Atonal and tonal music

[Madiel]

But I'm not using it as a system of categorization!  I'm pointing out that the way others use the terms, they are useless and don't delineate any distinctions!

Strictly speaking, the last thing you were doing was insisting that you used the word "tonality" in a better way than the way other people used it.

What you're not doing is thinking about why people use words to define categories in the first place. That's actually a key function of words. To delineate and distinguish.

[Madiel]

Seriously, if something is "not tonality at all in the sense that Jessop means"... well then maybe that means that Jessop's definition of "tonality" is a more useful one than the one that Mahlerian is trying to tell us all to use which means that absolutely everything is tonal.

[Mahlerian]

Seriously, if something is "not tonality at all in the sense that Jessop means"... well then maybe that means that Jessop's definition of "tonality" is a more useful one than the one that Mahlerian is trying to tell us all to use which means that absolutely everything is tonal.

I'm not saying that.  Obviously Jessop is using tonality in a different sense from Poco sF if Jessop says that Debussy's music is "not at all tonal" and Poco sF insists it is.

Jessop's definition of tonality is what is called "common practice tonality" or "functional tonality," while it is Poco sF who is using a definition of tonality that is broad enough to include Debussy (and, if all that is necessary is that clear tonal centers be heard, Schoenberg).

I am not claiming the superiority of one or another definition, I merely wish for people to use a specific definition consistently rather than use one definition to define tonality for some music and another ad hoc definition in order to exclude other music as "atonal".

[Ken B]

Book-burning is scheduled for 3 this afternoon.

Elegant.*

*That is the highest term of praise there is.

[PotashPie]

I edited my "mistake." I do things like that to bait him in...

Schoenberg's style is nothing other than an extension of tonal practice...

Yes, his style (including his 12-tone period) is based on replicating tonal practices such as cadences, motives, phrases, etc, but his 12-tone music is not based on any underlying tonal structure, or the result of a tonal hierarchy, and does not sound tonal in a harmonic sense, but only in a 'gestural sense.' It's like a tonal mechanism which is not really tonal. Things resolve, but have no real tonal meaning.

...Debussy's music, on the other hand, is constructed in a way that contradicts (conventional academic) tonal practice...

Yes, in terms of traditional function, that's true. Still, forgetting the academic definition of tonality, Debussy creates areas of tonality much more convincingly to most ears, because he is using harmonic materials of tonality in non-academic ways. 

To me, Schoenberg sounds "more tonal" than Debussy...

Yes, if I forget about harmonic aspects, it does sound like a tonal mechanism at work, albeit in some language no ear can comprehend. It cadences, it phrases, it walks and quacks just like a duck...so it must BE a duck!

...though of course without functional harmony, neither of them can really be "tonal" in the sense under discussion.

Which, of course, for you, means a very specific, uptight academic definition of tonality using the major/minor system....and applying it to a 12-note chromatic music...uh-huh...I see...

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Seriously, if something is "not tonality at all in the sense that Jessop means"... well then maybe that means that Jessop's definition of "tonality" is a more useful one than the one that Mahlerian is trying to tell us all to use which means that absolutely everything is tonal.

Whenever I talk about 'tonality' i use it in the sense of the system used in Common Practice Harmony. Taking the perspective that this kind of treatment of harmony is 'tonal' then we can see how Debussy and Schoenberg use different methods of organising pitch. This doesn't mean that the word 'atonal' should be used to describe their music, rather it is more useful to talk about things like tonal implications, use of intervals and alternate scales and modes to create harmonic coherence among other things.

[Madiel]

I am not claiming the superiority of one or another definition, I merely wish for people to use a specific definition consistently rather than use one definition to define tonality for some music and another ad hoc definition in order to exclude other music as "atonal".

You to continue to be blissfully unaware of how language works. It would be cute if it wasn't for the fact that I've tried to point out to you several times already that this is not how language works. Etymology is not meaning. Things do not remain neat and tidy even if they started that way. And speakers of a language do not all promise to abide by the same dictionary definitions.

Perhaps you'd like to take on the task of reforming English spelling while you're at it. It will arguably benefit more people, and is about as likely to succeed. Just yesterday I learned/learnt in detail the origins of the word "knight" (original spelling "cniht"). Which actually meant a boy servant, but you know, those pesky people around the 11th and 12th century demonstrated how language actually works by totally transforming what the word meant despite its origins.

Also, a "target" is a shield. And "thou" is a highly informal form of address.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

You to continue to be blissfully unaware of how language works. It would be cute if it wasn't for the fact that I've tried to point out to you several times already that this is not how language works. Etymology is not meaning. Things do not remain neat and tidy even if they started that way. And speakers of a language do not all promise to abide by the same dictionary definitions.

Perhaps you'd like to take on the task of reforming English spelling while you're at it. It will arguably benefit more people, and is about as likely to succeed. Just yesterday I learned/learnt in detail the origins of the word "knight" (original spelling "cniht"). Which actually meant a boy servant, but you know, those pesky people around the 11th and 12th century demonstrated how language actually works by totally transforming what the word meant despite its origins.

Also, a "target" is a shield. And "thou" is a highly informal form of address.

I think there is a difference between using standard and accepted terminology in certain fields of study and using words the way you are talking about here. If people started changing scientific terms around to mean different things than what they are actually used to mean then this creates misinformation. It's the kind of thing we see today in the climate change 'debate' where sceptics confuse 'climate' with 'weather' and where Malcolm Roberts can't get his head around the idea of modelling and 'empirical evidence.' I'm sure you're well aware of that situation....though, perhaps it's a story for another time.....

[Mahlerian]

You to continue to be blissfully unaware of how language works. It would be cute if it wasn't for the fact that I've tried to point out to you several times already that this is not how language works. Etymology is not meaning. Things do not remain neat and tidy even if they started that way. And speakers of a language do not all promise to abide by the same dictionary definitions.

I understood that before you pointed it out the first time.

What I have been trying to say is that the problem with the label atonal is not only that it doesn't mean what it literally implies, but furthermore that it is understood as if it did have that literal meaning.*  What atonal means is a myriad of ways of writing music outside of common practice tonality (the definition of tonality Jessop used), which have no common features at all that they do not also share with much music not considered atonal.

What I want is not to abolish the term atonal, but to avoid it in conversations where it will not add to understanding.  Telling us that Schoenberg is atonal tells us nothing about his music.  Showing how his music is developed out of a web of motifs and through polyphony that emphasizes specific harmonies, usually related to those same motifs, tells us a great deal.

* In that connection, it is similar to the misunderstanding of the term "evolution" which, in its popular usage, means an advance or progression from what came before, while its scientific usage has no such connotations of superiority.  Equivocation of the two of them leads to all kinds of problems.  In popular usage, atonal is taken to mean something other than tonal (understood as all other music, not merely common practice), whereas in academic usage, it merely means certain kinds of non-common practice music.

[PotashPie]

Whenever I talk about 'tonality' i use it in the sense of the system used in Common Practice Harmony. Taking the perspective that this kind of treatment of harmony is 'tonal' then we can see how Debussy and Schoenberg use different methods of organising pitch. This doesn't mean that the word 'atonal' should be used to describe their music, rather it is more useful to talk about things like tonal implications, use of intervals and alternate scales and modes to create harmonic coherence among other things.

There is a more flexible definition, in the Harvard Dictionary of Music (the Red Book) which gives a general definition, and which most music of the world fits into.

Debussy and Stravinsky would fit into this as well: general tonality.

12-tone music or serialism, or set theory, do not fit this definition, and are thus "atonal" by exclusion. Total chromaticism, as a method, does not create a sense of tonality, nor is this its intention. Its concern is intervals "as relationships", not pitches as "identities."

[SharpEleventh]

I think there is a difference between using standard and accepted terminology in certain fields of study and using words the way you are talking about here. If people started changing scientific terms around to mean different things than what they are actually used to mean then this creates misinformation. It's the kind of thing we see today in the climate change 'debate' where sceptics confuse 'climate' with 'weather' and where Malcolm Roberts can't get his head around the idea of modelling and 'empirical evidence.' I'm sure you're well aware of that situation....though, perhaps it's a story for another time.....

We're talking about a notoriously subjective field here though, that is to say art, rather than science. Which I think calls for less rigid definitions.

[Madiel]

What I want is not to abolish the term atonal, but to avoid it in conversations where it will not add to understanding.  Telling us that Schoenberg is atonal tells us nothing about his music.  Showing how his music is developed out of a web of motifs and through polyphony that emphasizes specific harmonies, usually related to those same motifs, tells us a great deal.

I'm confused, is this a message board for music fans, or did I sign up for a diploma course while I was a little drunk?

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

We're talking about a notoriously subjective field here though, that is to say art, rather than science. Which I think calls for less rigid definitions.

That's partly true, but there are objective truths in music which we can't really deny without looking like we don't actually know what it means. Like the meaning of retrograde inversion and stuff like that.

[Madiel]

You'd think that notes, at least, would manage to be objective truths. But the little buggers have shifted quite a few Hertz over the centuries.

[arpeggio]

I have no idea if Elliot Carter's Variations for Orchestra is technically atonal.  All I know is that I like it.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

You'd think that notes, at least, would manage to be objective truths. But the little buggers have shifted quite a few Hertz over the centuries.

Like the meaning of Hertz as well

[PotashPie]

The 12-tone method and its principles developed into serialism and set theory.

These later methods dropped the use of pitch names and replaced them with numbers. This is because "pitch identity" had become irrelevant. All that mattered now was intervallic relationships measured in terms of "pitch distance" or quantity, not identity.

You have to be able to understand this in order to truly understand that 12-tone music and its derivatives are "not tonal" in the most basic sense.

Tonality (a sense of tone center) must use a tonic note as a reference to which all other notes are related. This is "pitch identity."

Beyond this, if you can't grasp this idea, then you can hear it. If you have fairly good ears, you should be able to immediately tell what music is tonal, and which is atonal, or does not sound tonal. And you will be correct 99% of the time.

Unlike Mahlerian, I trust people's ears more. I don't think people throw around the term "atonal" as recklessly as he seems to think. "Never underestimate the intelligence of your audience."

[Madiel]

Like the meaning of Hertz as well

I did wonder whether someone would pick that up.

[SharpEleventh]

Mahlerian you have previously used the expression "total chromaticism". What does it mean in your opinion?

[ahinton]

I have no idea if Elliot Carter's Variations for Orchestra is technically atonal.  All I know is that I like it.

Two "t"s, please (and no sugar". Yes, it's tonal. And I love it too!