Talk:Tonality

Contents

1 Fétis 2 Outline 3 Practical Sets 4 Titles? 5 Thanks 6 Removed

Fétis

"Hermann von Helmholtz wrote, 'The predominance of the tonic as the link which connects all the tones of a piece, we may, with F['e]tis, term the principle of tonality.'"

I don't know who F['e]tis is and this info is now in the first paragraph.Hyacinth 06:12, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

"['e]" is a sort of shorthand (well, longhand really) for "é", which would likely make this François-Joseph Fétis, a 19th century Belgian composer, teacher, writer, theoretician and all-round clever bloke. (Of course this doesn't need to be in the article, I'm just mentioning it for interest's (boredom's?) sake.) --Camembert

"The term tonality seems to have been introduced into music by the Belgian composer and musicologist Joseph Fétis around the middle of the nineteenth century. It was meant to signify a musical state, which had for several centuries already been in general use, according to which a musical group is conceived (by the composer as well as the listener) as a unit related to, and so to speak derived from, a central tonal fundament, the tonic. This tonal fundament is understood as one note, or, in a more comprehensive sense, as the full triad-harmony of a note, be it major or minor. In fact, the word tonality was probably chosen merely as a linguistically pleasant abberviation of tonicality (thus also presaging atonality instead of the tongue-twisting atonicality)." (Reti, 1958, Tonality: Harmonic Tonality)

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Outline

In this article tonality is described as a set of rules, which are actual guidelines created after the fact, and not as a system of relations and perceptions. Hyacinth

1. Intro:Tonality is the character of music written with hierarchical relationships of pitches, rhythms, and chords to a "center" or tonic. Tonic is sometimes used interchangeably with key. Musical sensations associated with tonality include consonance, dissonance, and resolution.
   1. Tonality, however, may be defined in various ways.
      1. One is through reference to pre-existing music of a specific time period and location which is assumed to be tonal, such as that of the common practice period.
      2. Analysis of the above music may be used to define tonal music from similarities and restrictions inferred from analysis. This includes the use of the major scale or minor scale, their triadic chords and diatonic functions, and the compositional techniques, procedures, and materials used.
      3. A definition may be formed from observations or assumptions of the characteristics of sound, organization or order, and/or perception, possibly combined with aspects of the above analysis, that considers tonality a practice correctly based on physical or psychological constants.
      4. Tonal music may simply be contrasted with atonal music, music which does not feel as if it has a tonal center.
   2. Tonality, however, may be considered more generally with no restrictions as to the date or place at which the music was produced, or (very little) restriction as to the materials and methods used. In fact, many people, including Anton Webern, consider all music to be tonal in that music is always perceived as having a center. Centric is sometimes used to describe music which is not traditionally tonal in that it used triads of a diatonic scale but which nevertheless has relatively strong tonal center. Other terms which have been used in an attempt clarify are tonical and tonicality, as in "possessing a tonic," and Igor Stravinsky used the term polar.
2. Vocabulary of Tonal Organization
   1. Scale: [table].
   2. Chords
   3. Degree & Diatonic function
   4. Form
3. Tonal Theory
   1. Intro: Tonality allows for a great range of musical materials, structures, meanings, and understandings. It does this through establishing a tonic, or central pitch, and a somewhat flexible network of relations between any pitch or chord and the tonic similar to perspective in painting. As within a musical phrase, interest and tension may be created through the move from consonance to dissonance and back, an larger piece will also create interest by moving away from and back to the tonic and tension by destabilizing and re-establishing the key. Further, temporary secondary tonal centers may be established by cadences or simply passed through in a process called modulation (key change), or simultaneous tonal centers may be established through polytonality. Additionally, the structure of these features and processes may be linear, cycical, or both. This allows for a huge variety of relations to be expressed through dissonance and consonance, distance or proximaty to the tonic, the establishment of temporary or secondary tonal centers, and/or ambiguity as to tonal center. Music notation was created to accomodate tonality and facilitates interpretation.
   2. The assumptions of tonal theory are:
      1. Octave equivalency and diatonic functionality not enharmonic equivalency
      2. Less so transpositional equivalency and very little inversional equivalency
   3. Cadences: Though modulation may occur instantaneously without indication or preparation, the strongest way to establish a tonal center is through a cadence, a succession of two or more chords which gives a feeling of closure or finality, or series of cadences. Traditionally cadences act both harmonically to establish tonal centers and formally to articulate the end of sections. The strongest cadence is the perfect authentic cadence, which moves from the dominant to the tonic, mostly strongly establishes tonal center, and ends the most important sections of tonal pieces, including the final section. This is the basis of the "dominant-tonic" or "tonic-dominant" relationship.
4. History
   1. Common practice period
   2. Post-tonal: According to different theories tonality began to "break down" because of expansion, disinterest in functionality, increased use of leading tones, alterations, modulations, tonicization, the increased importance of subsidary key areas, use of non-diatonic hierarchical methods, and/or symmetry.

Practical Sets

Compositional resources

I propose that compositional resources in the common practice period can be described in terms of practical sets.

The ultimate source set is the harmonic series. Common Practice composers and theoreticians have responded to this basic fact of nature by creating sets of:

Major scales, minor scales (all flavors), diatonic triads and extensions (tertian structures.) cadences, non-harmonic tones, secondary functions, partwriting procedures. harmonic progression practices,and the reconciliation of dissonance and consonance. Transition technics such as modulation were developed to tie everything together as coherently as possible.

To mold these basic resources into what Suzanne Langer would call "significant forms" composers craft phrases, melodies and genres and seek meaningful unity, variety and symmetical and asymmetical balance. This constitutes the raw materials of grammar and rhetoric of musical ideas within style periods, nationalities, individual composers and even specific works. In other words the common practice period languages provided ample room for individuality for a very long period of time.

Impressionistic Set Repertoire

The revolutionary vision of the impressionist composers expanded the repertoire of sets described above to include:

Modes, whole tone scales, pentatonic scales, quartal and quintal chords, pan diatonic, pan pentatonic and pan whole tone structures.

New grammar such as planing and new types of modulations were invented to bind this expanded wealth of resources together. A heightened interest in timbre and new rhythmic designs added even more dimension to the new language.

The genius of Debussy and Ravel was to create a great number of works that effectively blended old and new resources into significant forms. There seems to have been no trial and error or "mannererist" period of experimentation involving gimmicky failures and half successes. They also proved that the musical wheel could be effectively reinvented.

Beyond Impressionism

The challenge to composers ever since has been to craft a personal language whose new and old sets can be combined into expressive and formally significant compositions. In this quest 20th century composers often forgot that the audience is the client for their products. Verbose and convoluted annotations were typically provided to beg for respect for fundamentally unlikable experiments.

Enough! As 21st. century composers we must now direct our efforts to successfully serve the only population who, in the final analysis, justifies our existence. To paraphrase Bill Clinton's famous campaign slogan, "It's the audience, stupid."

Robert C. Howard

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Titles?

The article currenlty has sections titled "Vocabulary of Tonal Organization" and "Tonal Theory" and "History". What exactly do those title mean? Is the "Vocabulary of Tonal Organization" the vocabulary use to describe organization according to traditional theory? Is "Theory" then the history of theory? Is "History" the history of the "use" of tonality, or the history of the theory of tonality, or both? Hyacinth 05:54, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

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The article has an accumulation of material. The Vocabulary of tonal organization is a description of chord names and functions - which is required to able to read tonal analysis of almost any kind. The theory and history sections should probably be rewritten to make each clearer. The current article is defective in that it spends a great deal of time on some POVs which, while interesting, are not the dominant meanings of the word as it is generally used.

Thanks. Which POVs are you referring to? Hyacinth 06:05, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Stirling Newberry I would have to say that Reti gets a good deal more attention in the article than he does in the real world, particularly with respect to Schenker and Schoenberg who are still the most influential theorists on the subject of tonality. The use of tonality in Jazz is, similarly, given a somewhat short shrift. I feel we should rebalance the article to put more emphasis on the sort of material that most people will encounter and want information on.

Stirling Newberry added a great deal to the vocabulary section. I want the poor stiff who reads "and then cadence on vi leads back to the tonic triad" to at least feel that there is some sense there.

Please sign messages. Hyacinth 06:05, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Also, please note that the Reti section/example explains tonality in ways not covered in the article and possibly not covered in more well known sources. Hyacinth 18:38, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Are you talking to yourself? Didn't Stirling Newberry write this, "Stirling Newberry added a great deal to the vocabulary section."? I'm confused. Hyacinth 00:15, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks

User:Stirling Newberry, thanks for integrating the section on Reti into the history section.

Removed

• "In his influential article on the subject, music theorist Carl Dahlhaus provided a broad survey which included seven definitions of tonality he felt had been used with regularity."

I removed the above sentence because the article, as of yet, in no way mentions Dahlhaus' seven definitions. Hyacinth 00:10, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)