# Tonality and Serial Thought: Two Different Universes



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Tonality exemplifies the Newtonian model of the universe; Serialism and its subsequent developments exemplify a quite different Einsteinian model of the universe.

Tonality is an hierarchy; it relates all notes of the octave back to "1" or the key note; all the notes have an "identity," tied to a pitch/letter name. Tonality is best pictured on a circle, or clock-face.

In Serialism, all notes are equal, related only to each other. There is no "1" (as a root reference). The notes are placed on a number line, usually with "C" as zero, C# as 1, etc. Going forward (to the right) is positive, and going to the left is negative, just as on a number line.

In Srerial thinking, the intervals and sets are treated as quantities. In Tonality, notes are treated as identities.

*Inversion* in tonality involves going to the nearest chord member; you can go clockwise from C to E, or counterclockwise to E. Clockwise, this interval is called a major third; counter-clockwise, it is called a minor sixth. We still hear the inversion of the C-E-G chord as a C major chord, any way you stack it; C-E-G, E-G-C, or G-C-E.

It is best to think of Tonality in terms of fractions, or divisions of "1".

In Tonality, the octave (12 half-steps) can be considered as "1" or unity. The steps of our scale, and the "functions" of the chords built thereon, are the direct result of interval ratios, all in relation to a "keynote area" or unity of 1; the intervals not only have a dissonant/consonant quality determined by their ratio, but also are given a specific scale degree (function) and place in relation to "1" or the Tonic. This is where all "linear function" originated, and is still manifest as ratios (intervals), which are at the same time, physical harmonic phenomena. (Harry Partch)

One (1:1) is the ultimate consonance. In the beginning was ONE. From this, sprang forth the universe.

"All musical understanding can be reduced to the understanding of one note."

Our understanding of number is still tied to identity in the way time is "measured" or experienced as durations. This can ultimately be traced back to religious thought, as the "center of being" becomes synonymous with the ultimate creator, God, the big "1" which always existed.

Additionally, "nothingness" or "emptiness" was seen as heresy, derived from the Eastern idea of meditation and "emptying" the conscious mind. The emerging Gnostic Christians who were influenced by this "nothing is real" idea were eradicated by the emerging Church Fathers by 300 A.D., as the Nicene Creed developed and the Bible was compiled.

So in this religious-based Newtonian view of things, time is seen as synonymous with being, and God the creator. If God created everything, how could there be "nothing"? "Nothing" is simply a lack, a deficiency, like a disease parasite; it cannot live without a host; it is essentially nothing. This is called the Doctrine of Privati Boni.

Applied to number, Zero was a forbidden concept, as "emptiness" and "nothingness" did not reconcile with the idea of God as creator of everything. Nothingness was impossible; God always was, and always will be.

Therefore, Tonality is best seen as the identity number ONE and its fractional divisions. ONE is the root, the center, around which all things revolve, and which everything else is subordinate and related. God, and his favored creation, Man, are at the center.

In Serial thinking, quantity, not identity, is the norm. Inversion in Serialism is literal. The inversion of the major chord C-E-G, inverted serially, becomes C-Ab-F, or F minor. The major/minor quality of the chord has been changed.

This serial type of inversion can be applied to advanced harmonic tonal music as well, as Howard Hanson and Vincent Persichetti have demonstrated; hence, Serialism becomes not just a "school" of music in a brief period of the post-war era; it is a way of thinking about musical materials which still influences composers today, many who would not dream of calling themselves "Serialists."

In the Einsteinian Serial universe, gravity is gone; but local masses can attract, just as in outer space. Bartók created localized areas of tonal gravity around "seed" notes, which appear temporarily, but do not last for the entire composition. Also, other hierarchies can replace Tonality's root ranking; the Fibonacci series was also used by Bartók, and ideas concerning the Golden Mean.

John Cage and Pierre Boulez were important post-war musical thinkers, and their correspondence in the 1950s reveals that they both desired to achieve the same goal, which was a music freed from the constraints and controls of "the ego" or the conscious mind. Cage was seeking to do this through chance procedures, and his interest in Eastern religion; Boulez was influenced by the French Surrealists, with their automatic drawings and imagery which sprang from the "unconscious." Boulez was also motivated, early on, by political motives which sought to undermine nationalism.

So the Serial way of approaching music was more than just a different use of materials; the aesthetic itself, which rejected the heroic ideal of Man and God as the center of his universe, sought to create great edifices of Art which stood as mysteries, with no special sympathy for Man, his ego, and his God, or the outmoded nationalist aesthetic which had nearly destroyed Europe in WW II.

We were now in a different universe, a more indifferent universe, which engendered a new art, free from the encumberance of past tradition, and which nurtured strange new works of beauty never heard before.


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