Atonal and tonal music

[Uhor]

Have fun.

[Monsieur Croche]

You are a linear thinker.

Oh, am I?

Damn, Karl! 

I never would have known, and I admire the hell out of your stoicism in never having made it public in a ploy for sympathy.  I hasten to add I think you've done exceeding well despite the debilitating handicap.


Always best regards,
M. Croche

[Monsieur Croche]

~ Atonal means never having to say you're sorry ~

Monsieur Croche antidilettante (aka Petr B) © 2017

[Karl Henning]

~ Atonal means never having to say you're sorry ~
Monsieur Croche antidilettante © 2017

I know: that major third does sound a little funny there.  But it's right, I tell you.

[Madiel]

~ Atonal means never having to say you're sorry ~

Monsieur Croche antidilettante © 2017

Well, that made my morning brighter.

[Monsieur Croche]

I know: that major third does sound a little funny there.  But it's right, I tell you.

Makes me recall the story of a young British contemporary composer who, when completely stuck mid-piece, sought out the advice of the well-established senior composer Michael Tippett. 

Tippett let the man speak, all that talk being in the nature of analysis, determining / defining the style or theoretical aspects of the piece in order to best find a solution to his 'problem.'  When the younger composer was done talking, Tippett addressed him in a typical old-school British manner, and gave his suggestion...
"My dear boy, why don't you just use your ears?"

Put another way (this you already know all too well), regardless of the harmonic system, method, aesthetic plank or theory, the composer must ultimately rely on their ears, lol.

[PotashPie]

That's the "artistic" answer. I need a scientific answer.

[Monsieur Croche]

That's the "artistic" answer. I need a scientific answer.

Good luck with that ^.  Ever notice how many and how often those inclined to the sciences and maths go at analyzing / explaining the arts, and conversely, how many artists quite intelligently do not try to go at analyzing / explaining the sciences and arts -- because as 'universal' as the arts are, the artists know that art is neither science or maths?  Hmmmm.  You do know, I hope, that Art is not Maths or Science, and that Maths and Science are not Art?

The several hundred billions of neurons firing away which comprise 'brain' are inherently inclined to understand and 'make order' of what the brain perceives.  One could begin to think that everything can and should be analyzed and 'made order of' and maybe one discipline covers all in attempting to do that.  In fact that impulse and train of thought is not always useful, or at least that analytic hemisphere of the brain is only half the deal and half the equipment one has at ones disposal.

Timothy Leary made an analogy about the brain and that inherent impulse:
~ Imagine the brain is all the moving, roiling oceans of the world.  Imagine then the human mouth to actual scale, floating and adrift on all that moving, roiling water while continually calling out, "Order!"

The continual wont of those in sciences and maths to think they can get a handle on / explain art by using the tools of their discipline should be at least a little questioned, since most artists know well enough they can not get a handle on / analyze the sciences and maths using the tools of the artistic disciplines.  Why the scientists and maths crowd thinks their discipline is that much more 'universal' than the arts, so can be applied to the arts... well, let's just politely say that is somewhere between cute and quaint.

What if there really is not and never will be a 'scientific' explanation for the art of music, or any of the other arts?  It seems quite some time that generations have tried -- and failed; rather like that quote attributed to Einstein, is this not verging on insanity, i.e. using the same tools to do the same thing and expecting, eventually, a different result?


Best regards

[DaveM]

Good luck with that ^.  Ever notice how many and how often those inclined to the sciences and maths go at analyzing / explaining the arts, and conversely, how many artists quite intelligently do not try to go at analyzing / explaining the sciences and arts -- because as 'universal' as the arts are, the artists know that art is neither science or maths?  Hmmmm.  You do know, I hope, that Art is not Maths or Science, and that Maths and Science are not Art?

The several hundred billions of neurons firing away which comprise 'brain' are inherently inclined to understand and 'make order' of what the brain perceives.  One could begin to think that everything can and should be analyzed and 'made order of' and maybe one discipline covers all in attempting to do that.  In fact that impulse and train of thought is not always useful, or at least that analytic hemisphere of the brain is only half the deal and half the equipment one has at ones disposal.

The continual wont of those in sciences and maths to think they can get a handle on / explain art by using the tools of their discipline should be at least a little questioned, since most artists know well enough they can not get a handle on / analyze the sciences and maths using the tools of the artistic disciplines.  Why the scientists and maths crowd thinks their discipline is that much more 'universal' than the arts, so can be applied to the arts... well, let's just politely say that is somewhere between cute and quaint.

What if there really is not and never will be a 'scientific' explanation for the art of music, or any of the other arts?  It seems quite some time that generations have tried -- and failed; rather like that quote attributed to Einstein, is this not verging on insanity, i.e. using the same tools to do the same thing and expecting, eventually, a different result?

All that analysis and putting people in the strict categories of the sciences and maths vs. those of the arts. Sounds like something those in the sciences and maths would be accused of.

[Jo498]

maths and science are more universal than the arts "by construction". Because they abstract from everything that is concrete, special, unwieldy etc. (at least the most general ones, botany obviously not in the way theoretical physics does). This has been compared to allowing only black and white (math tools) for the description of everything. Of course, you cannot get color back into the picture if your method consists in allowing only black and white. (Note that this is an analogue, of course one can represent other colors mathematically, the point is one represents mathematically only the abstract features of things that are representable in such fashion, not the others.)
This is one reason for the immense power and utility of maths and physics (and nobody in his right mind will deny this utility). But it is also the reason for their limitation. This is such a simple point that one wonders why it is so rarely recognized (of course there are reasons why this is so hard to recognize, among other things 400 years of broadly speaking Baconian+Cartesian philosophy ).

[Karl Henning]

That's the "artistic" answer. I need a scientific answer.

The science of art, is (while not necessarily uninteresting) the least interesting thing about art.

[Monsieur Croche]

The science of art, is (while not necessarily uninteresting) the least interesting thing about art.

The science of art is also post hoc the art itself.

That is a bit like the police and other emergency services sweeping up the broken glass and hosing the blood down after an accident, i.e although the premise of their existence is to make / maintain order, they instead arrive after the chaos -- as the clean-up crew.

[millionrainbows]

What about music pre-tonality then?  Is that also considered atonal because it isn't articulated in terms of functional tonality?

Back in Gregorian times, 'tonal' was an irrelevant term which I doubt got much use, if any.

If it isn't articulated in terms of functional tonality, then it is "not tonal." Let's call the "music which is not articulated in terms of functional tonality" which came after the era of functional tonality "atonal."

There are plenty of things not considered "atonal" which also lack functional harmony, such as the late music of Debussy, The Rite of Spring, Scriabin's later works, and so forth.

My grandmother likes Debussy, especially Claire de Lune.

Debussy wrote music music which was not articulated in terms of functional tonality, so it is "not tonal" in that specific sense (but neither is modal jazz...So What?)
It is still harmonic, though, so we tend to hear harmonic music as being more akin to normal tonality. It still uses many tonal devices, like triads and scales. But it does not create expectation with an hierarchy, in the same way that tonality does.

If you want to say that "atonal" merely designates a piece of Western music post-1880 or so that doesn't use functional harmony as its basis, fine, that's one thing, but in my experience people want to exclude everything outside of Schoenberg, his circle, and composers who followed them from the description "atonal."

I think that's because Schoenberg very consciously stopped using the motion and goal-oriented devices of tonality, and used thematic and melodic elements to replace them. He was not interested in the harmonic implications of things like whole tone scales as Debussy was; he was more interested in adjacent whole tone scales implying the total chromatic gamut.
Debussy, though not tonal, still had plenty of harmonic devices in his work, and smaller-term goals of localized tone centering, but not long-term, overarching structures like tonality. His use of whole-tone scales, and the harmonic implications which he derived from such structures, was different than Schoenberg's, whose interest was thematic and melodic, and evocative of the total chromatic.

The polyphony and thematic nature of Schoenberg's free-atonal music, later formalized into the 12-tone method, is what makes the Second Viennese music so different and distinctive, and this is what people hear as "atonal."

Atonal music did not attempt to create any "alternate harmonic system" with functional hierarchies, derived from modes or exotic scales. It used thematic development, and used chromaticism as generating symmetrical structures (cycles of thirds, fourths, etc) as opposed to the unbalanced hierarchical structures of the major-minor system.

After all, in one sense, I still do hear tonal centers throughout "atonal" music, so I don't understand why the distinction would be made on that basis. 

Localized, momentary tonal centricities are one thing, but overarching long-term tonal superstructures are quite another. I would suggest listening for thematic and melodic, motivic elements, rather than tonal centers.

By meaningless I meant something closer to "it's meaningless as it is commonly used in non-academic contexts."  When "atonal" appears in academic works, generally all they mean by it is that it's post-common practice and doesn't use triadic or diatonic harmony.

That seems logical, but seems self-evident in the music as well, to average listeners. The net result is the same.

[Karl Henning]

If it isn't articulated in terms of functional tonality, then it is "not tonal."

That is one viewpoint, as I think most of us credit.

[bwv 1080]

And the decent into semantics, the endpoint of all these discussions, is now beginning. 

I dont want to be a- anything, sounds too much like asexual or apolitical, so therefore i will expand the definition of tonality so it covers all the music i like.  So I hear Ferneyhough and Xenakis as tonal.  You know, Metastaseis can be reduced through Schenkerian analysis to one long V7-I cadence, once you eliminate all the extra notes.  Similarly, all the quarter-tones in ferneyhough are simply non-harmonic tones, not that different than Bach, actually

[Madiel]

I dont want to be a- anything, sounds too much like asexual or apolitical, so therefore i will expand the definition of tonality so it covers all the music i like.

Okay, that reasoning is just strange. Liking atonal music doesn't make you atonal any more than liking jazz would make you jazzy.

Nor is the a- prefix going to disappear from the English language just because you have some peculiar reaction to it. Are you going to start believing in God just to avoid being an atheist?

[Karl Henning]

And the decent into semantics, the endpoint of all these discussions, is now beginning. 

I dont want to be a- anything, sounds too much like asexual or apolitical, so therefore i will expand the definition of tonality so it covers all the music i like.  So I hear Ferneyhough and Xenakis as tonal.  You know, Metastaseis can be reduced through Schenkerian analysis to one long V7-I cadence, once you eliminate all the extra notes.  Similarly, all the quarter-tones in ferneyhough are simply non-harmonic tones, not that different than Bach, actually

On the chance that this was a reply to my post . . .

Do I object to the term "atonal"?  Possibly not.  There is enough variety in the music which Your Average Listener would describe as "atonal" (including some music which is not at all atonal) that I doubt that is very much use as a descriptor.

I've come to regard Tonality not in the traditionally strict sense of "belonging to Common Practice and its functional harmonies" (by which definition a Palestrina motet would not be "tonal").  Do I publish a manifesto on this?  No.  Is it a reflection of how I have engaged in the management of pitch in my own composition, or how I have studied non-Common-Practice scores?  Yes.  Do I demand that others concede that mine is the best way to regard the matter?  No.  Do I make free to express my thoughts on the matter?  Yes, and possibly too free for some people.

[bwv 1080]

On the chance that this was a reply to my post . . .

Do I object to the term "atonal"?  Possibly not.  There is enough variety in the music which Your Average Listener would describe as "atonal" (including some music which is not at all atonal) that I doubt that is very much use as a descriptor.

I've come to regard Tonality not in the traditionally strict sense of "belonging to Common Practice and its functional harmonies" (by which definition a Palestrina motet would not be "tonal").  Do I publish a manifesto on this?  No.  Is it a reflection of how I have engaged in the management of pitch in my own composition, or how I have studied non-Common-Practice scores?  Yes.  Do I demand that others concede that mine is the best way to regard the matter?  No.  Do I make free to express my thoughts on the matter?  Yes, and possibly too free for some people.

Not a reply, just an observation how no one can agree on definitons , which make these discussions an excercise in semantics and people talking past one another

[Karl Henning]

Ah, well, it's a good point.  In many a thread, the slipperiness of the terms makes for little more than a squishy chat.

[bwv 1080]

Okay, that reasoning is just strange. Liking atonal music doesn't make you atonal any more than liking jazz would make you jazzy.

Nor is the a- prefix going to disappear from the English language just because you have some peculiar reaction to it. Are you going to start believing in God just to avoid being an atheist?

Damn, does that mean I'm not funky?

Stalin was certainly an athiest, while Christopher Hitchens merely believed in expanded theism