Tonal & Atonal Music Tonality Tonality is a musical system in which pitches or chords are arranged so as to induce a hierarchy of perceived stabilities and attractions. The pitch or chord with the greatest stability is called the tonic. Tonality was the predominant musical system in the European tradition of classical music from the late 1500s until early in the 20th century. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron (1810) and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840 (Reti 1958, Simms 1975, 119; Judd 1998a, 5; Heyer 2001; Brown 2005, xiii). According to Carl Dahlhaus, however, the term tonalité was only coined by Castil-Blaze in 1821 (Dahlhaus 1967, 960; Dahlhaus 1980, 51). Although Fétis used it as a general term for a system of musical organization and spoke of types de tonalités rather than a single system, today the term is most often used to refer to major–minor tonality, the system of musical organization of the common practice period. Major-minor tonality is also called harmonic tonality, diatonic tonality, common practice tonality, functional tonality, or just tonality. ------------------------- Form At the macro-level, the traditional form of tonal music begins and ends in a home key, and many tonal works move to a closely related key relative key. The key signature of the closely related key will be one accidental different from the tonic, with the exception of the tonic minor or major. A tonality is established in many ways, traditionally accomplished through the harmonic implications of a cadence, which is two chords in succession which give a feeling of completion or rest at the end of a phrase, with the most common being to . ------------------------- Consonance and dissonance In the context of tonal organization, a chord or a note is said to be consonant when it implies stability, and dissonant when it implies instability. This is not the same as the ordinary use of the words consonant and dissonant. A dissonant chord is in tension against the tonic, and implies that the music is distant from that tonic chord. Resolution is the process by which the harmonic progression moves from dissonant chords to consonant chords and follows counterpoint or voice leading. Voice leading is a description of the horizontal movement of the music, as opposed to chords which are considered the vertical. Traditional tonal music is described in terms of a scale degrees, upon which are built chords. Chords in order form progressions, which establish or deny a particular chord as being the tonic chord. The cadence is held to be the sequence of chords which establishes one chord as being the tonic chord; more powerful cadences create a greater sense of closure and a stronger sense of key. Chords function by leading the music towards or away from a particular tonic chord. When the sense of which chord is the tonic is changed, the music is said to have changed key or modulated. Roman numerals and numbers are used to describe the relationship of a particular chord to the tonic chord. The techniques of accomplishing this process are the subject of tonal music theory and compositional practice. ---------------------------------------------- Atonality 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 (Kennedy 1994). 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 (Lansky, Perle, and Headlam 2001). 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 (Lansky, Perle, and Headlam 2001). Late 19th- and early 20th-century composers such as Alexander Scriabin, Claude Debussy, Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, and Edgard Varèse have written music that has been described, in full or in part, as atonal (Baker 1980; Baker 1986; Bertram 2000; Griffiths 2001; Kohlhase 1983; Lansky and Perle 2001; (Obert 2004); Orvis 1974; Parks 1985; Rülke 2000; Teboul 1995–96; Zimmerman 2002). (chosen excerpts from Wikipedia) https://youtube/watch?v=6qhrAEMC0ms
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 06:32:43 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015