Atonal and tonal music

[Madiel]

I think you're fruity. And not because you eat fruit.

[Monsieur Croche]

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

The award for the best neologism of the year goes to Karl Henning for his having coined
~ Squishychat ~

Congratulations, Karl!

[Karl Henning]

The award for the best neologism of the year goes to Karl Henning for his having coined
~ Squishychat ~

Congratulations, Karl!

It is an honor to have been nominated. It could only have happened here at GMG!

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[millionrainbows]

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

I think the term "atonal" should apply to music in which pitch relations are one of the primary concerns; this did not emerge as a dialectic until tonality had fully developed, post-Wagner. With Xenakis, and Fernyhough's scratching, pitch and tonality/harmony,melody,theme/motive are not really concerns, that I know of.

Tonality and pitch can still be a concern in modern times, if certain methods are applied to this area, such as fractal composition with Wuorinen, Peter schat's Tone Clock, and other instances.

[Monsieur Croche]

It is an honor to have been nominated. It could only have happened here at GMG!

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

Well, you know it MUST go through the normal declension of polls-type lists voting, but I'm certain your nomination is a shoo-in.


Best regards

[bwv 1080]

I think the term "atonal" should apply to music in which pitch relations are one of the primary concerns; this did not emerge as a dialectic until tonality had fully developed, post-Wagner. With Xenakis, and Fernyhough's scratching, pitch and tonality/harmony,melody,theme/motive are not really concerns, that I know of.

Tonality and pitch can still be a concern in modern times, if certain methods are applied to this area, such as fractal composition with Wuorinen, Peter schat's Tone Clock, and other instances.

Hopefully it was clear that I was joking, but BF does develop motives after a fashion.  Intersections, juxtapositions and crosscutting of thematic / motivic / melodic material is a key component of his music. 

[millionrainbows]

Hopefully it was clear that I was joking, but BF does develop motives after a fashion.  Intersections, juxtapositions and crosscutting of thematic / motivic / melodic material is a key component of his music.

"Material" being the key word here.

A certain new territory has been entered with Fernyhough.

With Boulez, a certain traditional concern with pitch is still present in his piano sonatas: just fingers on keys, no preparations, no scraping. I like it when music retains its pitch concerns, as a basic element.

[Karl Henning]

It's an error to suppose that pitch is not a concern with prepared piano, of course, or with the strings of the piano plucked.

[bwv 1080]

No scraping here

https://youtu.be/odTUqs8rJDg

[millionrainbows]

It's an error to suppose that pitch is not a concern with prepared piano, of course, or with the strings of the piano plucked.

I don't think John Cage was concerned with establishing a tonality with his prepared piano pieces. I think his concerns were timbal and rhythmic.

Exactly how is pitch a concern in these pieces?

Back to atonal: The main point to remember is that tonality is based on major/minor scales, with triads built on these creating an hierarchy.

The hierarchy is graded in importance by the relation of the scale step upon which the triad is built (the root) and its relation to tonic, or I. The smaller and simpler the ratio, the more closely related and important it is in the hierarchy.

If you can see that any scale can be treated in this way, like jazz players do it, with triads built on the steps of other and exotic scales, which also form an hierarchy naturally, then you can see how Common Practice Tonality has no exclusive right to this principle of hierarchies formed from scales.

Thus, in modernism we see the creation of these 'outside the box' tonalities. Debussy and Stravinsky were doing this. Thus, their music is harmonically derived, for the most part.

This is exactly what The Second Viennese composers sought to avoid. They were not concerned with creating harmonically-derived alternate tonalities from materials like the whole-tone set (scale); they went for motivic and melodic material.

This was a throwback to pre-tonality; tonality was a recent development and a recent way of thinking in "functions" instead of melodically and polyphonically.

This is what distinguishes the structure and the sound of 12-tone music, and is why it is called 'atonal.' Other harmonically-derived music like Debussy and Stravinsky sounds vaguely tonal and familiar by comparison, because it is creating "artificial tonalities" which are harmonically derived.

[bwv 1080]

Debussy's Voiles is atonal, but not chromatic and Medieval and Renaissance music had no conception of chords as a such, what triads appear are the result of conventions in counterpoint. 

[millionrainbows]

Debussy's Voiles is atonal, but not chromatic...

Here is a video of it. https://youtu.be/VrVyQhUM5C4

Debussy is simply using the whole tone scale here. The WT scale is not "atonal" but is ambiguous; that's a crucial distinction. The WT scale has 7 notes and is totally symmetrical, so it can have 7 possible "roots" or tonics, if one wishes. Note at the end how the bass note underneath "anchors" the whole thing to a "root."

Debussy was interested in exploiting the harmonic possibilities of the WT scale to create a sense of "tonality"; Schoenberg was not, in his free atonal and 12-tone works. If he used it, he was always more interested in the WT scale as representing the total chromatic gamut in more motivic and melodic/thematic ways, not as creating a "tonal hierarchy" out of a scale.

I reserve the use of "atonal" to refer to music which does not attempt to create harmonic tonalities from scales, any scales. Atonal music uses motives and thematic devices, and does not create hierarchies of harmonic function from any kind of scale.

[millionrainbows]

...Medieval and Renaissance music had no conception of chords as a such, what triads appear are the result of conventions in counterpoint...

True, but that is before harmonic function developed fully, as apart from melodic procedures. Triads did not "exist" as triads, but today we hear them as chords; the net result is the same.

Still, Medieval and Renaissance music is harmonic at times; the functions are not defined, and may be arbitrary, but are still results of melodic or scalar (linear) activity.

They weren't called "chords" yet, but the net result was the perception of a harmonic entity that we now call chords.

To distinguish Chant from atonal music: Atonal music is not harmonically conceived or derived.

Neither is chant, but Chant, although it has no harmony and is totally linear, and consists of predetermined melodic formulae, is still "harmonic" in the sense that the melodic formulations resemble scales (called modes), and the net result is that they are suggestive of "tonality" or hints of tonality.

Another way chant is "harmonic" or is suggestive of the harmonic, is that the modes are constructed in steps, have limited numbers of notes (not all 12, even though they didn't exist yet), and travel stepwise, similar to scales, or prototypes of scales; atonal music uses the total chromatic gamut. Less notes than 12 tends to establish a tonal sense, mores than cycling all 12 notes.

[Florestan]

[millionrainbows]

Eww, gross. So you don't see how this all ties in to the Wagner thread, and music and math?

[North Star]

I hope you mean you want less of it, Andrei - not that you want it less intellectual.  0:)

[millionrainbows]

I hope you mean you want less of it, Andrei - not that you want it less intellectual.  0:)

I'm gonna get naked and listen to Schoenberg's String Trio. Whatever happens from there, who knows.

[Florestan]

Eww, gross. So you don't see how this all ties in to the Wagner thread, and music and math?

Oh, please! This thread had died a deserved natural death. You resurrected it by quoting a post from November 2016 (!!!)  and you go on and on and on over-analyzing and over-hairsplitting. Why? Why on Earth is so important to you whether Debussy or Wagner were tonal or atonal, extended tonal or unextended atonal or whatever term you fancy to coin? No offense meant but you seem to love far more talking about music than actually listening to it.

[Karl Henning]

Oh, please! This thread had died a deserved natural death. You resurrected it by quoting a post from November 2016 (!!!)

Thread Necrology.

[Madiel]

I've seen threads resurrected when they're 7 or 8 years old. This is amateur necrology.