeterminate harmonies, etc I had in mind if I would ever finish the thing (note: I haven't finished a piece of "composed" music yet. Doesn't help that I can only barely read music, I suppose). The female asks me "so, just checking, *this one* can't possibly have any emotion in it". 

I understood what she meant, but I essentially answered, with honesty, "When I hear this little fragment, I hear my own fascination with adventure, wonder, discovery, and invention that led me (not even being a trained musician or composer or anything relevant) to write the thing in the first place". Perhaps someone else might hear the same. 

Just to clarify: adventure, wonder, discovery, invention...these ideas typically produce a fountain of emotions.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> I don't think *hierarchy* is a trivial principle...This is deeply rooted in neurological, psychological, and physiological reality. Hierarchical structures exist, so far as I can see, in nearly all of the world's art and music..Why should we be surprised that a keynote has "some sort of advantage" in allowing art to express aspects of life?


The 'hierarchy' Woodduck refers to exists in one single note: a fundamental and its harmonics. This is a fact which existed before 'time' or 'function over time' is introduced.

Tonality is reference to a tonic note, just as higher harmonics are related to a fundamental tone. This fundamental is the "complete" tone, and the harmonics are smaller, constituent parts of it. This is expressed as ratios, in relation to "1" just as all fractions are.

Moreover, this is the way the ear hears, from "bottom" (fundamental) to "top" (harmonics). This is why chord inversion works in tonality; C-E-G/E-C-G/G-C-E are all heard as the same chord, a C major triad

In mathematical terms (fractions), the keynote is "1" and the other number (a fraction) is the subservient scale degree. Thus:

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

A 'keynote' refers to an hierarchy which is created in a scale.The 'subservient' members of the scale are considered in relation to that keynote, even before triads are constructed on them.

This is basically reduced to a relation of consonance/dissonance _between two notes at a time: the scale note, and its relation to the keynote. _

These are _*then *_given functional importance according to the degree of consonance/dissonance.In tonality, the horizontal notion of 'function' is derived from consonance/dissonance of intervals in relation to "1" or tonic. These are expressed as "fractions" of that "1", falling within the octave (1:1).

This is "ranked" by degree of increasing dissonance: 1:1, 2:3, 3:4, 4:5, 5:6, etc. These vertical intervals are then "projected" into the horizontal dimension as "functions:" I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, vii.

So a C major scale's horizontal functions  correspond to these harmonic relations; and one can observe how these functions were derived:

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 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

Using this model, a "function" hierarchy can be applied to _any scale (not just CP tonality's major/minor scales) ,_ after the degrees of dissonance are ranked.

Whole Tone scale: C-D-D-F#-G#-A#

C - 1:1
D -8:9
E -4:5
F#- 45:32
G# - 8:5
A# - 16:9

Whether or not you attach Roman numerals to the above is optional; but by the numbers, one can see a ranking:

C - 1:1
E -4:5
G# - 8:5
D -8:9
A# - 16:9
F#- 45:32

So, although tonality's horizontal structures and functions are based on the vertical harmonic model, they are still after-the fact* cerebral constructs, *which are not instantaneously perceived, but must be deduced from movement through time.

In other words, the horizontal function of tonality, and its excursions away from the home key, are just *references* to the vertical harmonic model of one note and its constituent parts.

They are *arbitrary constructs,* just as arbitrary as any other form of *horizontal *structure. Thus, Webern's use of certain intervals in certain areas of a work are constructs based on the row, used for their sonorous quality. Just because they refer *in a different way *to the harmonic model does not make them any less natural or effective.

Webern's dyads have sonance, just like all music does. Just because they are considered 'in isolation' as harmonic entities does not make them in any way deficient.

The vertical sonority is universal; common to all music, and any 'extrapolation' or projection of this model into the horizontal dimension of time is an arbitrary, after-the-fact cerebral construct, based in style and practice, not a universal truth.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> I don't claim that emotion is "tied" to tonal hierarchies, merely that dispensing with hierarchy dispenses with a very basic element of the way we perceive reality, as I've described above, and thereby cuts off the expressive possibilities which an aural analogue to that universal, underlying psycho/physical experience allows.


Only the vertical aspect of the harmonic model is basic. I don't see the horizontal aspect of tonality as anything other than a reference to that. It's a construct.



Woodduck said:


> Certainly any combination or *succession* of sounds may have expressive possibilities, but *unless the set of tones being utilized includes a fundamental or base to which other tones all relate* (whether long- or short-term, but more than momentarily), and in expected ways, the maximal degree of stability and resolution, and thus the maximal deviation from it and the maximal inducement of the felt need to return to it, cannot be achieved.


All other tones do not have to relate to a keynote to possess degrees of consonance or dissonance; this is a self-contained relationship between two notes (any interval). Thus, an area of fifths (3:2) will be more consonant than an area of minor sevenths (9:16). Thus, areas of sonance become self-referential, and can be compared to other areas, in the same manner as tonality.

"All notes relating to one note" is only one way of structure. "All partials relate to a fundamental" is common to all music. You are confusing the two concepts. One is an extrapolation, the other is a universal truth.



Woodduck said:


> There can be varying degrees of felt instability/stability without such a base, but the full range of the continuum is not available...


Whatever intervals are available is the full range. There are eleven possible. Here they are:

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

In this sense, tonality is *more limited *in its range of possible sonances.



Woodduck said:


> ...and the ordering of experience within that continuum, if it is to be both maximally comprehensible and truest to the hierarchical processes of reality and consciousness, must itself be hierarchically based.


Not necessarily. Interval sonances are relations to each other. Sets can be formed which are smaller hierarchies, like the diminished scale, which is an 'hierarchical set' of four notes which repeats three times in each octave. This creates three 'small keynotes' which govern that set within that octave. That's what Bartok was doing with his 'localized tone centers' or 'seed-clusters' of pitches.



Woodduck said:


> I don't question for a moment that things can be expressed with atonal methods, or that these things may be "new" or "unidentifiable" (depending, I suppose, on who is doing the identifying). But I do contend that not everything can be expressed by music which retains the twelve tones of the chromatic scale but dispenses with a hierarchical system which gives them functional relationships to a base.


Okay, then prove it to me with demonstrable examples, as I have done. Otherwise, it's empty rhetoric.



Woodduck said:


> In music, consonance has a sensual aspect, but it is _not_ "purely" sensual. It is symbolic and expressive - or rather, potentially so, depending on its stylistic and syntactic function.


Yes, and these are arbitrary, or as you put it, 'symbolic' or referential. Any further 'symbolic' meaning of consonance is subjective.



Woodduck said:


> Consonance/dissonance is relative in any syntactic context - any given harmony may or may not seem to require or suggest resolution - but in tonal music the consonance of the tonic is absolute.


But that consonance of the tonic is not absolute; only the vertical harmonic model is. The tonic is an imitation of the harmonic effect, spread out over time. Dissonances do not have to resolve to consonances; this is not an absolute.

This is why I say that Berg's statement _"I tell you, this whole hue and cry for tonality comes not so much from a yearning for a keynote relationship as from a yearning for familiar concords-let us say it frankly, for the common triads. And I believe it is fair to state that no music, provided only it contains enough of these triads, will ever arouse opposition even if it breaks all the holy commandments of tonality"_ is not the whole truth, and may even be a little disingenuous. *The pleasure of tonal music, as Berg should know, is not the pleasure of floating blissfully and stupidly in a sea of triads, but of experiencing - in whatever harmonic context, simple or complex - tonality itself, including pre-eminently the assurance of knowing that tension, no matter how extreme, is ultimately resolvable.* [/QUOTE]

One listen to Debussy, who never resolves things, will tell you that this is wrong. Debussy "_breaks all the holy commandments of tonality," _yet it is sensual, beautiful music. *The notion that music must return to a tonic home base is just that...a notion.

*


Woodduck said:


> Audiences that flock to _Tristan und Isolde_ - and did in Berg's time as well - are not looking for triads; they love knowing that the resolution which they are constantly denied but which awaits them at the end gives meaning to the tortured journey they willingly undergo. Wagner knew better than anyone how to affirm the power of tonality, not in spite of, but _by means of_, the most extreme tests of its cohesive and expressive power. This is too often omitted from the "historical inevitability of atonality" script of Modernism.


Lots of Wagner's music 'floats' in an ocean of ambiguous tonality...where's home? The Tristan chord's function was never fully determined, even to this day. Tonality was already falling apart. If not 'historically inevitable,' this was 'structurally inevitable' because of the 12-note scale and the inherent 7-5 asymmetry of tonality's V-I.



Woodduck said:


> The fact that the arts, including the musics, of the world have almost universally incorporated hierarchical principles in their structures, while hierarchy is also a fundamental aspect of reality and of human perception and functioning, is unlikely to be either accident or coincidence. The expressive powers of music derive from a complex of factors involving both intrinsic properties of sound and the perception of sound, but both sound and perception must be patterned in order for meaning to be conveyed and expression to occur. And those patterns must somehow be perceived as corresponding to patterns in reality - in physical reality, in thought, in emotion. If I am correct in saying that hierarchy is a _fundamental_ pattern that human beings perceive in reality, internal and external, and if music's specific expressive qualities reside in its analogous relationship to structures of internal and external reality, it is reasonable to suppose that music which is tonal and hierarchical can more fully represent the continuum of the dynamics of life, the cycle of tension/resolution, action/repose, which is present in all activity and all affect, as well as the hierarchical structures of the world and of consciousness which give order and comprehensibility to the movements of that cycle, than can music which eschews hierarchy as a basic principle.


There's more than one kind of hierarchy, and there are independent agents. There are upside-down hierarchies, as well.

Basically, the 'one relating to all' hierarchy of Western tonality is just a reflection of the Christian social order. See my blog _*Tonality is God *_and *Western Tonality: Running From the Devil.*


----------



## Albert7

I believe in Eastern music, the concept of atonality is completely foreign to those guys?


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## Woodduck

Only the vertical aspect of the harmonic model is basic. I don't see the horizontal aspect of tonality as anything other than a reference to that. It's a construct.

I find this statement incomprehensible.

All other tones do not have to relate to a keynote to possess degrees of consonance or dissonance.

I never said they did.

"All notes relating to one note" is only one way of structure. "All partials relate to a fundamental" is common to all music. You are confusing the two concepts.

No, the difference betwwen those two concepts is perfectly clear. I haven't confused them.

Sets can be formed which are smaller hierarchies, like the diminished scale, which is an 'hierarchical set' of four notes which repeats three times in each octave. This creates three 'small keynotes' which govern that set within that octave. That's what Bartok was doing with his 'localized tone centers' or 'seed-clusters' of pitches.

Yes, different sets (scales, modes, etc.) are possible. That does not affect the principle of hierarchy.

But that consonance of the tonic is not absolute; only the vertical harmonic model is. The tonic is an imitation of the harmonic effect, spread out over time.

Within any tonal, hierarchical system, the consonance of the tonic is absolute. There is no further place to which a tonic can resolve. It is the resolution of all instabilities and tensions within the system.

Dissonances do not have to resolve to consonances; this is not an absolute.

Of course they don't. A composer may leave them unresolved, for a variety of reasons.

One listen to Debussy, who never resolves things, will tell you that this is wrong. Debussy "_breaks all the holy commandments of tonality," _yet it is sensual, beautiful music. *The notion that music must return to a tonic home base is just that...a notion.

I never claimed that music must return to a tonic base. There is nothing that music must do.

All I said was: "Berg's statement 'I tell you, this whole hue and cry for tonality comes not so much from a yearning for a keynote relationship as from a yearning for familiar concords-let us say it frankly, for the common triads. And I believe it is fair to state that no music, provided only it contains enough of these triads, will ever arouse opposition even if it breaks all the holy commandments of tonality' is not the whole truth, and may even be a little disingenuous. The pleasure of tonal music, as Berg should know, is not the pleasure of floating blissfully and stupidly in a sea of triads, but of experiencing - in whatever harmonic context, simple or complex - tonality itself, including pre-eminently the assurance of knowing that tension, no matter how extreme, is ultimately resolvable."

I spoke of "the pleasure of tonal music," not of the pleasure of Debussy. Debussy also offers pleasure; it can indeed be pleasant to "float" on a sequence of unrelated triads. But to imply, as Berg does, that that's all audiences want, and that the absence of it is their only objection to highly dissonant atonal music, is mere self-justifying absurdity. Plenty of people who dislike 12-tone music have a high tolerance of dissonance - indeed, love dissonance - if the musical context in which it occurs makes sense to them.

Lots of Wagner's music 'floats' in an ocean of ambiguous tonality...where's home? The Tristan chord's function was never fully determined, even to this day. Tonality was already falling apart. If not 'historically inevitable,' this was 'structurally inevitable' because of the 12-note scale and the inherent 7-5 asymmetry of tonality's V-I.

First, there is nothing wrong with "floating," harmonically. But I used the metaphor for its connotations of a lack of clear purpose or direction. That does not get at the essence of Wagner's chromaticism. His ambiguities are intensely purposeful and do not pacify but rather challenge - and require - the listener's tonal expectations. Wagner's harmony is not, as Debussy's often is, fundamentally sensual, despite its surface effect; the love duet from Tristan and Brangaene's warning are both constantly modulating and gorgeous to the ear, but tonal relations are not bypassed or enfeebled but compressed, giving to the music a poignancy, at once ecstatic, tragic, and disturbing, that's quite alien to Debussy's aesthetic. As for the infamous Tristan chord: the opening of the prelude, right up to the first real "tune" in C, is very easily analyzed in the key of A-minor (easily, once you see it, which some people apparently still don't, going by some of the off-the-wall efforts I've seen). This is not to minimize the effect of ambiguity, the mystery and anxiety which Wagner intends to evoke. But he was not toying with leaving tonality behind. We might call Wagner's harmonic strategy an enormous tease, if the word didn't sound so flippant. He had long stretches of music to hold together and had to know where he was, tonally, if it was going to work.

There's more than one kind of hierarchy.

There are many musical systems, yes.

Basically, the 'one relating to all' hierarchy of Western tonality is just a reflection of the Christian social order. 

It's rare that anything is "just" anything. Common practice tonality and religion (not just Christianity) both contain hierarchies. The universe at large contains hierarchies - is shot through with them, in fact. I've probably made that point sufficiently. (Without getting too deep into sociology, I must suggest that there is no so thing as "the Christian social order" - but that, if there is, it reached its agogee well before common practice tonality reached its own. These correspondences are simplistic, and in any event tangential.)*


----------



## millionrainbows

MR: "Only the vertical aspect of the harmonic model is basic. I don't see the horizontal aspect of tonality as anything other than a reference to that. It's a construct."



Woodduck said:


> I find this statement incomprehensible.


Then if you can't see that the horizontal functions (in time) of tonality are _structural devices,_ there's no need for me to further point this out; but this seems to be the dimension of tonal music that you are saying is its greatest strength and beauty, as opposed to purely sensual (vertical) characteristics (the triads Berg mentioned). If you claim 'incomprehensibility' on this point, then you are throwing your entire argument away.

"MR: All other tones do not have to relate to a keynote to possess degrees of consonance or dissonance."



Woodduck said:


> I never said they did.


You did say that atonal music was less effective, and tonality was more effective, for this reason:

*"...the renunciation of the "consonant/tonic" polarity in typical 12-tone music is a decisive factor in circumscribing its expressive range..." *

Since they both have degrees of consonance and dissonance, I think this weakens your assertion, or at least exposes it as subjective opinion.

MR: "All notes relating to one note" is only one way of structure. "All partials relate to a fundamental" is common to all music. You are confusing the two concepts.



Woodduck said:


> No, the difference between those two concepts is perfectly clear. I haven't confused them.


But earlier you asserted that the _horizontal functions _of tonality are its greatest aspect, because they are based on 'natural' (vertical) realities. 
I simply pointed out that the vertical and horizontal aspects of harmony are two different things. 
You seem to be equating them in a literal sense, but horizontal functions are only a symbolic reference to the vertical harmonic model.

MR: "Sets can be formed which are smaller hierarchies, like the diminished scale, which is an 'hierarchical set' of four notes which repeats three times in each octave. This creates three 'small keynotes' which govern that set within that octave. That's what Bartok was doing with his 'localized tone centers' or 'seed-clusters' of pitches."



Woodduck said:


> Yes, different sets (scales, modes, etc.) are possible. That does not affect the principle of hierarchy.


I'm comparing hierarchies, not questioning the principle. By _comparison_ it affects your tonal hierarchy based on the major/minor system. You touted this as the 'best, most natural' hierarchy, but it is only one of many.

MR: "But that consonance of the tonic is not absolute; only the vertical harmonic model is. The tonic is an imitation of the harmonic effect, spread out over time."



Woodduck said:


> Within any tonal, hierarchical system, the consonance of the tonic is absolute. There is no further place to which a tonic can resolve. It is the resolution of all instabilities and tensions within the system.


That's true if there is only one 'tonic' in an octave.

If there are three 'centricities,' as in the diminished scale, which cycle or repeat thoughout the octave, there is no 'absolute' tonic or center. The octave can be fragmented in this way.

The 'system' you speak of must cover all notes within the octave, or it is not absolute.

MR: "Dissonances do not have to resolve to consonances; this is not an absolute."



Woodduck said:


> Of course they don't. A composer may leave them unresolved, for a variety of reasons.


I'm simply saying that unresolved consonances are not 'less effective' than tonality, as you asserted with this point of 'resolved dissonance:'

*Woodduck: "...in music which is determined to avoid reference to such a stable pole, the harmonic range is necessarily narrowed in the direction of dissonance, and the sense of tonal gravity is not present to exercise its wide and diverse potential for expression."
*
MR: "One listen to Debussy, who never resolves things, will tell you that this is wrong. Debussy "_breaks all the holy commandments of tonality," _yet it is sensual, beautiful music. *The notion that music must return to a tonic home base is just that...a notion."**



Woodduck said:



I never claimed that music must return to a tonic base. There is nothing that music must do.

Click to expand...

But you did say that tonality's return to an ultimate home base was its greatest quality, and that atonal music suffered as a result. This is fine, as long as it is stated as your opinion, not structural fact.
You said, in so many words, that people who crave tonality crave the return to a tonic base, not just triads. Debussy, with his triads, weakens that assertion greatly, and bolsters Berg's statement.



Woodduck said:



All I said was: "Berg's statement 'I tell you, this whole hue and cry for tonality comes not so much from a yearning for a keynote relationship as from a yearning for familiar concords-let us say it frankly, for the common triads. And I believe it is fair to state that no music, provided only it contains enough of these triads, will ever arouse opposition even if it breaks all the holy commandments of tonality' is not the whole truth, and may even be a little disingenuous. The pleasure of tonal music, as Berg should know, is not the pleasure of floating blissfully and stupidly in a sea of triads, but of experiencing - in whatever harmonic context, simple or complex - tonality itself, including pre-eminently the assurance of knowing that tension, no matter how extreme, is ultimately resolvable."

Click to expand...




Woodduck said:



I spoke of "the pleasure of tonal music," not of the pleasure of Debussy. Debussy also offers pleasure; it can indeed be pleasant to "float" on a sequence of unrelated triads. But to imply, as Berg does, that that's all audiences want, and that the absence of it is their only objection to highly dissonant atonal music, is mere self-justifying absurdity. Plenty of people who dislike 12-tone music have a high tolerance of dissonance - indeed, love dissonance - if the musical context in which it occurs makes sense to them.

Click to expand...

You said, in so many words, that people who crave tonality crave the return to a tonic base, not just triads. 'Tonic base' implies consonance, because you equate it to the vertical idea of consonance. So, within the context of tonality, I will not argue with that. But it's still just a musical context, not a 'natural truth' or reality.

MR: "Lots of Wagner's music 'floats' in an ocean of ambiguous tonality...where's home? The Tristan chord's function was never fully determined, even to this day. Tonality was already falling apart. If not 'historically inevitable,' this was 'structurally inevitable' because of the 12-note scale and the inherent 7-5 asymmetry of tonality's V-I."



Woodduck said:



First, there is nothing wrong with "floating," harmonically. But I used the metaphor for its connotations of a lack of clear purpose or direction. That does not get at the essence of Wagner's chromaticism. His ambiguities are intensely purposeful and do not pacify but rather challenge - and require - the listener's tonal expectations. Wagner's harmony is not, as Debussy's often is, fundamentally sensual, despite its surface effect; the love duet from Tristan and Brangaene's warning are both constantly modulating and gorgeous to the ear, but tonal relations are not bypassed or enfeebled but compressed, giving to the music a poignancy, at once ecstatic, tragic, and disturbing, that's quite alien to Debussy's aesthetic. As for the infamous Tristan chord: the opening of the prelude, right up to the first real "tune" in C, is very easily analyzed in the key of A-minor (easily, once you see it, which some people apparently still don't, going by some of the off-the-wall efforts I've seen). This is not to minimize the effect of ambiguity, the mystery and anxiety which Wagner intends to evoke. But he was not toying with leaving tonality behind. We might call Wagner's harmonic strategy an enormous tease, if the word didn't sound so flippant. He had long stretches of music to hold together and had to know where he was, tonally, if it was going to work.

Click to expand...

Then , in my view, this weakens your position in a corresponding manner to the same degree as these examples of weakening tonality demonstrate.

Eventually, your assertion that "...the renunciation of the "consonant/tonic" polarity in typical 12-tone music is a decisive factor in circumscribing its expressive range..." will weaken your position, and be reflected diametrically back at tonality, by using examples such as Wagner.

MR: "There's more than one kind of hierarchy."



Woodduck said:



There are many musical systems, yes.

Click to expand...

You seem to have forgotten the context of the discussion.

MR: "Basically, the 'one relating to all' hierarchy of Western tonality is just a reflection of the Christian social order."



Woodduck said:



It's rare that anything is "just" anything. Common practice tonality and religion (not just Christianity) both contain hierarchies. The universe at large contains hierarchies - is shot through with them, in fact. I've probably made that point sufficiently. (Without getting too deep into sociology, I must suggest that there is no so thing as "the Christian social order" - but that, if there is, it reached its agogee well before common practice tonality reached its own. These correspondences are simplistic, and in any event tangential.)

Click to expand...

I'm speaking generally, and believe that Man's art, institutions, and religion reflect his world view. Plus, the idea of hierarchies begins to seem Newtonian, in a world of Einstein's relativity.*


----------



## Woodduck

Then if you can't see that the horizontal functions (in time) of tonality are structural devices, there's no need for me to further point this out; but this seems to be the dimension of tonal music that you are saying is its greatest strength and beauty, as opposed to purely sensual (vertical) characteristics. If you claim 'incomprehensibility' on this point, then you are throwing your entire argument away.

Not understanding your statement, or how it answers my argument, hardly invalidates my argument.

Then you are saying that tonality is no more or less effective than serialism, since they both have degrees of consonance and dissonance.

For one thing, tonality has more degrees of it. Serialism lacks the "zero degree," the _absolute_ consonance of a home base. The polarity of consonance vs. dissonance implies stability/relaxation/resolution vs. instability/tension/irresolution. All music has both poles, but tonality presupposes, and can refer at any time to, the former as an absolute steady state or norm, while venturing as far as it wishes into the latter. Because music occurs in time, the movement between these poles can generate structures analogous to fundamental life functions, physical and psychological, which always presuppose an equilibrium, which depends on the existence of a stable state, which gives structure to movement. Serialism offers degrees of tension but no stable state.

I simply pointed out that the vertical and horizontal aspects of harmony are two different things. 
You seem to be equating them in a literal sense, but horizontal functions are only a symbolic reference to the vertical harmonic model.

I don't equate them (I don't know what it would mean to equate them), but I say that the actions of (harmonic tonal) music in time are not just "symbolic" references to harmony but deployments of its possibilities. Consonance and dissonance function and achieve their affective power in time. They are not just acoustical phenomena. A chord may be static, but an appoggiatura or a suspension or a progression is dynamic. Dissonance resides not just in partials but in the tension of progression. This is not "symbolism." It's what such music fundamentally consists of.

I'm comparing hierarchies, not questioning the principle. By comparison it affects your tonal hierarchy based on the major/minor system. You touted this as the 'best, most natural' hierarchy, but it is only one of many.

"Tonality" need not imply Western common practice. It's just the system I know and can use to illustrate principles. I've never said the major/minor system was "natural," much less the "most natural" or "best" of all possible systems. No musical system is totally natural - i.e. independent of culture. But I do absolutely believe - and there is by now a lot of literature on this, which I've barely begun to explore - that musical forms and devices, tonality among them, do arise as expressions of basic aspects of the human organism's physical and psychic life processes. How could it be otherwise in so universal and important a phenomenon as music?

I am unconvinced that serialism, as a system of musical organization, could ever arise and evolve from any psycho-physical aspects of human nature or experience.

You said, in so many words, that people who crave tonality crave the return to a tonic base, not just triads. Debussy, with his triads, weakens that assertion greatly, and bolsters Berg's statement.

I don't think so. "People" (presumably theose who don't like atonality) accept a great deal of dissonance if the context in which it occurs is comprehensible and if they are not asked to endure a constant state of tension and irresolution. Tonality provides a comprehensible context. Debussy's dreamworld is a hedonistic magic carpet ride, but people also want life on the ground.


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## Marschallin Blair

> Woodduck _supra_: For one thing, tonality has more degrees of it. Serialism lacks the "zero degree," the absolute consonance of a home base. The polarity of consonance vs. dissonance implies stability/relaxation/resolution vs. instability/tension/irresolution. All music has both poles, but tonality presupposes, and can refer at any time to, the former as an absolute steady state or norm, while venturing as far as it wishes into the latter. Because music occurs in time, the movement between these poles can generate structures analogous to fundamental life functions, physical and psychological, which always presuppose an equilibrium, which depends on the existence of a stable state, which gives structure to movement. Serialism offers degrees of tension but no stable state.


I think this is about the most beautifully-put and succinct summation of the problem of serialism that I've encountered. It certainly explains my own psychological impressions with such music.


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## Mahlerian

Marschallin Blair said:


> I think this is about the most beautifully-put and succinct summation of the problem of serialism that I've encountered. It certainly explains my own psychological impressions with such music.


But it's still _wrong_, regardless of how it feels to you.

Serial music can be tonal, in fact, and non-tonal music always has hierarchical relationships and tension/resolution dynamics, even if they are not the same ones of traditional tonality.


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## SeptimalTritone

I'm going to play the devil's advocate in this atonality debate (sorry Mahlerian!)

I think that it's very hard to hear the tension resolution aspects in atonal music. I was recently listening to Schoenberg's Wind Quintet and Fourth String Quartet. They are both very good, buzzing, intense pieces. They also (at least the first movements) are very thematic and almost sonata-form like. They are almost Mozart/Beethoven/Brahms like in their mentality and development. But it's very hard to hear harmonic tension-resolution (beyond climaxes/lulls in the amount of notes and energy and voices... but that's a non-harmonic property).

Mahlerian, we all are very confused and would like to better understand.


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## KenOC

I just completed an on-line course of some length, a historical survey of the string quartet from the Curtis Institute. The main presenter was Arnold Steinhardt, long-time first violin of the Guarneri Quartet. He used the term"atonality" very freely, mostly when speaking of the music of theSecond Viennese School. And he did seem to know a bit about music. He is on the faculties of the Curtis Institute, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, the University of Maryland, and the Colburn School in Los Angeles.

I suspect he would be startled to learn that there is no such thing as atonal music.


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## Mahlerian

SeptimalTritone said:


> I'm going to play the devil's advocate in this atonality debate (sorry Mahlerian!)
> 
> I think that it's very hard to hear the tension resolution aspects in atonal music. I was recently listening to Schoenberg's Wind Quintet and Fourth String Quartet. They are both very good, buzzing, intense pieces. They also (at least the first movements) are very thematic and almost sonata-form like. They are almost Mozart/Beethoven/Brahms like in their mentality and development. But it's very hard to hear harmonic tension-resolution (beyond climaxes/lulls in the amount of notes and energy and voices... but that's a non-harmonic property).
> 
> Mahlerian, we all are very confused and would like to better understand.


Well, it does lack the characteristics of functional tonality in having clearly defined harmonic regions or a home chord. But don't you feel, hearing that music, that there is a sense that the thematic and harmonic/pitch content compliment each other? When we reach a recapitulation in one of Schoenberg's latter String Quartets, there is an immediate sense that it is a full recapitulation, even when, as in the Third, the thematic material has not yet returned in its original guise.

Tension/resolution dynamics do work differently, for sure, but I think of it as more akin to the modal music of the Renaissance in certain ways. In the absence of tonal function, we have an interplay of the various voices and their motifs against each other.


----------



## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> I suspect he would be startled to learn that there is no such thing as atonal music.


Don't you think it's significant at all that the so-called atonal composers almost unanimously avoid and disparage the term? Even Leonard Bernstein agreed that it was a misnomer.


----------



## KenOC

Mahlerian, please don't forget that I'm from Macon.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Mahlerian said:


> But it's still _wrong_, regardless of how it feels to you.
> 
> Serial music can be tonal, in fact, and non-tonal music always has hierarchical relationships and tension/resolution dynamics, even if they are not the same ones of traditional tonality.


No one's arguing that they don't- merely that _vis-à-vis_ traditional tonality, serialism is an emotional dead end when it comes to a wide range of meaningful human expression (and not just novel combinations of sounds).

Last time I checked, no serialist has written anything as emotionally compelling as _"Der Abschied"_ from _Das Lied von der Erde _or the love music from Act II of _Tristan_.


----------



## SeptimalTritone

^ For the record, I think the late works of Webern (from the string trio to the 2nd cantata) are _more_ emotionally compelling, visceral, human, and spiritual.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

SeptimalTritone said:


> ^ For the record, I think the late works of Webern (from the string trio to the 2nd cantata) are _more_ emotionally compelling, visceral, human, and spiritual.


You're truly _sui generis_. _;D_


----------



## Guest

Marschallin Blair said:


> You're truly _sui generis_. _;D_


What makes his opinion less valid than your's, if I may ask?


----------



## Marschallin Blair

nathanb said:


> What makes his opinion less valid than your's, if I may ask?


I never presume to judge for others, merely when others presume to judge for me.


----------



## Woodduck

Mahlerian writes:

Non-tonal music always has hierarchical relationships and tension/resolution dynamics, even if they are not the same ones of traditional tonality.

Well, it does lack the characteristics of functional tonality in having clearly defined harmonic regions or a home chord. But don't you feel, hearing that music, that there is a sense that the thematic and harmonic/pitch content compliment each other? When we reach a recapitulation in one of Schoenberg's latter String Quartets, there is an immediate sense that it is a full recapitulation, even when, as in the Third, the thematic material has not yet returned in its original guise.

Tension/resolution dynamics do work differently, for sure, but I think of it as more akin to the modal music of the Renaissance in certain ways. In the absence of tonal function, we have an interplay of the various voices and their motifs against each other.


Nothing I've written denies any of this. And none of this denies the peculiar properties of tonal music.


----------



## Guest

> serialism is an emotional dead end when it comes to a wide range of meaningful human expression.





> ^ For the record, I think the late works of Webern (from the string trio to the 2nd cantata) are more emotionally compelling, visceral, human, and spiritual.





> I never presume to judge for others


Well, then, I suppose this is your way of humbly admitting that you were wrong and that serialism is not an emotional dead end because experience says it's not.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

nathanb said:


> Well, then, I suppose this is your way of humbly admitting that you were wrong and that serialism is not an emotional dead end because experience says it's not.


_There's not a humble hair on__ my __head_. _;D_. . .

No, rather its a polite way of saying that serialism for myself (and _incidentally_, a great number of other people) was, is, and will always be an emotional dead end- given the physiological limitations of the human ear.

I think there's good reason that pop music around the world is written tonally and not serially- it 'speaks' to people intuitively and immediately without spinning out endless rationalizations and pretending what the sonic arcana is supposed to mean.


----------



## Mahlerian

Woodduck said:


> Nothing I've written denies any of this. And none of this denies the peculiar properties of tonal music.


So, you agree that post-tonal music is only as much different from tonal music as modal music is, then? I should think that you were disagreeing with this.


----------



## Mahlerian

Marschallin Blair said:


> _There's not a humble hair on__ my __head_. _;D_. . .
> 
> No, rather its a polite way of saying that serialism for myself (and _incidentally_, a great number of other people) was, is, and will always be an emotional dead end- given the physiological limitations of the human ear.
> 
> I think there's good reason that pop music around the world is written tonally and not serially- it 'speaks' to people intuitively and immediately without spinning out endless rationalizations and pretending what the sonic arcana is supposed to mean.


So does this music.
None of us have given rationalizations.
All of us were attracted to it through the way it sounded.
We have human ears too.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Mahlerian said:


> So does this music.
> None of us have given rationalizations.
> All of us were attracted to it through the way it sounded.
> We have human ears too.


. . . and of that I have no doubt.

I was just referring to the thick end of the bell curve and not to the thin end- to the rule and not its exception.


----------



## Mahlerian

Marschallin Blair said:


> . . . and of that I have no doubt.
> 
> I was just referring to the thick end of the bell curve and not to the thin end- to the rule and not its exception.


The rule is that people don't care about classical music of any kind, aside from perhaps Fur Elise or the first movement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Mahlerian said:


> The rule is that people don't care about classical music of any kind, aside from perhaps Fur Elise or the first movement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.


True. . . but in a 'red herring' way.

The issue is why tonality speaks to greater mankind and not serialism.


----------



## Mahlerian

Marschallin Blair said:


> True. . . but in a 'red herring' way.
> 
> The issue is why tonality speaks to greater mankind and not serialism.


First, tonality and serialism are not opposed. I said this earlier, but let me say it again: *there is such a thing as serial music that is also tonal*.

Okay, now that that's out of the way...

You're begging the question using a premise I cannot agree with. The vast majority of the music in the world is _not_ tonal, but rather modal. It seems that the natural things that evolve in human music-making are the pentatonic scale and some kind of modal treatment of it. Other than that, things have evolved differently, and while there are non-Western cultures that have things similar to our diatonic scale, even they did not have tonality, which did not truly form until the 1600s.

Post-tonal music doesn't exist in other cultures for the simple reason that it depends on the prior existence of a tonal tradition on which to build. It is no less or more natural than any other kind of music, though its unfamiliarity has made it inaccessible to some.


----------



## SeptimalTritone

OK Mahlerian you're aboslutely right, there are feelings of tension and resolution, in, say Schoenberg's 3rd quartet (and thus everywhere else).

For the record, and my education, the onset of the recap is at 5 min here in this video: 



 I think? There is a difference between the more exotic and the more concrete harmony, even in atonal music.


----------



## Guest

Marschallin Blair said:


> _There's not a humble hair on__ my __head_. _;D_. . .
> 
> No, rather its a polite way of saying that serialism *for myself* (and _incidentally_, a number of other people) was, is, and will always be an emotional dead end- given the physiological limitations of *my* ear.
> 
> I think there's good reason that pop music around the world is written tonally and not serially- it 'speaks' to _*me*_ intuitively and immediately without spinning out endless rationalizations and pretending what the sonic arcana is supposed to mean.


Edited your post for clarity.


----------



## millionrainbows

MR: "Then if you can't see that the horizontal functions (in time) of tonality are structural devices, there's no need for me to further point this out; but this seems to be the dimension of tonal music that you are saying is its greatest strength and beauty, as opposed to purely sensual (vertical) characteristics. If you claim 'incomprehensibility' on this point, then you are throwing your entire argument away."



Woodduck said:


> Not understanding your statement, or how it answers my argument, hardly invalidates my argument.


If you've never thought about it in depth, there's no need; but when you make sweeping statements about it, you need to be able to back those up, in order to establish a credible position that is more than just rhetoric.

MR: "Then you are saying that tonality is no more or less effective than serialism, since they both have degrees of consonance and dissonance."



Woodduck said:


> For one thing, tonality has more degrees of it. Serialism lacks the "zero degree," the _absolute_ consonance of a home base.


No, here it is in the list of sonances: Unison and octave, the same pitch identity. If by 'home base' you mean key area, or "harmonic function," then the lack of a 'home base' in serialism is moot, irrelevant, and has no application in atonal music, since it does not have key areas. This is a ridiculous comparison.



Woodduck said:


> The polarity of consonance vs. dissonance implies stability/relaxation/resolution vs. instability/tension/irresolution. All music has both poles, but tonality presupposes, and can refer at any time to, the former as an absolute steady state or norm, while venturing as far as it wishes into the latter...Because music occurs in time, the movement between these poles can generate structures analogous to fundamental life functions, physical and psychological, which always presuppose an equilibrium, which depends on the existence of a stable state, which gives structure to movement. Serialism offers degrees of tension but no stable state.


Once again, you are comparing tonality to atonality in a way that assumes the qualities of tonality to be superior or 'more reflective of fundamental life functions' than serial/atonal methods.

Tonality's simplistic reference to a tonic is a very basic, almost crude method of reflecting the complexity of life and organisms. *Fractal* methods of composition are better suited to such an argument, since local 'seeds' of stability can generate, change, and develop in complexity. See Theo Verby, Charles Wuorinen.

MR: "I simply pointed out that the vertical and horizontal aspects of harmony are two different things. 
You seem to be equating them in a literal sense, but horizontal functions are only a symbolic reference to the vertical harmonic model."



Woodduck said:


> I don't equate them (I don't know what it would mean to equate them), but I say that the actions of (harmonic tonal) music in time are not just "symbolic" references to harmony but deployments of its possibilities.


Harmony is instantaneous.

Otherwise, music is melodic and moves through time.. Root movement takes place in time, and it is a succession of events. It's just a _reference_ to harmonic phenomena. A "G" or "F" triad (chord) sounds exactly the same as a "C" chord, until we make the reference, over time, cerebrally, that the "G" is in the key of "C." Only _then_ do we hear its function. This is a cognitive process, not instantaneous.



Woodduck said:


> Consonance and dissonance function and achieve their affective power in time. They are not just acoustical phenomena.


Consonance and dissonance are harmonic phenomena, which are instantaneous. Otherwise, pitches occur in succession. melodically, as lines.



Woodduck said:


> A chord may be static, but an appoggiatura or a suspension or a progression is dynamic.


That's because the 'suspension' evolved out of the confluence of separate melodic lines. Only after functional harmonic thinking developed did the idea of a 'suspension' emerge.



Woodduck said:


> Dissonance resides not just in partials but in the tension of progression. This is not "symbolism." It's what such music fundamentally consists of.


No, it's just a way of thinking about pitches which occur simultaneously. They are given 'functions' in relation to a home key, but they are still simultaneous soundings of notes. It's only through progression over time that they are thought of as having functions. This kind of functional dissonance/consonance is only valid when comparing in context.

It's basically an ambiguous phenomena, and is often exploited in simple pop progressions. For example, a succession of chords C-F-C-F etc. is ambiguous; it can be seen as I-IV in the key of C, or as V-I in the key of F. Harmonic thinking is ambiguous; it is not reflective of any 'absolute' quality of consonance or dissonance, and it often ambiguous. Its meaning is only grasped over time, in context. Therefore, it is structural and cerebral, not essentially sensual. It is only a 'reference' to the sensual vertical dimension.

MR: "I'm comparing hierarchies, not questioning the principle. By comparison it affects your tonal hierarchy based on the major/minor system. You touted this as the 'best, most natural' hierarchy, but it is only one of many."



Woodduck said:


> "Tonality" need not imply Western common practice. It's just the system I know and can use to illustrate principles. I've never said the major/minor system was "natural," much less the "most natural" or "best" of all possible systems.


The net result of your statements say otherwise:



Woodduck said:


> All music has both poles, but tonality presupposes, and can refer at any time to, the former as an absolute steady state or norm, while venturing as far as it wishes into the latter. Because music occurs in time, the movement between these poles can generate structures analogous to fundamental life functions, physical and psychological, which always presuppose an equilibrium, which depends on the existence of a stable state, which gives structure to movement. Serialism offers degrees of tension but no stable state.





Woodduck said:


> No musical system is totally natural - i.e. independent of culture. But I do absolutely believe - and there is by now a lot of literature on this, which I've barely begun to explore - that musical forms and devices, tonality among them, do arise as expressions of basic aspects of the human organism's physical and psychic life processes. How could it be otherwise in so universal and important a phenomenon as music?


I have no complaint about that, as long as this is not seen as exclusive or better defined by tonality.



Woodduck said:


> I am unconvinced that serialism, as a system of musical organization, could ever arise and evolve from any psycho-physical aspects of human nature or experience.


I disagree.

MR: "You said, in so many words, that people who crave tonality crave the return to a tonic base, not just triads. Debussy, with his triads, weakens that assertion greatly, and bolsters Berg's statement."



Woodduck said:


> I don't think so. "People" (presumably those who don't like atonality) accept a great deal of dissonance if the context in which it occurs is comprehensible and if they are not asked to endure a constant state of tension and irresolution. Tonality provides a comprehensible context. Debussy's dreamworld is a hedonistic magic carpet ride, but people also want life on the ground.


Well, whatever floats your carpet. Some people don't like Mozart or Haydn, and see them as anachronistic and overly-formal. After all, this is the 21st century. I accept all forms, all systems, for what they are, and what they can do for me.


----------



## millionrainbows

Marschallin Blair said:


> I think this is about the most beautifully-put and succinct summation of the problem of serialism that I've encountered. It certainly explains my own psychological impressions with such music.





Mahlerian said:


> But it's still _wrong_, regardless of how it feels to you.
> 
> Serial music can be tonal, in fact, and non-tonal music always has hierarchical relationships and tension/resolution dynamics, even if they are not the same ones of traditional tonality.


Oh, my *GHOD! *This is the most beautiful statement I have ever heard!!!


----------



## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> Well, it does lack the characteristics of functional tonality in having clearly defined harmonic regions or a home chord. But don't you feel, hearing that music, that there is a sense that the thematic and harmonic/pitch content compliment each other? When we reach a recapitulation in one of Schoenberg's latter String Quartets, there is an immediate sense that it is a full recapitulation, even when, as in the Third, the thematic material has not yet returned in its original guise.
> 
> Tension/resolution dynamics do work differently, for sure, but I think of it as more akin to the modal music of the Renaissance in certain ways. In the absence of tonal function, we have an interplay of the various voices and their motifs against each other.


Don't forget, the tension/resolution of a _mediocre_ tonal composition can be _boring,_ too. A lot of people are turned-off by even the best, like Mozart or Haydn, because it sounds too simplistic to them. That was my problem in learning 'sonatinas' in my first adult piano lessons, already having heard more harmonically complex jazz and modern music.

So, tonality, with its areas of tension & resolution, are effective when used well, but they're not the be-all end-all.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

millionrainbows said:


> Oh, my *GHOD! *This is the most beautiful statement I have ever heard!!!


_"But its still wrong, regardless of how it feels to you."_

Emotions still aren't tools of cognition.


----------



## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Mahlerian writes:
> 
> Non-tonal music always has hierarchical relationships and tension/resolution dynamics, even if they are not the same ones of traditional tonality.
> 
> Well, it does lack the characteristics of functional tonality in having clearly defined harmonic regions or a home chord. But don't you feel, hearing that music, that there is a sense that the thematic and harmonic/pitch content compliment each other? When we reach a recapitulation in one of Schoenberg's latter String Quartets, there is an immediate sense that it is a full recapitulation, even when, as in the Third, the thematic material has not yet returned in its original guise.
> 
> Tension/resolution dynamics do work differently, for sure, but I think of it as more akin to the modal music of the Renaissance in certain ways. In the absence of tonal function, we have an interplay of the various voices and their motifs against each other.
> 
> 
> Nothing I've written denies any of this. And none of this denies the peculiar properties of tonal music.


Oh, come on, Woodduck. You've made some disparaging remarks about serialism, and touted tonality as being a more effective music, and Marschalin Blair agrees with you.

If you're pretending to* not* be making a devisive argument which takes sides, I'm not believing it.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

nathanb said:


> Edited your post for clarity.


. . . or rather for obfuscation.

I'm not the only person who thinks this.

- Try again.


----------



## millionrainbows

The harmonic functions of tonality, which occur over time, are basically an ambiguous phenomena, and are often exploited in simple pop progressions. 

For example, a succession of chords C-F-C-F etc. is ambiguous; it can be seen as I-IV in the key of C, or as V-I in the key of F. 

Harmonic thinking is inherently ambiguous; it is not reflective of any 'absolute' quality of consonance or dissonance, and it is often ambiguous. 

Its meaning is only grasped over time, in context. Therefore, it is structural and cerebral, not essentially sensual. It is only a 'reference' to the sensual vertical dimension.

The vertical experience of sonance is common to all forms of music, including serial and atonal music.


----------



## Woodduck

Mahlerian writes:

So, you agree that post-tonal music is only as much different from tonal music as modal music is, then? I should think that you were disagreeing with this.

That isn't exactly what you said before. I don't agree with it. Modality is a form of tonality (see below).

The vast majority of the music in the world is not tonal, but rather modal. It seems that the natural things that evolve in human music-making are the pentatonic scale and some kind of modal treatment of it. Other than that, things have evolved differently, and while there are non-Western cultures that have things similar to our diatonic scale, even they did not have tonality, which did not truly form until the 1600s.


We should be careful (I probably haven't been careful enough) to distinguish the different meanings of "tonality." I use our Western common practice system to illustrate tonal principles because it's famailiar to me and because it includes a highly developed harmonic dimension, but the basic concepts of tonality - a group of tones constituting a scale or mode, a "home" tone from that scale which functions as a primary point of focus, departure and/or arrival (especially arrival), and a hierarchy of relationships determining how the different tones of the scale relate to the home tone and to each other - exist in music outside the Western tonal tradition. I can't discuss, say, Indian music knowledgeably, though I can hear ways in which it embodies tonal (broad sense) principles. I try to remember to be clear when I mean to specify common practice tonality, but probably fail to be at times.

Tonality in the broad sense - which includes modality - has arisen in music worldwide and has been the subject of increasing study and theorizing as to its origins and significance in psychology, anthropology and human evolution. I see Western harmonic tonality as an elaboration upon some basic principles which I've been trying to understand, principles rooted in the structures and activities of consciousness, physiology, emotion, and even cosmology ("music of the spheres"? Beautiful waltz by Josef Strauss, if nothing else). How those principles persist or don't persist in atonal (pardon the expression) music and the way we hear it is a further question. It seems to me that in some respects they do persist - I think I understand at least partially why you say such music is still "tonal" - but that in other important respects they don't. So when you say

Non-tonal music always has hierarchical relationships and tension/resolution dynamics, even if they are not the same ones of traditional tonality [...] it does lack the characteristics of functional tonality in having clearly defined harmonic regions or a home chord...

I agree with you, but find the lack of _systemic_ hierarchy more significant than you do. The human brain cannot help perceiving things in certain ways, in terms of certain patterns and relationships. The question is, how does the music embody and express those patterns and relationships? Tonality, I think, is one of the chief ways in which it does.


----------



## Mahlerian

What you call "tonality in the broad sense" includes all of the music we've discussed, including serial music. I cannot think of any way in which the music of Brahms and Bach is more distant from Schoenberg's late period than from Ockeghem.

When you hear this, do you really think it is so distant from everything in traditional music?


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Mahlerian said:


> First, tonality and serialism are not opposed. I said this earlier, but let me say it again: *there is such a thing as serial music that is also tonal*.
> 
> Okay, now that that's out of the way...
> 
> You're begging the question using a premise I cannot agree with. The vast majority of the music in the world is _not_ tonal, but rather modal. It seems that the natural things that evolve in human music-making are the pentatonic scale and some kind of modal treatment of it. Other than that, things have evolved differently, and while there are non-Western cultures that have things similar to our diatonic scale, even they did not have tonality, which did not truly form until the 1600s.
> 
> Post-tonal music doesn't exist in other cultures for the simple reason that it depends on the prior existence of a tonal tradition on which to build. It is no less or more natural than any other kind of music, though its unfamiliarity has made it inaccessible to some.


Okay Mahlerian: _corrigendum_: 'tonality and serialism are _not necessarily_ opposed.'

Yes.

But you know what I mean when I say that """"serialism"""" doesn't emotionally speak to most people.


----------



## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> I...find the lack of _systemic_ hierarchy...significant ... The human brain cannot help perceiving things in certain ways, in terms of certain patterns and relationships. The question is, how does the music embody and express those patterns and relationships? Tonality, I think, is one of the chief ways in which it does.


Human brains are connected to ears. Then tonality is just a sensual phenomena; a craving for consonant triads. Berg was right!


----------



## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Human brains are connected to ears. Then tonality is just a sensual phenomena; a craving for consonant triads. Berg was right!


Sorry, tonality is not just a "sensual" phenomenon. Where do you get this "craving for triads" out of what I said? You got that from Berg, not from me.


----------



## Woodduck

Mahlerian said:


> What you call "tonality in the broad sense" includes all of the music we've discussed, including serial music. I cannot think of any way in which the music of Brahms and Bach is more distant from Schoenberg's late period than from Ockeghem.
> 
> When you hear this, do you really think it is so distant from everything in traditional music?


Interesting piece. Quite tonal, really (if in a free way). Reminds me of Bach, Liszt, Reger, etc. What was this supposed to demonstrate about tonality/atonality?


----------



## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Oh, come on, Woodduck. You've made some disparaging remarks about serialism, and touted tonality as being a more effective music, and Marschalin Blair agrees with you.
> 
> If you're pretending to* not* be making a devisive argument which takes sides, I'm not believing it.


Does having a point of view mean that I have to consider everyone I disagree with completely wrong?


----------



## Guest

Marschallin Blair said:


> . . . or rather for obfuscation.
> 
> I'm not the only person who thinks this.
> 
> - Try again.


And we're not the only people who think this.

But if you want to submit truths to overall majority poll, try Kardashian vs. Callas :lol:


----------



## Mahlerian

Woodduck said:


> Interesting piece. Quite tonal, really (if in a free way). Reminds me of Bach, Liszt, Reger, etc. What was this supposed to demonstrate about tonality/atonality?


It is tonal, in fact (in D), but don't you feel that it's not really all that different from Schoenberg's other late works? It has the same kind of melody and polyphony, and the harmonization isn't that different either. The tonally-conceived material is also subjected to methods derived from the 12-tone method. Many people would likely hear it as 12-tone because of the constant chromaticism.

I think this 12-tone piece is actually less dissonant overall:


----------



## Marschallin Blair

nathanb said:


> And we're not the only people who think this.
> 
> But if you want to submit truths to overall majority poll, try Kardashian vs. Callas :lol:


How about "Kardashian vs. Schoenberg?"

Even 'dumb' leaves 'ugly' in the dust.


----------



## Guest

Bottom line, you seem unwilling to accept that your opinion isn't the law of the land.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

nathanb said:


> Bottom line, you seem unwilling to accept that your opinion isn't the law of the land.


Bottomer Line: You impute opinions to me that I quite simply don't hold.

Put a little 'leverage' into unhorsing that windmill, Don.


----------



## SeptimalTritone

Don't worry nathan. Even if the majority of classical music fans think Schoenberg is ugly (this may very well be true) it hardly matters, because the second theme group (at 1:25) of the Schoenberg third quartet is extremely beautiful, like a dialogue of two mothers' voices singing to their children in the calm blue darkness of the night:


----------



## Woodduck

Mahlerian said:


> It is tonal, in fact (in D), but don't you feel that it's not really all that different from Schoenberg's other late works? It has the same kind of melody and polyphony, and the harmonization isn't that different either. The tonally-conceived material is also subjected to methods derived from the 12-tone method. Many people would likely hear it as 12-tone because of the constant chromaticism.
> 
> I think this 12-tone piece is actually less dissonant overall:


A beautiful and absorbing little piece. Dreamlike (as performed here anyway). Harmonically iridescent, suggestive of many tonal possibilities but, of course, not following them. Interesting polyphonically. Thanks.


----------



## Guest

Marschallin Blair said:


> Bottomer Line: You impute opinions to me that I quite simply don't hold.
> 
> Put a little 'leverage' into unhorsing that windmill, Don.


Then I would suggest you post a very clear and brief statement of what opinion you actually hold and be very clear about who it applies to.

If you wish to do this, I'll point out very clearly whether or not you are actually projecting your own judgements upon others or if your opinion manages to be clearly expressed as an opinion.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

nathanb said:


> Then I would suggest you post a very clear and brief statement of what opinion you actually hold and be very clear about who it applies to.
> 
> If you wish to do this, I'll point out very clearly whether or not you are actually projecting your own judgements upon others or if your opinion manages to be clearly expressed as an opinion.


You can concentrate on 'your' posting style and of course refrain from criticizing mine- which is of course against the TC TOS.

Aesthetic appraisals of music are on trial, not personal opinions about aesthetic appraisals of music.


----------



## Woodduck

SeptimalTritone said:


> Don't worry nathan. Even if the majority of classical music fans think Schoenberg is ugly (this may very well be true) it hardly matters, because the second theme group (at 1:25) of the Schoenberg third quartet is extremely beautiful, like a dialogue of two mothers' voices singing to their children in the calm blue darkness of the night:


Nobody asked for my opinion, but... :lol:

I honestly don't get anything like what you get out of this music. Granted that your comment is fanciful and I wouldn't expect to imagine that imagery, I wonder where those impressions come from? I hear a nervous, obsessive figure, against which some not very distinguished lines appear in long notes. Occasionally there are pizzicati. What you call a "second theme group" sounds an awful lot like the first theme group - a tad quieter, but no notable change in character - and they don't sound like "groups" anyway. Groups of what? None of the material seems to me noteworthy in any way, the only interest being provided by some imitation. I'm a bit relieved at around 6:30, when the obsessive rhythm breaks down. The movement does end up leaving me with some sense of progress, mainly because of that final section (coda?), but up to then the only thing that really engages my mind is the polyphony. That's something, at least. Harmony? Extremely monotonous and unlovely. Melodic interest? Please. Seems to me that Schoenberg's done a lot better than this.


----------



## Guest

Marschallin Blair said:


> You can concentrate on 'your' posting style and of course refrain from criticizing mine- which is of course against the TC TOS.
> 
> Aesthetic appraisals of music are on trial, not personal opinions about aesthetic appraisals of music.


Perhaps then, you can refrain from blanket criticisms of music that others clearly connect with - which is of course not against the TC TOS but is in poor tastes nevertheless.


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## Mahlerian

I feel that this version captures the cantabile of Schoenberg's lines and the dramatic arc of the movement better, personally.


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## Marschallin Blair

nathanb said:


> Perhaps then, you can refrain from blanket criticisms of music that others clearly connect with - which is of course not against the TC TOS but is in poor tastes nevertheless.


Please, do try not to lecture me on 'taste.'

How perfectly marvelous to """compare""" Maria Callas fans to Kim Kardashian.


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## Guest

Marschallin Blair said:


> How perfectly marvelous to """compare""" Maria Callas fans to Kim Kardashian.


I was comparing the Callas fans to the Kardashian fans, not the Callas fans to Kardashian herself! Good lord, I can see why you'd be angry!


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## Marschallin Blair

nathanb said:


> I was comparing the Callas fans to the Kardashian fans, not the Callas fans to Kardashian herself! Good lord, I can see why you'd be angry!


Of course: You were comparing "_the Callas fans to the Kardashian fans_"- a separate and superior caste to Kim Kardashian herself.

(Cascading sarcasm.)


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## Guest

Marschallin Blair said:


> Of course: You were comparing "_the Callas fans to the Kardashian fans_"- a separate and superior caste to Kim Kardashian herself.


Yes. Endless gushing over fame and scandal... I rank it a few notches above pure evil itself.

For the record, I rank Maria a few notches higher than Kim too! I listened to her Rigoletto just last week, but damn, I'm not about to make a Lifetime Original Movie about it.


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## Woodduck

Mahlerian said:


> I feel that this version captures the cantabile of Schoenberg's lines and the dramatic arc of the movement better, personally.


A much more articulate performance indeed. I've also dug out my old DG La Salle Quartet set of the Second Viennese School string quartets to compare. They take a more propulsive, more agitated, almost fierce approach which I think works really well, helping to rescue the obsessive, nervous figure from being tiresome, though I have to admit I find that figure, as well as the constantly repeating, intervallically reaching "tunes," rather tiresome anyway (especially three times in one day!). Of the movements of this quartet I like the fourth best; more variety, pure and simple (is that phrase copyrighted around here?). The quiet ending is a surprise; not sure why he did it, but for me, in music written in an atonal harmonic idiom, the perpetual sense of harmonic suspension often wearies and cloys, and anything the composer can do with texture and gesture to jolt me is welcome.


----------



## Dim7

Woodduck expressed exactly what I feel about SQ No. 3 1st mov. Since this thread has turned into "Post Schoenberg videos" then I might as well post this movement from the piano suite op. 25 posted by Mahlerian in another thread, I find it a lot better than that string quartet:


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## dgee

How about we post some tonal music on this thread to demonstrate some of the expressive qualities supporters claim it inherently possesses? We always hear about tonal music in the abstract, but how about some concrete examples and an indication of where the common practice tonality or tonal hierarchy adds expression or somesuch? I'd personally appreciate some examples from the works of Italian opera composers of the nineteenth century - I've found their vast canvases expressively arid (although I'm sure they're very clever!) but understand they're highly rated by supporters

I'm looking forward to see what comes up


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## Mahlerian

May I submit that when I hear this music, my emotional state turns instantly to ennui and despair? All the worst of third-rate German late Romanticism, with nothing to save it.






(This piece may just be the worst thing I've heard recorded by a professional orchestra on a commercial label...)


----------



## Woodduck

Mahlerian said:


> May I submit that when I hear this music, my emotional state turns instantly to ennui and despair? All the worst of third-rate German late Romanticism, with nothing to save it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (This piece may just be the worst thing I've heard recorded by a professional orchestra on a commercial label...)


Inflated, meandering, unfocused, incomprehensibly narrativistic, quasi-filmic late Romantic schlock by a third - maybe fourth - rate composer whose obscurity is well-deserved. I suspect it was originally accompanied by a three-page program telling us bar by bar what's happening on the imaginary screen of our captive brains.

How would you rate this against Strauss's Japanese Festival Music, another revelation of mediocrity which you've been kind enough to bring us in the past?

I presume this is your response to dgee's "challenge." The joke is cute, as was his. Now we all know that tonal music can be bad. Gosh. I learn so much here on TC.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Inflated, meandering, unfocused, incomprehensibly narrativistic, quasi-filmic late Romantic schlock by a third - maybe fourth - rate composer whose obscurity is well-deserved. I suspect it was originally accompanied by a three-page program telling us bar by bar what's happening on the imaginary screen of our captive brains.
> 
> How would you rate this against Strauss's Japanese Festival Music, another revelation of mediocrity which you've been kind enough to bring us in the past?
> 
> I presume this is your response to dgee's "challenge." The joke is cute, as was his. Now we all know that tonal music can be bad. Gosh. I learn so much here on TC.


I've got to have it, now! Hopefully, it's still in print...


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> I've got to have it, now! Hopefully, it's still in print...


Why? Having trouble sleeping?


----------



## Mahlerian

Woodduck said:


> *Inflated, meandering, unfocused, incomprehensibly narrativistic, quasi-filmic late Romantic schlock by a third - maybe fourth - rate composer whose obscurity is well-deserved.* I suspect it was originally accompanied by a three-page program telling us bar by bar what's happening on the imaginary screen of our captive brains.
> 
> How would you rate this against Strauss's Japanese Festival Music, another revelation of mediocrity which you've been kind enough to bring us in the past?
> 
> I presume this is your response to dgee's "challenge." The joke is cute, as was his. Now we all know that tonal music can be bad. Gosh. I learn so much here on TC.


See? We can agree on something after all.

I'd put this below even Japanese Festival Music, which at least reaches a bare minimum of competency, despite being devoid of any interest.

Incidentally, I first heard of Boehe because one of his works (a part of a series of four tone poems on The Odyssey) was premiered at a contemporary music festival alongside Mahler's Sixth Symphony. Many of the other composers represented don't even have any recordings.

The point is that tonality qua tonality is not inherently emotionally powerful. Just as bad tonal music does nothing for us emotionally, great non-tonal music can stir the emotions.


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## Woodduck

Mahlerian said:


> See? We can agree on something after all.
> 
> I'd put this below even Japanese Festival Music, which at least reaches a bare minimum of competency, despite being devoid of any interest.
> 
> Incidentally, I first heard of Boehe because one of his works (a part of a series of four tone poems on The Odyssey) was premiered at a contemporary music festival alongside Mahler's Sixth Symphony. Many of the other composers represented don't even have any recordings.
> 
> The point is that tonality qua tonality is not inherently emotionally powerful. Just as bad tonal music does nothing for us emotionally, great non-tonal music can stir the emotions.


No argument here. No attribute of music has value if it's used badly. Incompetence is incompetence. Boring is boring.

But I'd rather hear dull tonal music than dull atonal music. At least I could fall asleep to it.



(BTW, I'm sure we'd agree on a lot of things. But what fun is that?)


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## Woodduck

Duplicate post.......


----------



## dgee

> dgee's "challenge."


No need to scare quote! I'd like to see the theories set out in this thread in action with a real life example and I'd thought someone/anyone would jump at the chance. Otherwise we've wound back from a theory about tonal hierarchy and expression all the way to "I couldn't fall asleep to atonal"...


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## Woodduck

Dgee wrote:

How about we post some tonal music on this thread to demonstrate some of the expressive qualities supporters claim it inherently possesses? We always hear about tonal music in the abstract, but how about some concrete examples and an indication of where the common practice tonality or tonal hierarchy adds expression or somesuch? I'd personally appreciate some examples from the works of Italian opera composers of the nineteenth century - I've found their vast canvases expressively arid (although I'm sure they're very clever!) but understand they're highly rated by supporters

I'm looking forward to see what comes up



dgee said:


> No need to scare quote! I'd like to see the theories set out in this thread in action with a real life example and I'd thought someone/anyone would jump at the chance. Otherwise we've wound back from a theory about tonal hierarchy and expression all the way to "I couldn't fall asleep to atonal"...


I wasn't going to comment on this, but now I have to.

Honestly - what could you _possibly_ be talking about? You are asking, if I'm reading you right, for _examples_ of tonal music which are in some unspecified sense "expressive" ("How about we post some tonal music on this thread to demonstrate some of the expressive qualities supporters claim it inherently possesses?"). What could this possibly mean? What, precisely, are you asking for a demonstration of? That some of the music of Western civilization written over the last four centuries is capable of being expressive? That's what it sounds like to me. That's what you seem to mean. But you're not _really_ asking for samples of music that has "expressive" qualities... or are you? Haven't you been living in Western civilization during the period in question? Haven't you already noticed that music - tonal music, which most music has been until recently - makes people, well, _feel_ things? Hasn't it, possibly, even made _you_ feel things? You need _proof_ that it has? And you think that someone putting a few favorite pieces of music here and saying "see how expressive this is" constitutes the "proof" of whatever it is you're asking for proof of - _or of anything whatsoever?_

If I were to put up here a movement from a Bach concerto which I found powerfully moving but you did not, what would have been the point? Or, if you agreed that it was expressive, what would we have learned? What, in particular, would it tell us about tonality or the absence of it? Mahlerian has already put up a poor tonal composition, evidently to show that tonal music can be poor. Well - if I may say so - duh! And now we're supposed to find an "expressive" tonal piece to show that tonal music can be expressive?

Aiyaiyai!



Lucy, you've got some 'splainin' to do!


----------



## dgee

Nah - unfortunately I'm now fairly bored with the discussion of the relative merits of "tonality" and "atonality" based on "theories" and not on responses to the music. So capricious am I. Think, I'll ignore future "theorising" on TC and stick to the music related bits


----------



## arpeggio

Mahlerian said:


> May I submit that when I hear this music, my emotional state turns instantly to ennui and despair? All the worst of third-rate German late Romanticism, with nothing to save it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (This piece may just be the worst thing I've heard recorded by a professional orchestra on a commercial label...)


Wow. I thought I was going to get into trouble with some of my friends because at first I liked the music. I thought what is the problem with the music. It was a good piece of music by a B level composer. By the tenth minute I was sick of it.


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## Woodduck

dgee said:


> Nah - unfortunately I'm now fairly bored with the discussion of the relative merits of "tonality" and "atonality" based on "theories" and not on responses to the music. So capricious am I. Think, I'll ignore future "theorising" on TC and stick to the music related bits


Whew. I thought I was going to have to post 400 years worth of YouTube clips!

I have to wonder why you think these discussions are not based on people's responses to music. Why would anyone bother to think and write about the nature of music if they were not inspired by their experience of it?

But that's OK. I'm not really asking.


----------



## isorhythm

^I listened to a few minutes of that Boehe piece before losing patience, but I think he could have been a solid film composer.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Honestly - what could you _possibly_ be talking about? You are asking, if I'm reading you right, for _examples_ of tonal music which are in some unspecified sense "expressive" ("How about we post some tonal music on this thread to demonstrate some of the expressive qualities supporters claim it inherently possesses?"). What could this possibly mean? What, precisely, are you asking for a demonstration of? That some of the music of Western civilization written over the last four centuries is capable of being expressive? That's what it sounds like to me. That's what you seem to mean. But you're not _really_ asking for samples of music that has "expressive" qualities... or are you? Haven't you been living in Western civilization during the period in question? Haven't you already noticed that music - tonal music, which most music has been until recently - makes people, well, _feel_ things? Hasn't it, possibly, even made _you_ feel things? You need _proof_ that it has? And you think that someone putting a few favorite pieces of music here and saying "see how expressive this is" constitutes the "proof" of whatever it is you're asking for proof of - _or of anything whatsoever?_


You're absolutely right! It would make much more sense to post examples of music that is* un*expressive, like Mozart's flute concertos, most of early Vivaldi, etc...


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> But it's still _wrong_, regardless of how it feels to you.
> 
> Serial music can be tonal, in fact, and non-tonal music always has hierarchical relationships and tension/resolution dynamics, even if they are not the same ones of traditional tonality.


I have in front of me a book which can explain what it is that Mahlerian is trying to say, although I think he is using the word "tonal" rather generally.

It's called *Arnold Schoenberg: Notes, Sets Forms* by Silvina Milstein. The entire book is concerned with how Schoenberg did not ever completely abandon some aspects of tonality, and goes into detail. Here is a general statement of what she is getting at:

_(QUOTE) In many of Schoenberg's atonal and 12-tone works, tonal function is not abandoned completely, but single pitch-classes or pitch-levels, rendered prominent by virtue of their position as boundaries of groupings, are often made to bear implications formerly pertaining to tonal regions or keys and therefore function as true tonal centers displaying centricity within a given context without necessarily carrying all the implications of the tonal system....
In Schoenberg the structural importance of tonal centres and the manner in which they are used varies not only among different works, but also among different sections of a single work. However, many of Schoenberg's compositions share certain devices for creating hierarchies; namely, the structure of regular metre and the prominence of those pitch-levels or pitch-classes which appear at the boundaries of groupings, often reinforced by leading-note and appoggiatura-like semitonal figures, and frequently supported by perfect fifths and by the use of idiomatic cadential gestures. While the nature of conventional metric structure remains essentially unaffected by the new situation, the retention of pitch-class centres or pitch-level centres unsupported by tonal progression creates a new syntactical context in which tonal motion is achieved through the polyphonic unfolding of hierarchically structured lines...
The use of individual pitch-levels and pitch-classes as tonal centres has also been identified in Berg. Perle commented in relation to Wozzeck that "though one notes the occasional presence of tonic functionality in this otherwise 'atonal' work...the centricity of a given pitch or collection of pitches is no less unmistakable in many of the "atonal" sections of Wozzeck." Perle explained in relation to the tonal centre which he identified as being the primary linear focal element in scene 1 in Wozzeck that "its priority was expressed through repetition, durational preponderance, and prominence at registral and temporal boundaries." (END QUOTE)_

So, mystery solved! Now we finally know what Mahlerian means when he says "serial music is tonal."

However, I think such off-the-wall statements are incomplete and misleading. 12-tone music is not _really_ a tonal hierarchy, but can use some of the same syntax, and yes, can even be tonally functional or tone-centric in spots. But to say it is 'tonal' is misleading, and doesn't go into enough detail, as I have done here in explaining his statement.


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## millionrainbows

In the liner notes of this 2-CD set, it explains how Schoenberg, in one of the quartets, was not even using the row as thematic, or to be recognized by pitch at all, but simply used meter and rhythmic phrasing as the "identity" of the lines.


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> In the liner notes of this 2-CD set, it explains how Schoenberg, in one of the quartets, was not even using the row as thematic, or to be recognized by pitch at all, but simply used meter and rhythmic phrasing as the "identity" of the lines.


That's a distortion of what he actually said. He was telling people not to listen for the row, and this was misconstrued as meaning that the pitch element wasn't important.

In fact, the same liner notes for the same quartet (No. 3) say the following:
"Certainly the interplay of *melodic and rhythmic motives* explains the great richness of all four movements in a gradual accumulation of numerous affinities between disparate elements."


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## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> So, mystery solved! Now we finally know what Mahlerian means when he says "serial music is tonal."


No, it's simpler than that.

_If modal music and chant are tonal_, all music, so long as it is organized according to pitch, is tonal, and will be heard as such. That's it.



millionrainbows said:


> However, I think such off-the-wall statements are incomplete and misleading. 12-tone music is not _really_ a tonal hierarchy, but can use some of the same syntax, and yes, can even be tonally functional or tone-centric in spots. But to say it is 'tonal' is misleading, and doesn't go into enough detail, as I have done here in explaining his statement.


Modal music isn't _really_ a tonal hierarchy either. It isn't tonally functional at all. To say it is tonal is not only misleading, but in a very fundamental sense wrong.


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## millionrainbows

I think you need to make a distinction between 'tone centric' and atonal/serial music. Schoenberg can have spots of tone-centricity, but it's constructed purposely, and is not a basic structural element of any tone row.

Tone-centric music, on the other hand, is structured using unordered sets, i.e. scales or modes. These are intrinsically tone-centric, because they have a scale (or mode) which begins on a starting note (root) and proceeds through one octave.

When discussing the experience of 'tonality' or tone-centeredness, I do not recognize the traditional 'academic' definition of 'tonal' which says modal music is not tonal.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> That's a distortion of what he actually said. He was telling people not to listen for the row, and this was misconstrued as meaning that the pitch element wasn't important.
> 
> In fact, the same liner notes for the same quartet (No. 3) say the following:
> "Certainly the interplay of *melodic and rhythmic motives* explains the great richness of all four movements in a gradual accumulation of numerous affinities between disparate elements."


As I interpret it, it said not to listen to the row, or any thematic elements either; that the only thing giving it identity was the rhythmic syntax.


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> I think you need to make a distinction between 'tone centric' and atonal/serial music. Schoenberg can have spots of tone-centricity, but it's constructed purposely, and is not a basic structural element of any tone row.
> 
> Tone-centric music, on the other hand, is structured using unordered sets, i.e. scales or modes. These are intrinsically tone-centric, because they have a scale (or mode) which begins on a starting note (root) and proceeds through one octave.
> 
> When discussing the experience of 'tonality' or tone-centeredness, I do not recognize the traditional 'academic' definition of 'tonal' which says modal music is not tonal.


Why is it academic?

Modal music sounds distinctly different from tonal music, and the differences are easy to explain.

Post-tonal music also sounds distinctly different from tonal music, and the differences are easy to explain.

I cannot hear your distinction between "tone-centric" and "atonal" music, and you have been unable to explain it in any non-circular fashion.

I agree that tone rows do not innately imply tonality, the way chordal structures in tonal music do. But rows are not music, they are merely the material from which serial music is fashioned. Likewise, a collection of all of the chords used in a tonal piece, apart from any ordering, does not necessarily imply a specific tonality. One finds that the dominant harmony is usually more often used than the tonic.



millionrainbows said:


> As I interpret it, it said not to listen to the row, or any thematic elements either; that the only thing giving it identity was the rhythmic syntax.


But that's false. I'm quoting the same thing you are, and it specifically mentions melodic motives.

On top of that, I can _hear_ melodic motives and themes and such. Again, I trust my ear.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> Why is it academic?
> 
> Modal music sounds distinctly different from tonal music, and the differences are easy to explain.


The academic definition of 'tonal' means the major/minor scales, and it excludes modes or modal music.

The academic definition of 'tonal' is referring to a traditional system, not to the experience of sound itself; that's why it excludes modal music, scale-based music.

For our purposes, in discussing how music _actually sounds_, and how tonality is _experienced (by the ear/brain)_, we need to avoid the old, restricted definition of tonality. It's only good for referring to that particular tradition. That's why I substitute the term 'tone-centric' whenever possible. Otherwise, clarity will be lost.



Mahlerian said:


> I cannot hear your distinction between "tone-centric" and "atonal" music...


Listening is to an extent subjective, so I can't provide you with any sort of 'definitive' definition which will cover the wide range of music out there; besides, there are too many grey areas, and music which represents 'tonality in transition,' such as Debussy.

Most tone-centric music, however, is self evident to the ear. It's fairly easy to spot this in folk musics, ethnic musics, 'primitive' music, pop music, etc.

Atonal music covers a wide area, as well, so I cannot provide you an easy, black-and white answer to your statement, "...I cannot hear your distinction between "tone-centric" and "atonal" music."

Just as 'tonality' is not really a 'listening' term, the term 'atonal' is not really a 'listening' term, either, but refers to (Western) music which has no tonal center (in the tonal sense). It refers to music which is structured using all sorts of other hierarchical methods, and ways of approaching and dividing the 12-note octave collection of pitches. This includes Bartok, but not all, parts of Debussy, but not all, etc.

So let's agree not to discuss the* experience* of 'tone-centricity' with terms better suited for identifying different kinds of music in terms of their structural characteristics.



Mahlerian said:


> I agree that tone rows do not innately imply tonality, the way chordal structures in tonal music do. But rows are not music, they are merely the material from which serial music is fashioned.
> Likewise, a collection of all of the chords used in a tonal piece, apart from any ordering, does not _necessarily_ imply a specific tonality. One finds that the dominant harmony is usually more often used than the tonic...


Tone-centric music uses scales, which are unordered. These act as an 'index' of notes, which imply tone-centricity by this very characteristic. Scales have a 'starting' note, and cover an octave. Placing a scale within an octave in such a way creates a recursive structure, which is_ intrinsically_ tone-centric. You can put in on a circle, with the root a 12 o'clock, and it is self-explanatory. That's why in set theory, a number line is used, not a circle.

_"Likewise, a collection of all of the chords used in a tonal piece, apart from any ordering, does not necessarily imply a specific tonality..."_
To avoid a sense of tone-centricity in such music would require conscious effort to avoid such tendencies, and is a rather artificial exception in this context. A broad range of musical example would easily prove this. But I'm not interested in 'proving' that; I simply want to clarify.

Besides that, "chords without ordering" means "no hierarchy," and that's a non-sensical way of putting it, when discussing tonality. Chords can only have function in relation to a tonic.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> That's a distortion of what he actually said.* He was telling people not to listen for the row, *and this was misconstrued as meaning that the pitch element wasn't important.


That's not what the liner notes state. If you would care to post the actual quote, we can proceed.


----------



## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> I agree that tone rows do not innately imply tonality, the way chordal structures in tonal music do...*a collection of all of the chords used in a tonal piece, apart from any ordering, does not necessarily imply a specific tonality.*


Yes, it does.

Tonality (a sense of tone-centricity perceived by the ear/brain) is established in one way, by _movement in time,_ in the horizontal dimension, as relations.

One note or chord can establish this, but it has no relations.

Two chords can establish this, but it's weak. C-G can be seen as I-V (key of C) or as V-I (key of G).

Three or more chords establish a stronger sense of tonality, depending on how they are used.

So, a collection of chords with no movement or progression do not imply a sense of tonality (tone-centricity) until a horizontal spectrum of relationships (you called this 'ordering') is established. But once this is established, the chords acquire a 'function' in relation to the key note. This remains fixed and consistent for that key. But this is not the only way tonality is established using scales and triads built on those scale steps.

A tone row cannot _innately_ imply tonality (a sense of tone-centricity perceived by the ear/brain) in and of itself, or when put on a horizontal dimension. It is only the relations to other lines (forms of the row) that would imply tonality (a sense of tone-centricity perceived by the ear/brain) that could do this.

Even so, these perceived tonal effects would not have a consistent identity as such, or fixed 'function' (there is no function in 12-tone music), nor would any of these suggestions of tonality (a sense of tone-centricity perceived by the ear/brain) be related to a keynote. So tone rows cannot consistently establish tonality, even in the horizontal dimension, except by chance relations.

Nor can tone rows establish tonality vertically, because they have no innate vertical hierarchy.

When Mahlerian said "a collection of all of the chords used in a tonal piece, *apart from any ordering,* does not necessarily imply a specific tonality," this is ambiguous. "Ordering" can be taken to mean "horizontal progression," but that's only one aspect of 'tonal ordering.'

"The collection of chords used in a tonal piece," in another sense, _cannot be 'devoid of order,' because they imply a recursive (circular, repeating) tonal hierarchy_. This is because the triads are derived from scales, and scales are recursive. So, _no matter if the chords are used horizontally or not,_ there is an innate structure of tonality built-in to them, by their "vertical" relation to the key note.

Not so with tone rows, because the strict ordering precludes any relations _between the notes as a whole collection_ (like a scale is). _There is no innate 'vertical' dimension to a tone row, as a scale (or collection of chords) has in tonality. _

The only relations in a tone row are _adjacent_ (before or after the note in question); there are no cross-relations or multiple relations to any one note within the row, except as it is ordered through time.

So, to try to equate tone rows with tonal scales, in a vertical sense, is flawed from the beginning, and is not a valid example.


----------



## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> I agree that tone rows do not innately imply tonality, the way chordal structures in tonal music do. But rows are not music, they are merely the material from which serial music is fashioned. *Likewise, a collection of all of the chords used in a tonal piece, apart from any ordering, does not necessarily imply a specific tonality.*


A *scale itself* creates tonality, and also *creates all functions of chords used in that tonality *(key), _before any time has passed or before any horizontal relationships have been established. _

It can do this because a scale is a 'theoretical index' of notes. The _internal relations_ of the scale establish all the functions of any triads built on the scale steps. Thus, harmonic movement can be reduced to root movement, which only requires an interval.

*Tonality happens instantly,* in the vertical dimension. The potential is already there. The horizontal fleshing-out of chords and root movement is secondary, and a construct which is experienced cerebrally.

Each note in the scale has a place in relation to the key note; this is called an hierarchy. Thus, the harmonic relations are created by harmonic intervals (two notes sounded simultaneously).

Each of the scale steps has a consonance/dissonance ratio, which establishes how harmonically related it is to the tonic. The more consonant, the more related.

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, no,* "...a collection of all of the chords used in a tonal piece, apart from any ordering, does not necessarily imply a specific tonality."* But a scale does. It has alreay 'ordered' the scale notes into an hierarchy, upon which your chords are built. Tone rows can't do that.

You should have compared tone rows with scales, not chords.


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## millionrainbows

In certain parts of the third, Schoenberg said not to listen for the *transformations* of the row. This would include any division into subsets, or of any sort of grouping. He didn't want you to listen in terms of 'identifiable musical ideas conveyed by pitch.' He wanted the notes to have identity *primarily through their rhythmic identity,* because he realized that's where a 'melody' or string of pitches gets most of its identity.
*
You can prove this by asking people to identify tunes like "Mary had a little lamb" as you bang them out with your fist on a piano, following the contour. In almost all cases, people can identify the tune, because of it's rhythmic identity, not because of the pitches.*


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## millionrainbows

So, tonality is a 'potentiality' which is pre-determined by the scale collection.


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## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> In certain parts of the third, Schoenberg said not to listen for the *transformations* of the row. This would include any division into subsets, or of any sort of grouping. He didn't want you to listen in terms of 'identifiable musical ideas conveyed by pitch.' He wanted the notes to have identity *primarily through their rhythmic identity,* because he realized that's where a 'melody' or string of pitches gets most of its identity.


The first part here doesn't imply the second. He doesn't want you to follow the transformations of the row in the sense that one thinks about the fact that here we are hearing the inversion, here the retrograde transposed at the tritone, and so forth. Obviously, the effects produced by these things are the point, not the fact that they are done.

At any rate, compare Schoenberg's notes on the work here.

Also this comment: "[The] tones, intervals, and rhythm of this figure undergo innumerable changes often for mere variety or for a change of mood or character, or because additional countermelodies are demanding it, but also in order to produce as many contrasts as the present situation requests." (See here)



Millionrainbows said:


> *You can prove this by asking people to identify tunes like "Mary had a little lamb" as you bang them out with your fist on a piano, following the contour. In almost all cases, people can identify the tune, because of it's rhythmic identity, not because of the pitches.*


And rhythmic motifs exist in other music as well, eg Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.


----------



## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> You should have compared tone rows with scales, not chords.


No, a tone row is not used in a manner analogous to a scale in any way. It is much closer to an unordered index of the chords used in a piece.

Also, that a scale in itself does *not* imply tonality should be obvious from the fact that the same scale may be used to generate any number of centers, depending on context and treatment.


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## EDaddy

I'm clearly late to the party here but it seems to me that "atonal" simply refers to music that exhibits a more obscure (less-defined) tonal center than music with a more clearly-defined center of tonality. Taken literally, I suppose no music can truly be atonal so long as there are any notes ringing out. However, if one were to mash down on a piano, grabbing as many notes as possible in large, random clusters like, say, a child might, while there would be many notes ringing out, there is nothing tonal about it, at least in musical terms. This would be an extreme example of atonal, of course. The more atonal, the less tonally-centered or "musical" it will sound. The question is, how far into the realm of atonal can a composer/performer go before it starts sounding musically preposterous? 

In my opinion, for example, pretty much everything John Coltrane did post 1966 is complete musical rubbish, simply because the "music" is so far removed from any tonal center that it sounds... well... musically preposterous. 

Of course, that's just my humble/ not-so-humble opinion... for what it's worth.


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## Dim7

EDaddy said:


> I suppose no music can truly be atonal so long as there are any notes ringing out. However, if one were to mash down on a piano, grabbing as many notes as possible in large, random clusters like, say, a child might, while there would be many notes ringing out, there is nothing tonal about it, at least in musical terms.


You can even bang only the white keys of piano randomly and it sounds still pretty atonal... atonal music in C major


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## millionrainbows

MR: "You should have compared tone rows with scales, not chords."



Mahlerian said:


> No, a tone row is not used in a manner analogous to a scale in any way.


That's true, but you were comparing tonal structures to tone rows, saying that neither one implied tonality; but that's not true, *a scale does imply tonality.* Chords don't; they are just triads built on the scale steps; the scale steps are already established.* Root movement *is what defines the functionality of the chord, and roots are built on scale steps, so the function has already been determined by the step.



Mahlerian said:


> It (a tone row) is much closer to an unordered index of the chords used in a piece.


Why? Apparently, you can't explain that statement. The whole comparison is ridiculous; tonal scales imply tonality, tone rows do not.



Mahlerian said:


> Also, that a scale in itself does *not* imply tonality should be obvious from the fact that* the same scale may be used to generate any number of centers*, depending on context and treatment.


Not in tonality! A scale is defined and named by its tonic, which is the beginning of the scale/octave. I have no earthly idea what you mean.

*WIK: (quote)A specific scale is defined by* its characteristic interval pattern and by* a special note, known as its first degree (or tonic).

The* *tonic *of a scale *is the note selected as the beginning of the octave,* and therefore as the beginning of the adopted interval pattern. Typically, the name of the scale specifies both its tonic and its interval pattern. For example, *C-major indicates a major scale in which C is the tonic.* (end quote)

I can't have a discussion when basic dictionary definitions are questioned.


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## millionrainbows

Dim7 said:


> You can even bang only the white keys of piano randomly and it sounds still pretty atonal... atonal music in C major


Try this:stack a scale's worth (7 notes) of fifths from C (C-G-D-A-E-B-F#), then stack fifths from F (F-C-G-D-A-E-B, and see which one sounds more consonantly tonal, at rest. Or, just watch this video!


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## Mahlerian

millionrainbows said:


> That's true, but you were comparing tonal structures to tone rows, saying that neither one implied tonality; but that's not true, *a scale does imply tonality.* Chords don't; they are just triads built on the scale steps; the scale steps are already established.* Root movement *is what defines the functionality of the chord, and roots are built on scale steps, so the function has already been determined by the step.


Exactly, and these things are why modal music isn't tonal either. It doesn't have functional harmony or root movement in the same sense.




millionrainbows said:


> Why? Apparently, you can't explain that statement. The whole comparison is ridiculous; tonal scales imply tonality, tone rows do not.


Tone rows, like an unordered index of chords, provide the harmonic and melodic potential for a piece. Like an unordered index of chords, they do not in themselves form any kind of structure, and one must be constructed from them.



Millionrainbows said:


> Not in tonality! A scale is defined and named by its tonic, which is the beginning of the scale/octave. I have no earthly idea what you mean.
> 
> *WIK: (quote)A specific scale is defined by* its characteristic interval pattern and by* a special note, known as its first degree (or tonic).
> 
> The* *tonic *of a scale *is the note selected as the beginning of the octave,* and therefore as the beginning of the adopted interval pattern. Typically, the name of the scale specifies both its tonic and its interval pattern. For example, *C-major indicates a major scale in which C is the tonic.* (end quote)
> 
> I can't have a discussion when basic dictionary definitions are questioned.


Okay, I should have said the notes of a scale do not in themselves imply a center. This is especially true if we speak of non-diatonic "scales" such as the whole-tone scale or octatonic scale, but it is also true of the traditional major and minor diatonic scales.


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## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> Exactly, and these things are why modal music isn't tonal either. It doesn't have functional harmony or root movement in the same sense.


Yes, I think we've heard that before.



Mahlerian said:


> ...the notes of a scale do not in themselves imply a center, (This) is also true of the traditional major and minor diatonic scales.


This sounds like a tonal implication if I ever heard one:

From definition of a scale (WIK):* The tonic *of a scale is the note selected as the beginning of the octave, and therefore as the beginning of the adopted interval pattern. Typically, the name of the scale specifies both *its tonic* and its interval pattern. For example, C-major indicates a major scale in which* C is the tonic.

*


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## EDaddy

Dim7 said:


> You can even bang only the white keys of piano randomly and it sounds still pretty atonal... atonal music in C major


Ha! I'll have a C major scale all at once please... a la carte!


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## millionrainbows

If we are truly and sincerely trying to define the terms "tonal" and "atonal" in relation to the _*listening experience *_(the perception of tonal centers), then atonality is is *perceived* as music which has no tonal center.

We're going to have to make up our minds as to the way in which we use these terms, and what our ultimate goal is: either historical reference, or as *terms which describe the experience and perception of tonal centers in listened-to music.*

Yes, of course, it is improper to refer to Japanese Noh music as "atonal" as we normally use the term in the West, and it is a term which evolved in a Western context.

If our goal is to *describe the listening experience,* which I think is more important and relevant to all the listening members here, then we need to use the *general definition of tonality *(as music which has a perceived tonal center, and which includes _almost all music, tribal or modal_), and "atonality" to refer to music which is *perceived *as having no tonal center.

Thus, I see the basic premise of this thread question *(Does atonal music really exist?)* to be flawed, or at best ambiguous and unclear, since it makes no effort to distinguish between the academic, stylistic, historical use of the terms "tonal" and "atonal," with general definitions of tonal/atonal which are used to refer to *the experience and perception of tonal centers in listening to music,* whether that music is CP tonal, modal, Gregorian chant, ethnic musics, folk musics, etc). In this sense (see Harvard Dictionary of Music), almost all music is tonal in the general sense.

In fact, I see this entire line of argumentation as a subtle form of 'academic trolling,' since it uses terminology to perpetuate misconceptions and does nothing to clear up the issue of what tonality is, as experienced by listeners.

Again, we must make up our minds as to how we wish to use the terms "tonality/atonality;" as academic/historical/stylistic terms, or as terms which describe the listening experience.


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## mtmailey

AS i see it playing all 12 notes on the scale makes it atonal but as long as it sounds great i really do not care.


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## millionrainbows

mtmailey said:


> AS i see it playing all 12 notes on the scale makes it atonal but as long as it sounds great i really do not care.


It's statistical, as well; the more notes, the weaker the tonality. The 12-note chromatic scale weakens the sense of tonality considerably, compared to a pentatonic or diatonic scale. "Ordering" the 12 notes into a row (not a scale), and specifying that no note is to be repeated until all 12 have occurred (as in Schoenberg's method) weaken the perceived sense of tonality even further.


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## millionrainbows

What is it that makes tonal music tonal, and atonal music not-tonal?

Tonality is based on the harmonic model; atonal music is not.

A fundamental tone has higher, quieter harmonics, which give a tone its timbre. This is what makes a violin sound like a violin, a flute like a flute, and so on.

The harmonics are subservient, lesser components of the main tone; the fundamental pitch is "1", with the harmonics being higher fractional divisions of that "1": 2/3, 4/5, etc.

Likewise, a tonal scale has a keynote, and the other scale steps are the fractional divisions of that. This is a harmonic model.

Tonality is at its strongest when it is in a diatonic 7-note scale, in key areas which do not change, and are closely related. This is the whole purpose of tonality: to reinforce the tonality by using stable triads, and exploiting the sonorous quality of these materials.

This is the way our ears hear, as well. So harmonically-based music will be immediately apparent to our ears. Atonal music will not; it will be apparent that it is not harmonically based, and has no perceived tonal center, even though it may sound quite sonorous.

*Atonal music* is based on some other way of structuring, not a harmonic model.

Schoenberg did this by using ordered, essentially melodic tone rows, not scales.

A scale differs from a tone row; in a scale, every note is related to every other note in the scale, and all these are related to the keynote, or "1". This is called the 'harmonic content' of the scale.

In tone rows, the notes are related only to the preceding and succeeding note.

In set theory, an_* un*_ordered set can have harmonic content, and this is called its "interval vector." In this sense, it is similar to a scale: every note in the scale can relate, or be combined with, every other note in the scale.

*Ordered* sets do not have interval vectors, because they are horizontal entities, with no vertical harmonic content.

Complications arise when *"abstract pitch geometries"* began to creep in to tonality, and weaken it, or make it more ambiguous. This began to happen as music became more chromatic, and more of the 12 notes began to come into use.

These constructs, like the division of the octave symmetrically at the tritone, and whole-tone and diminished scales, are not based on stable triads (with fifths), or sonorities which reinforce the tonality. If anything, they weaken it.

Still, these "abstract pitch geometries" are part of tonality, as in Debussy and Bartok. They are *used* tonally, as well. Just the concept of a "whole tone *scale"* is tonal.

For example, the whole tone scale can imply a tonal center depending on which note you start the scale on, and there are six to choose from. Also, in a tonal context, the WT scale on the V degree can imply an altered dominant, as in Thelonious Monk's signature whole-tone run.

But abstract pitch geometries, and symmetries such as these are a part of *both* tonality, *and *serial/12-tone music. This way of thinking took us away from the sonorous, stable world of tonality, and weakened or expanded tonality; it also is an abstract, geometric way of thinking about the 12-note division of the octave, which applies to serial ans 12-tone methods.

For example, the whole tone set can be thought of not as a 'scale' but as an* interval projection: *the major second, "projected" or stacked onto itself in a recursive way.


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## Che2007

I don't think that atonal music is not harmonic. As much as you can describe tonal music as harmonic, you can also describe atonal music. It still deals with frequency ratios. It doesn't matter whether you have a row or some other abstract system, it is just another system for ordering harmonic relationships. Tonality is no less abstract than serial practices.

I think I must disagree with you about the whalebone scale being a projection of the whole tone. I think it is rather a 6fold division of the 8ve. That is a bit of a different thing.


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## Che2007

Also, to answer the main thread's thesis "Does atonal music exist?"

Simple answer: Yes.


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## millionrainbows

Che2007 said:


> I don't think that atonal music is not harmonic. As much as you can describe tonal music as harmonic, you can also describe atonal music. It still deals with frequency ratios. It doesn't matter whether you have a row or some other abstract system, it is just another system for ordering harmonic relationships. Tonality is no less abstract than serial practices.


I didn't say that atonal music was "not harmonic" (whatever is meant by that); I said that atonal music is not based on a *harmonic model.*

Of course, all music using pitches is "harmonic" and has sonority.

In the case of 12-tone music, the original, retrograde, inversion, and retrograde inversion forms are well-suited for tone rows, because tone rows are *melodic* (not harmonic or vertical).

Try to apply this to tonality, and you can't, in this sense: a scale can't be "inverted" or "reversed" (this has no meaning) because it is only an _abstract index of notes, with no order. _Melodies can be inverted in tonality, but not scales.

Scales are conventionally_ depicted_ as a sequence of notes from low to high, as if they were "progressing" through time horizontally, but this is only a convention. Scales do not actually "exist" as realized musical entities; they are just an* index* of notes, with a starting point, which covers that octave.
_______________________________________________________________________________

Tone rows are *melodic *musical entities, unlike scales, because they are horizontal, melodic entities (intervallic relations, regardless of pitch) with order, which must proceed in a sequence of time, like a melodic construct, in order to have meaning. The intervallic relations of a tone row are fixed, similar to a melody, but are really about interval relations.

These intervallic relations are _ordered,_ because it would make no sense to stack them vertically; they are not designed to be harmonically useful in that sense, since they contain all 12 notes, and register is not specified (in serial music, anyway): pitches, in the harmonic sense, are not the important thing in tone rows; _intervals are._

The idea of *melodic inversion, retrograde*, etc, is applicable to tonality, but _only in the melodic sense._ You can't "invert" a scale because it is not horizontal entity.

What are scales useful for, then? They are _unordered,_ so there are cross-relations between every note in the scale with every other note. What does this mean? It means that scales have a_ harmonic content,_ unlike tone rows.

What are harmonic content, and cross-relations in a scale? I means this: every note is related to every other note:

*C Major scale: C-C-E-F-G-A-B
*
Relations: First note, *C: *
C-D; C-E; C-F; C-G; C-A; C-B

Then, next note, *D: *
D-E; D-F; D-G; D-A; D-B

Then, next note, *E: *
E-F; E-G; E-A; E-B

Then, next note, *F: *
F-G; F-A; F-B

Then, next note, *G: *
G-A; G-B

Then, next note, *A:
*A-B

These intervals can be counted, to come up with a "harmonic content" of the scale: 
minor seconds: 2 (E-F, B-C)
major seconds: 5 (C-D, D-E, F-G, G-A, A-B)
minor thirds: 4: D-F, E-G, A-C, B-D)
major thirds: 3: C-E, F-A, G-B
fourths: 5: C-F, D-G, E-A, G-C, A-D
tritones: 1: (B-F)

20 relations; with 6 basic interval types (the rest are inversions): m2/M7, M2/m7, m3/M6, M3/m6, 4th/5th/, and tritone.

You can't do this with a tone-row, because the relations are restricted by ordering:
C-C#-D-D#-E-F-F#-G-G#-A-A#-B (chromatic set)

C-C#, C#-D, D-D#, D#-E, E-F, F-F#, F#-G, G-G#, G#-A, A-A#, A#-B, B-C

There a 12 interval relations. This is not a good row because the intervals are all the same, minor seconds.

As usual, I'll turn this into a blog.


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## Ali Dmo

these are two labels that are not used correctly, as long as you have more than one line , you have contrepoint/harmony. but imo ( no special reference ) Atonality based specially on not having cadence on a tonic that you were expecting to hear.


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## millionrainbows

Ali Dmo said:


> these are two labels that are not used correctly, as long as you have more than one line , you have contrepoint/harmony. but imo ( no special reference ) Atonality based specially on not having cadence on a tonic that you were expecting to hear.


That would be like calling organum "harmony."

Has anyone really thought about what they are saying in this thread? I often wonder. People seem to be able to cite things by rote, but it seems as if they don't know what these things really mean.


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## Che2007

millionrainbows said:


> Tone rows are *melodic *musical entities, unlike scales, because they are horizontal, melodic entities (intervallic relations, regardless of pitch) with order, which must proceed in a sequence of time, like a melodic construct, in order to have meaning. The intervallic relations of a tone row are fixed, similar to a melody, but are really about interval relations.


I think everyone can agree that a row isn't a scale, but it does use intervals from a scale. The chromatic scale. Some serial pieces use a more restricted palette actually such as Stravinsky's 9-note rows for instance. I don't think people are trying to say they are scales...



> These intervallic relations are _ordered,_ because it would make no sense to stack them vertically; they are not designed to be harmonically useful in that sense, since they contain all 12 notes, and register is not specified (in serial music, anyway): pitches, in the harmonic sense, are not the important thing in tone rows; _intervals are._


Serial music very often involves sounding parts of the set as a harmony. You can get some very interesting harmonies arising, like Berg's quote of Wagner's Tristan in the last movement of the Lyric Suite.



> The idea of *melodic inversion, retrograde*, etc, is applicable to tonality, but _only in the melodic sense._ You can't "invert" a scale because it is not horizontal entity.


I don't see how this relates to the matter at hand. You could invert a scale but I don't know how musically useful it would be. BTW you can invert harmonies so your horizontal/vertical thing doesn't really add up. Plus, it is best to avoid using those words - music isn't a spatial thing, it happens in time. You would do better with consecutive and simultaneous.



> What are scales useful for, then? They are _unordered,_ so there are cross-relations between every note in the scale with every other note. What does this mean? It means that scales have a_ harmonic content,_ unlike tone rows.


What is the difference between the intervals in a scale and the intervals in a row? What elevates them to the level of 'harmonic content'? You can have a 5th in a tone row just as you do in a scale. You can order your row so that the 5th are brought out prominently. You have have rows form 5th based harmonies in a piece. So what is the difference? I think you are forgetting that in serial music there is still a scale - it is the chromatic scale and it has just as much claim to harmonic content as any other.



> You can't do this with a tone-row, because the relations are restricted by ordering:
> C-C#-D-D#-E-F-F#-G-G#-A-A#-B (chromatic set)
> 
> C-C#, C#-D, D-D#, D#-E, E-F, F-F#, F#-G, G-G#, G#-A, A-A#, A#-B, B-C
> 
> There a 12 interval relations. This is not a good row because the intervals are all the same, minor seconds.


You can do all sorts of harmonic things with a tone row. You can set it against other versions of the row which will mean you have harmony arising. You can segment the row into idiomatic sets and then use these as a harmonic repertoire. Having a row as a compositional aid doesn't just negate harmony.


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## millionrainbows

Che2007 said:


> I think everyone can agree that a row isn't a scale, but it does use intervals from a scale. The chromatic scale. Some serial pieces use a more restricted palette actually such as Stravinsky's 9-note rows for instance. *I don't think people are trying to say they are scales...*


In this thread, people are questioning, or outright declaring, that there is no such thing as "music which is organized according to non-tonal principles," and that, in addition, that this non-tonally organized music "is tonal because it sounds tonal." Yet, they give no reasons for this. When I do, it seems that my position is attacked and undermined.

I must conclude that the reason for this defensiveness is a lack of understanding the differences between tonal and atonal (non-tonal) music.

If the chromatic scale is an unordered set, it has an interval vector, or harmonic content. If it is an ordered set, it should called a tone row, because scales are not ordered.

Miles Davis uses the chromatic scale, in The Cellar Door Sessions, The Jack Johnson Sessions, and that period. Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, and Herbie Hancock are all using the chromatic scale to create tonal music. It has a definite tone center, established by the bass player.

What are 'intervals from a scale'? If you wil recall, I said that *"Scales are conventionally depicted as a sequence of notes from low to high, as if they were "progressing" through time horizontally (with intervals between them), but this is only a convention. Scales do not actually "exist" as realized musical entities; they are just an index of notes, with a starting (reference) point, which covers that octave."
*


Che2007 said:


> Serial music very often involves sounding parts of the set as a harmony. You can get some very interesting harmonies arising, like Berg's quote of Wagner's Tristan in the last movement of the Lyric Suite.


I don't call "sounding parts of the set" as "harmonies," because they are not derived from a harmonic hierarchy. They are better called "sonorities," unless they really are tonal, and Berg frequently mixed the two. I think the Wagner quote is an actual quote. But in most of *Lyric Suite, *I think it's safely called atonal.



Che2007 said:


> *mr said: The idea of melodic inversion, retrograde, etc, is applicable to tonality, but only in the melodic sense. You can't "invert" a scale because it is not horizontal entity."
> *
> I don't see how this relates to the matter at hand. You could invert a scale but I don't know how musically useful it would be.
> BTW you can invert harmonies so your horizontal/vertical thing doesn't really add up. Plus, it is best to avoid using those words - music isn't a spatial thing, it happens in time. You would do better with consecutive and simultaneous.


I have no idea what you are referring to; you give no examples or reasons. You are applying abstract transformations to tonality; for what reason, I have no idea.

I'm citing the nature of tonal principles to expose the differences between tonality and atonality. One of the things that makes atonal music "not tonal" is that is uses abstract pitch geometries, such as "inversion of chords," but that's not "harmonic."

I intend to discuss what tonality is, and what it isn't. That way, it can be demonstrated what is* not tonal, *and how this differs from tonality. That's all I'm interested in discussing, because that's the thread topic.



Che2007 said:


> What is the difference between the intervals in a scale and the intervals in a row? What elevates them to the level of 'harmonic content'?


I've already discussed this, with detailed examples. A scale is an index, with no intervals specified.

A tone row is a series of interval relations, referring more to interval relations than specific pitches (thus, the transpositions). A tone row is just an 'interval template.' It refers to no specific pitches.

What is the difference? The pitches in tonality have a place in relation to the root, and a function. Tone rows do not.



Che2007 said:


> You can have a 5th in a tone row just as you do in a scale. You can order your row so that the 5th are brought out prominently. You have have rows form 5th based harmonies in a piece. So what is the difference? I think you are forgetting that in serial music there is still a scale - it is the chromatic scale and it has just as much claim to harmonic content as any other.


No, you are not recognizing the difference in scales and tone rows. "5ths" are just interval sonorities. All music has that.



Che2007 said:


> You can do all sorts of harmonic things with a tone row. You can set it against other versions of the row which will mean you have harmony arising. You can segment the row into idiomatic sets and then use these as a harmonic repertoire. Having a row as a compositional aid doesn't just negate harmony.


If it's an unordered set, you can have harmonic content, but I hesitate to call that "harmony."

But tone rows have an order, and no note can be repeated until all 12 are used. This not only negates harmonic content of the whole set, or any part of it (it removes a lot of the cross-relations), it also negates tonality by forcing non-repetition, and always includes all 12 notes, so a firm sense of tonality will never emerge. It always is in flux.

That's all irrelevant, though; the goal of a tone row is not to establish tonality, but to establish interval relations. If you want a lot of fifths in there, you can create a sonority, or area of sonority, which is very laden with fifths. This is a very different goal.


----------



## millionrainbows

Che2007 said:


> What is the difference between the intervals in a scale and the intervals in a row? What elevates them to the level of 'harmonic content'? You can have a 5th in a tone row just as you do in a scale. You can order your row so that the 5th are brought out prominently. You have have rows form 5th based harmonies in a piece. So what is the difference? I think you are forgetting that in serial music there is still a scale - it is the chromatic scale and it has just as much claim to harmonic content as any other.


That must be a rhetorical question, because I already gave a detailed response:

_What are scales useful for, then? They are unordered, so there are cross-relations between every note in the scale with every other note. What does this mean? It means that scales have a harmonic content, unlike tone rows.

What are harmonic content, and cross-relations in a scale? I means this: every note is related to every other note:

*C Major scale: C-C-E-F-G-A-B
*
Relations: First note, *C: *
C-D; C-E; C-F; C-G; C-A; C-B

Then, next note, *D: *
D-E; D-F; D-G; D-A; D-B

Then, next note, *E: *
E-F; E-G; E-A; E-B

Then, next note, *F: *
F-G; F-A; F-B

Then, next note, *G: *
G-A; G-B

Then, next note, *A:
*A-B

These intervals can be counted, to come up with a "harmonic content" of the scale: 
minor seconds: 2 (E-F, B-C)
major seconds: 5 (C-D, D-E, F-G, G-A, A-B)
minor thirds: 4: D-F, E-G, A-C, B-D)
major thirds: 3: C-E, F-A, G-B
fourths: 5: C-F, D-G, E-A, G-C, A-D
tritones: 1: (B-F)

20 relations; with 6 basic interval types (the rest are inversions): m2/M7, M2/m7, m3/M6, M3/m6, 4th/5th/, and tritone.
_


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## Che2007

I did read what you had written: I was asking you further because what you wrote didn't explain what you had said. I still don't think you have adequately explained why an interval in one music can have such a different status than in another piece. Yes a major 3rd functionally means something in Mozart that it doesn't in Nono, but they still both relate back to some abstract ordering. They still have a major 3rd sonority. Also, do you mean to say that harmony just simply ceases to exist in non-tonal music? Are you to mean that interval sets in atonal music are not related to some ordering? I would have to disagree with you. I think atonal music can very well have harmony, and tonal music can very well have passages without harmony!

As for the existence of atonal music I think we are generally in accord. Atonal music of course exists. 

However, I think the language tonal and atonal isn't really a set category which some things fall into and others do not. We can hear tonality and atonality in the same piece. It isn't that unusual. Indeed, we could listen to an atonal piece from a tonal perspective, or a tonal piece from an atonal perspective. That is quite an engaging activity.

I would therefore say we are dealing with something that is more of a spectrum than two set categories.


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## millionrainbows

Che2007 said:


> I still don't think you have adequately explained why an interval in one music can have such a different status than in another piece. Yes a major 3rd *functionally* means something in Mozart that it doesn't in Nono...


That's what I want you to recognize; that since tone-rows have no tonal harmonic function, ordering of the row is a necessary consequence of the concept of the set as a unitary structure whose individual elements are not functionally differentiated. So, yes, I agree, some sort of "abstract" way of dealing with the harmonic/vertical aspect of 12-tone music is needed.



Che2007 said:


> ...but they still both relate back to some abstract ordering. They still have a major 3rd sonority.


Of course they do; I never said they didn't. Sonority is a basic quality of intervals. I don't call this "harmony," though.



Che2007 said:


> Also, do you mean to say that harmony just simply ceases to exist in non-tonal music?


No, but I don't call it harmony. That confuses it with tonal harmonic function.



Che2007 said:


> Are you to mean that interval sets in atonal music are not related to some ordering?


The ordering of the row itself does not create sonority. In fact, ordering gets in the way of that. There can be hexachords, which are the result of combinatoriality of rows, which share content (but do not share order), which create "harmonic arrays." I don't call that harmony, though. Sets can be combined in this way to create vertical sonorities or 'harmonic arrays.'



Che2007 said:


> I would have to disagree with you. I think atonal music can very well have harmony, and tonal music can very well have passages without harmony!


That's misleading; atonal music does not have "harmony" in the same way as conventional tonality does. At least, I don't call it harmony.



Che2007 said:


> As for the existence of atonal music I think we are generally in accord. Atonal music of course exists.


Then there is a problem which needs to be clarified. Schoenberg objected to the term 'atonal,' preferring the term "pantonal." The implication of this term is that all tonalities are merged into one. Yet, according to Schoenberg & his followers, the effect of this merging was the obliteration of all the characteristic features of tonality in general. "Atonality" would be a better term.



Che2007 said:


> However, I think the language tonal and atonal isn't really a set category which some things fall into and others do not. We can hear tonality and atonality in the same piece. It isn't that unusual. Indeed, we could listen to an atonal piece from a tonal perspective, or a tonal piece from an atonal perspective. That is quite an engaging activity.


But I'm not interested in seeing how tonality and atonality are compatible, or are both present in some transitional piece; I'm interested in defining and extrapolationg upon the specific features which differentiate them.



Che2007 said:


> I would therefore say we are dealing with something that is more of a spectrum than two set categories.


Yes, but sooner or later you will have to deal with the differences, and what actually makes tonal music "tonal" and what makes it "atonal."

And I agree, tonality is a spectrum which goes from strong to weaker, but at the point of ordered sets, tonality ends. Sure, I agree that there is a spectrum of chromatic thinking, of "abstract pitch geometry," which creeps into tonality.


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## Che2007

It seems like the big difference between us is you don't want to call sets in atonal music harmony. I think you are quibbling over nothing.


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## EDaddy

Albert7 said:


> For me, the only truly atonal music are Cage's 4' 33" and field recordings like Lopez where there is no true tonal center. Everything else for me is tonal in basis.
> 
> So isn't atonality a more complex form of tonality with mathematical strictures?


I know it's not classical, but listen to John Coltrane's album Ascension and tell me if you hear anything that has a tonal center.


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## millionrainbows

Che2007 said:


> It seems like the big difference between us is you don't want to call sets in atonal music harmony. I think you are quibbling over nothing.


Might I remind you of the thread title, which questions the existence of atonal music (music which is structured without the tonal system).

If you want to use the word "harmony" to mean "the simultaneous sounding of pitches," I can concur; but beyond that, this simply clouds the issue.

The study of "harmony" includes functions of chords, scale degrees, and progressions, which do not apply to atonal music.

All I'm doing is asserting atonal music's existence, and how it differs from tonality. It is essentially non-harmonic, meaning that any harmonic/vertical sonorities which result in atonal music must be the result of simple verticalization of the row, or combining rows, and these procedures are not defined, or general, or pervasive as in tonality.

In tonality, you have to have a delimiting factor; otherwise, 12 notes can't create a sense of tonality.

In the context of this thread issue, it is therefore unproductive and misleading to say that "atonal music has harmony" or, which has been said earlier, that "all music is tonal" or "all music sounds tonal so it is" or that "there is no such thing as atonal music."

One big problem here is that "atonal" does not refer to a system of composing, or a set of general rules. Atonality is more a negation of tonality, in that it has no implicit harmonic function and uses rows instead of scales, or sets which are more connected with rows than with scales.

Tonality has general, pre-compositional parameters which create the tonality. It uses scales to define its harmonic nature, and uses the steps of that scale to define function.

Tone rows can't do that. Any harmonic/vertical sonorities which result in atonal music must be the result of simple verticalization of the row, or combining rows, and these procedures are not defined, general or pervasive as in tonality.

Plus, these solutions to the problem of "harmony" in atonal music are not directly related to the row order itself, but are the result of more general procedures, such as partitioning of hexads and considering them as unordered sets. Once again, this proves that ordered sets can not, in themselves, have harmonic significance, because they are horizontal/melodic by nature.

This is why atonal music is "not tonal."


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## millionrainbows

EDaddy said:


> I know it's not classical, but listen to John Coltrane's album Ascension and tell me if you hear anything that has a tonal center.


The chromatic scale is tonal, not atonal, because it is a scale. The twelve notes of a 12-tone row or set should not be confused with the tempered chromatic scale.

The chromatic scale still has, as a precompostional given general premise, the perfect fifth as a natural structure that defines functional relations.

The twelve-tone set of 12 notes does not assume any function, or assume any intervallic stability.

In Miles Davis' Cellar Door Sessions, and the Jack Johnson Sessions, you can hear the chromatic scale being used tonally.

With some of the later Coltrane stuff on ABC/Impulse, like Ascension and Stellar Regions, there seems to be no stable or stationary tonal center that I can hear, but it's still tonal: it has a constantly shifting reference to center.

Listen to the bass player and keyboard player constantly going up with 4th chords, going up chromatically. This implies a constantly shifting chromatic movement. Still, I hear it as being tonal, admittedly on the very edges of tonality.

Part of this is because the improvisors are using scales, not tone rows. theresfore, thay can choose notes freely from the chromatic set, emphasize or repeat notes, etc, all which contribiutes to a sense of tonality.


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## millionrainbows

Che2007 said:


> I don't think that atonal music is not harmonic. As much as you can describe tonal music as harmonic, you can also describe atonal music. It still deals with frequency ratios. It doesn't matter whether you have a row or some other abstract system, it is just another system for ordering harmonic relationships. Tonality is no less abstract than serial practices.


I think you are misinterpreting what I've been saying, and I also think you are using the term "harmonic" in a more general sense than I am. I think by "harmonic" you mean that atonal music has sonority, which all pitched music has; it would be too simplistic for me to question that.

There are other points in your response which worth addressing.

Since atonal music is not a method, but denotes music not organized according to tonal principles (which are inherently harmonic), I will focus on serial music.



Che2007 said:


> As much as you can describe tonal music as harmonic, you can also describe atonal music.


Serial music has no definitive, general principles regarding harmony. A tone row is an ordered set, and 'order' must be sequential, and proceed horizontally.

Tonality does have general principles which govern harmony and tonality: the use of unordered scales, and functions built on those scales.



Che2007 said:


> It (atonal music) still deals with frequency ratios.


Any interval can be expressed as a ratio, but in tonality these are all referenced to "1" (the keynote). Since atonal/serial music deals with the 12 notes of the tempered scale, ratios are not as important, since they are self-referencing. Additionally, sonance is not as important in serial music; emancipation of the dissonance, as Schoenberg used it.



Che2007 said:


> It doesn't matter whether you have a row or some other abstract system, it is just another system for ordering harmonic relationships.


That's not an implicit feature of serial music. There is no "system" for creating harmonic relationships inherent in the structural nature of tone rows. The ordered row is given, but any harmonic relationships which result must be invented; they are not defined in any general sense. In a limited sense, they are 'systems' of the composer, but harmonic relationships are not generally defined in atonal music, the way they are in tonality.

I'm saying this to show the *differences *in tonality and atonality, to demonstrate that atonality is essentially different than tonality, because atonality has no general, implicit principles of harmonic relations.

You seem to keep trying to show that there are no differences.



Che2007 said:


> Tonality is no less abstract than serial practices.


I disagree, because ordering of notes in serial music is a necessary consequence, and because the elements of a tone row are not functionally differentiated. An unordered set would be the same as a chromatic scale: simply a statement of the available tone material, like an index. In a diatonic scale, certain functional relations are implicit, via scales and triads built on the steps.

Since a 12-tone set is *not* functionally defined, and contains all 12 pitches, they *must* be ordered if the set is to have any constructive significance at all.


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## millionrainbows

Che2007 said:


> It seems like the big difference between us is you don't want to call sets in atonal music harmony. I think you are quibbling over nothing.


Nothing? Then atonal music *doesn't* exist!


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## millionrainbows

Plus, another thing about tonality: a "key" specifies the tone center. The "scale" specifies what the relationships there are between notes, and also in relation to the tonic note. These are termed "functions."

In twelve tone music, there is no pervasive tone center. A tone center would be an optional device, created by an axis of symmetry, or other means.


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## millionrainbows

Paraphrasing some ideas from the Perle Book:

In the broadest sense (New Grove), "tonality is a system of relationships between pitches having a 'central' or tonic pitch as its most important element." It was in this 'broadest sense' that Schoenberg had in mind when he indignantly rejected the term 'atonality.' Back then, in Vienna, 'atonal' meant the replacement of the major/minor system, and also the destruction of all tonal relationships. I can agree with his rejection on that point.

Yet, the *current* definition of 'atonality' (Random House) is "the absence of key or tonal center," and "twelve tone music" is "a modern system in which the 12 tones of the octave are not centered around any one tone."

Yet, these descriptions are in accord with what Schoenberg has repeatedly said about 'the new music' (Style & Idea), which implies the rejection of tonality in its specific sense, which is "a system of relationships between pitches having a 'tonic' or central pitch as its most important feature." Which is it, Arnie?

A better, more general definition of tonality is given by Levi-Strauss in The Raw and the Cooked: "The system of intervals (given by the scale) provides music with an initial level of articulation...it is precisely in the hierarchical structure of the scale that the first level of articulation of music is to be found."

So, using this more general definition, we can see what Schoenberg meant, and that it is possible for atonal 12-tone music to have a level of articulation, using the row relations to create its own kind of 'tonality.'

Thus, we see that the concept of a tone center is a necessary characteristic of a particular* kind *of tonality, but not of tonality in general. Thus, Schoenberg's* old *objection to the *old, specific definition *of tonality/atonality makes more sense, now that we have *expanded* the definition of tonality to be more general and comprehensive, and less specific.


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## millionrainbows

Unfortunately, and confusingly (a fact which has been taken advantage of here in this 'discussion'), what is meant by 'atonal' depends on the definition one uses of 'tonal.' Ironic, and convenient for academicians and people who don't really know what tonality is for themselves, because they never bothered to _really_ find out.

The body of knowledge is large, and if we assume that everything has already been figured out (which it has) without questioning for ourselves the true meaning of these questions, then we will simply be acting on rote information, and regurgitating factoids which we do not truly comprehend.


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## millionrainbows

"I hear Schoenberg as being tonal, so his music is tonal, so there is no such thing as atonal music."
"But if you mention modal music, Dufay, or other tone-centric music, which most people hear as tonal, I will pull out my academic definition of "tonal" and say that the music is "not tonal" because I refuse to accept or use a _general definition _of tonality." 
"A _general_ definition of tonality is bad, because _"atonal" is a general term_ _which denotes music in which a tone center is not of primary importance_. Therefore, a general definition of its opposite, atonality, cannot be accepted. This would be way too dangerous for my argument."
"But as long as I hear Schoenberg as being tonal, that's okay, because it negates the idea of atonal music." 
"My "academic definition" of tonality is my 'insurance.' "
"I pull this defense out whenever I need to invalidate the experiential way people 'hear' tonality in older music, or modal music." "This insures that whatever they might _also_ hear as being 'atonal' can be invalidated,_ since atonality is not a method or style, but a general term which denotes music in which a tone center is not of primary importance, _and the most convenient way to describe it is "atonal," and the only way to validate this is by hearing it, since it is not a specific style of music."
"This also insures that *all *music is tonal, in some way, even Schoenberg's Piano Concerto."
"That completely negates the validity of the term 'atonal music,' and invalidates the subjective, purely experiential sense of hearing music music that does not sound tonal, but sounds atonal."
"Plus, as an added bonus, I will keep persistently asking for a 'sppecific definition' of atonality, even though it is a general term."

"Is this clear?"


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## Dim7

Have some forms of non-western music been regarded as not tone-centric?


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## millionrainbows

Dim7 said:


> Have some forms of non-western music been regarded as not tone-centric?


Why? What specific examples of non-Western music have you listened to, which you think are not tone-centric?

Right off the bat, drums are frequently non-specific in pitch (some are), so there are probably some examples of African drumming in which pitch is not even a consideration.

So, logically, your question assumes that pitch, or sustained tones, is going to be an applied consideration in determining whether or not a certain music is "tone centric" or not.

In certain forms of music, sustained tone might not even be a consideration. Therefore, asking if the striking of a large gong is "tone centric" or not is somewhat of an irrelevant point, since a gong has no sustained "tone" in the sense of pitch. There are too many harmonics present, and it has no predominating fundamental pitch. As opposed to tone, this would be classified as non-pitched sound, sometimes referred to as "noise."


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## Dim7

I was thinking about non-western music with definite pitches. And I can't think of any examples personally, that's why I was asking.


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## millionrainbows

Dim7 said:


> I was thinking about non-western music with definite pitches. And I can't think of any examples personally, that's why I was asking.


If you could, what would that prove? That hearing this music as not tone centric means that it's not? That's not enough to prove anything to some people. And even if you could prove it, they would not accept it.

First, you'd have to prove what 'tone-centric' means. Then, you'd have to define what limits that includes, whether it means 'localized momentary tone centers' or overall tone centers. Then, you'd have to give specific examples, which will probably be torn down. Then, you'd have to define what tonality means, and hope that you would be responded to with that definition in mind.
Do you really think it's worth all that work?


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## Albert7

millionrainbows said:


> If you could, what would that prove? That hearing this music as not tone centric means that it's not? That's not enough to prove anything to some people. And even if you could prove it, they would not accept it.
> 
> First, you'd have to prove what 'tone-centric' means. Then, you'd have to define what limits that includes, whether it means 'localized momentary tone centers' or overall tone centers. Then, you'd have to give specific examples, which will probably be torn down. Then, you'd have to define what tonality means, and hope that you would be responded to with that definition in mind.
> Do you really think it's worth all that work?


So wait a minute if nothing is defined even from a music theory sense, then I am wondering whether all these arguments are merely semantics now.


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## millionrainbows

Albert7 said:


> So wait a minute if nothing is defined even from a music theory sense, then I am wondering whether all these arguments are merely semantics now.


As far as I am concerned, I know what tonality is, and what atonality is, and I can hear the differences, too.


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