Tonality
Tonality is the arrangement of pitches and/or chords of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, attractions and directionality. In this hierarchy, the single pitch or triadic chord with the greatest stability is called the tonic. The root of the tonic chord forms the name given to the key; so in the key of C major, the note C is both the tonic of the scale and the root of the tonic chord. Simple folk music songs often start and end with the tonic note. The most common use of the term "is to designate the arrangement of musical phenomena around a referential tonic in European music from about 1600 to about 1910". Contemporary classical music from 1910 to the 2000s may practice or avoid any sort of tonality—but harmony in almost all Western popular music remains tonal. Harmony in jazz includes many but not all tonal characteristics of the European common practice period, sometimes known as "classical music".
"All harmonic idioms in popular music are tonal, and none is without function".
Tonality is an organized system of tones in which one tone becomes the central point for the remaining tones. The other tones in a tonal piece are all defined in terms of their relationship to the tonic. In tonality, the tonic is the tone of complete relaxation and stability, the target toward which other tones lead. The cadence in which the dominant chord or dominant seventh chord resolves to the tonic chord plays an important role in establishing the tonality of a piece. "Tonal music is music that is unified and dimensional. Music is unified if it is exhaustively referable to a precompositional system generated by a single constructive principle derived from a basic scale-type; it is dimensional if it can nonetheless be distinguished from that precompositional ordering".
The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840. According to Carl Dahlhaus, however, the term tonalité was only coined by Castil-Blaze in 1821. 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.
Characteristics and features
At least eight distinct senses of the word "tonality", some mutually exclusive, have been identified :1. Systematic organization
The word tonality may describe any systematic organization of pitch phenomena in any music at all, including pre-17th century western music as well as much non-western music, such as music based on the slendro and pelog pitch collections of Indonesian gamelan, or employing the modal nuclei of the Arabic maqam or the Indian raga system.This sense also applies to the tonic/dominant/subdominant harmonic constellations in the theories of Jean-Philippe Rameau as well as the 144 basic transformations of twelve-tone technique. By the middle of the 20th century, it had become "evident that triadic structure does not necessarily generate a tone center, that non-triadic harmonic formations may be made to function as referential elements, and that the assumption of a twelve-tone complex does not preclude the existence of tone centers".
For the composer and theorist George Perle, tonality is not "a matter of 'tone-centeredness', whether based on a 'natural' hierarchy of pitches derived from the overtone series or an 'artificial' pre compositional ordering of the pitch material; nor is it essentially connected to the kinds of pitch structures one finds in traditional diatonic music". This sense is susceptible to ideological employment, as Schoenberg, did by relying on the idea of a progressive development in musical resources "to compress divergent fin-de-siècle compositional practices into a single historical lineage in which his own music brings one historical era to a close and begins the next." From this point of view, twelve-tone music could be regarded "either as the natural and inevitable culmination of an organic motivic process or as a historical Aufhebung, the dialectical synthesis of late Romantic motivic practice on the one hand with a musical sublimation of tonality as pure system on the other".
2. Theoretical arrangement of pitches
In another sense, tonality means any rational and self-contained theoretical arrangement of musical pitches, existing prior to any concrete embodiment in music.For example, "Sainsbury, who had Choron translated into English in 1825, rendered the first occurrence of tonalité as a 'system of modes' before matching it with the neologism 'tonality'. While tonality qua system constitutes a theoretical abstraction from actual music, it is often hypostatized in musicological discourse, converted from a theoretical structure into a musical reality. In this sense, it is understood as a Platonic form or prediscursive musical essence that suffuses music with intelligible sense, which exists before its concrete embodiment in music, and can thus be theorized and discussed apart from actual musical contexts".
3. Contrast with modal and atonal systems
To contrast with "modal" and "atonal", the term tonality is used to imply that tonal music is discontinuous as a form of cultural expression from modal music on the one hand and atonal music on the other.4. Pre-modern concept
In some literature, tonality is a generic term applied to pre-modern music, referring to the eight modes of the Western church, implying that important historical continuities underlie music before and after the emergence of musical modernism around 1600, with the difference between tonalité ancienne and tonalité moderne being one of emphasis rather than of kind.5. Referential tonic
In a general way, tonality can refer to a wide variety of musical phenomena as arranged or understood in relation to a referential tonic.6. Tonal theories
In a slightly different sense to the one above, tonality can also be used to refer to musical phenomena perceived or preinterpreted in terms of the categories of tonal theories.This is a psychophysical sense, where for example "listeners tend to hear a given pitch as, for instance, an A above middle C, an augmented 4th above E, the minor 3rd in an F minor triad, a dominant in relation to D, or in G major rather than a mere acoustical frequency, in this case 440 Hz".
7. Synonym for "key"
The word tonality has more recently been used by amateur musicians and in popular music as a synonym for "key"—in this sense meaning "keyness"This is the most common usage, referring to the arrangement of musical phenomena around a referential tonic, as found in European music from about 1600 to about 1910, using two modal genera, major and minor
8. Other perspectives
There is a loose assortment of ideas associated with the term."Tonal harmonies must always include the third of the chord".
In major and minor harmonies, the perfect fifth is often implied and understood by the listener even if it is not present. To function as a tonic, a chord must be either a major or a minor triad. Dominant function requires a major-quality triad with a root a perfect fifth above the affiliated tonic and containing the leading tone of the key. This dominant triad must be preceded by a chord progression that establishes the dominant as the penultimate goal of a motion that is completed by moving on to the tonic. In this final dominant-to-tonic progression, the leading tone normally ascends by semitone motion to the tonic scale degree. A dominant seventh chord always consist of a major triad with an added minor seventh above the root. To achieve this in minor keys, the seventh scale degree must be raised to create a major triad on the dominant.
David considers key, consonance and dissonance, and hierarchical relationships the three most basic concepts in tonality.
Carl Dahlhaus lists the characteristic schemata of tonal harmony, "typified in the compositional formulas of the 16th and early 17th centuries," as the "complete cadence" I–ii–V–I, I–IV–V–I, I–IV–I–V–I; the circle of fifths progression I–IV–vii°–iii–vi–ii–V–I; and the major–minor parallelism: minor v–i–VII–III equals major iii–vi–V–I; or minor III–VII–i–v equals major I–V–vi–iii. The last of these progressions is characterized by "retrograde" harmonic motion.
Form
Consonance and dissonance
The consonance and dissonance of different intervals plays an important role in establishing the tonality of a piece or section in common practice music and popular music. For example, for a simple folk music song in the key of C Major, almost all of the triadic chords in the song will be Major or minor chords which are stable and consonant. The most commonly used dissonant chord in a pop song context is the dominant seventh chord built on the fifth scale degree; in the key of C Major, this would be a G dominant seventh chord, or G7 chord, which contains the pitches G, B, D and F. This dominant seventh chord contains a dissonant tritone interval between the notes B and F. In pop music, the listener will expect this tritone to be resolved to a consonant, stable chord.Tonal musics
"The larger portion of the world's folk and art music can be categorized as tonal," as long as the definition is as follows: "Tonal music gives priority to a single tone or tonic. In this kind of music all the constituent tones and resulting tonal relationships are heard and identified relative to their tonic". In this sense, "All harmonic idioms in popular music are tonal, and none is without function". However, "within the continuing hegemony of tonality there is evidence for a relatively separate tradition of genuine folk musics, which do not operate completely or even mainly according to the assumptions or rules of tonality. … throughout the reign of tonality there seem to have existed subterranean folk musical traditions organized on principles different from tonality, and often modal: Celtic songs and blues are obvious examples".According to Allan, "part of the heritage of rock lies within common-practice tonality" but, because the leading-note/tonic relationship is "axiomatic to the definition of common-practice tonality", and a fundamental feature of rock music's identity is the absence of a diatonic leading tone, the harmonic practices of rock music, "while sharing many features with classical tonality, are nonetheless distinct". Power chords are especially problematic when trying to apply classical functional tonality to certain varieties of popular music. Genres such as heavy metal, new wave, punk rock, and grunge music "took power chords into new arenas, often with a reduced emphasis on tonal function. These genres are often expressed in two parts—a bass line doubled in fifths, and a single vocal part. Power chord technique was often allied with modal procedure".
Much jazz is tonal, but "functional tonality in jazz has different properties than that of common-practice classical music. These properties are represented by a unique set of rules dictating the unfolding of harmonic function, voice-leading conventions, and the overall behavior of chord tones and chordal extensions".
History and theory
18th century
's Treatise on Harmony is the earliest effort to explain tonal harmony through a coherent system based on acoustical principles, built upon the functional unit being the triad, with inversions.19th century
The term "tonalité" was first used in 1810 by Alexandre Choron in the preface "Sommaire de l'histoire de la musique" to the "Dictionnaire historique des musiciens artistes et amateurs" to describe the arrangement of the dominant and subdominant above and below the tonic—a constellation that had been made familiar by Rameau. According to Choron, this pattern, which he called tonalité moderne, distinguished modern music's harmonic organization from that of earlier music, including "tonalité des Grecs" and "tonalité ecclésiastique" . According to Choron, the beginnings of this modern tonality are found in the music of Claudio Monteverdi around the year 1595, but it was more than a century later that the full application of tonal harmony finally supplanted the older reliance on the melodic orientation of the church modes, in the music of the Neapolitan School—most especially that of Francesco Durante.François-Joseph Fétis developed the concept of tonalité in the 1830s and 1840s, finally codifying his theory of tonality in 1844, in his Traité complet de la théorie et de la pratique de l'harmonie. Fétis saw tonalité moderne as the historically evolving phenomenon with three stages: tonality of ordre transitonique, of ordre pluritonique and, finally, ordre omnitonique. The "transitonic" phase of tonality he connected with the late Monteverdi. He described his earliest example of tonalité moderne thus: "In the passage quoted here from Monteverdi's madrigal, one sees a tonality determined by the accord parfait on the tonic, by the sixth chord assigned to the chords on the third and seventh degrees of the scale, by the optional choice of the accord parfait or the sixth chord on the sixth degree, and finally, by the accord parfait and, above all, by the unprepared seventh chord on the dominant". Among most subtle representatives of "pluritonic order" there were Mozart and Rossini; this stage he saw as the culmination and perfection of tonalité moderne. The romantic tonality of Berlioz and especially Wagner he related to "omnitonic order" with its "insatiable desire for modulation". His prophetic vision of the omnitonic order as the way of further development of tonality was a remarkable innovation to historic and theoretic concepts of the 19th century.
Tonalité ancienne Fetis described as tonality of ordre unitonique. The principal example of this "unitonic order" tonality he saw in the Western plainchant.
Fétis believed that tonality, tonalité moderne, was entirely cultural, saying, "For the elements of music, nature provides nothing but a multitude of tones differing in pitch, duration, and intensity by the greater or least degree ... The conception of the relationships that exist among them is awakened in the intellect, and, by the action of sensitivity on the one hand, and will on the other, the mind coordinates the tones into different series, each of which corresponds to a particular class of emotions, sentiments, and ideas. Hence these series become various types of tonalities." "But one will say, 'What is the principle behind these scales, and what, if not acoustic phenomena and the laws of mathematics, has set the order of their tones?' I respond that this principle is purely metaphysical . We conceive this order and the melodic and harmonic phenomena that spring from it out of our conformation and education."
Fétis' "Traité complet" was very popular. In France alone the book was printed between 1844 and 1903 twenty times. The 1st edition was printed in Paris and Brussels in 1844, the 9th edition was printed in , and the 20th edition was printed in Paris in 1903. For more bibliographical information, see .
In contrast, Hugo Riemann believed tonality, "affinities between tones" or Tonverwandtschaften, was entirely natural and, following Moritz, that the major third and perfect fifth were the only "directly intelligible" intervals, and that I, IV, and V, the tonic, subdominant, and dominant were related by the perfect fifths between their root notes.
It is in this era that the word tonality was popularized by Fétis.
Theorists such as Hugo Riemann, and later Edward and others, pushed back the date when modern tonality began, and the cadence began to be seen as the definitive way that a tonality is established in a work of music.
In the music of some late-Romantic or post-Romantic composers such as Richard Wagner, Hugo Wolf, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Alexander Scriabin, and others, we find a variety of harmonic and linear procedures that have the effect of weakening functional tonality. These procedures may produce a suspension of tonality or may create a sense of tonal ambiguity, even to the point that at times the sense of tonality is completely lost. Schoenberg described this kind of tonality as "aufgehobene Tonalität" and "schwebende Tonalität", usually rendered in English as "suspended" tonality and "fluctuating" tonality, respectively.
20th century
In the early 20th century, the tonality that had prevailed since the 17th century was seen to have reached a crisis or break down point. Because of the "...increased use of the ambiguous chords, the less probable harmonic progressions, and the more unusual melodic and rhythmic inflections," the syntax of functional harmony loosened to the point where, "At best, the felt probabilities of the style system had become obscure; at worst, they were approaching a uniformity which provided few guides for either composition or listening."Tonality may be considered generally, with no restrictions on the date or place the music was produced, and little restriction on the materials and methods used. This definition includes pre-17th century western music, as well as much non-western music. By the middle of the 20th century, it had become "evident that triadic structure does not necessarily generate a tone center, that non-triadic harmonic formations may be made to function as referential elements, and that the assumption of a twelve-tone complex does not preclude the existence of tone centers". For the composer and theorist George Perle, tonality is not "a matter of 'tone-centeredness', whether based on a 'natural' hierarchy of pitches derived from the overtone series or an 'artificial' pre compositional ordering of the pitch material; nor is it essentially connected to the kinds of pitch structures one finds in traditional diatonic music".
Theoretical underpinnings
One area of disagreement going back to the origin of the term tonality is whether tonality is natural or inherent in acoustical phenomena, whether it is inherent in the human nervous system or a psychological construct, whether it is inborn or learned, and to what degree it is all these things. A viewpoint held by many theorists since the third quarter of the 19th century, following the publication in 1862 of the first edition of Helmholtz's On the Sensation of Tone, holds that diatonic scales and tonality arise from natural overtones.Rudolph Réti differentiates between harmonic tonality of the traditional kind found in homophony, and melodic tonality, as in monophony. In the harmonic kind, tonality is produced through the V–I chord progression,
Consequently, he argues, melodically tonal melodies resist harmonization and only reemerge in western music after, "harmonic tonality was abandoned," as in the music of Claude Debussy: "melodic tonality plus modulation is modern tonality".
Outside common-practice period
The noun "tonality" and adjective "tonal" are widely applied also, in studies of early and modern Western music, and in non-Western traditional music, to the "systematic arrangements of pitch phenomena and relations between them". Felix Wörner, Ullrich Scheideler, and Philip Rupprecht in the introduction to a collection of essays dedicated to the concept and practice of tonality between 1900 and 1950 describe it generally as "the awareness of key in music".Harold Powers, in a series of articles, used terms "sixteenth-century tonalities" and "Renaissance tonality". He borrowed German "Tonartentyp" from :de:Siegfried Hermelink|Siegfried, who related it to Palestrina, translated it into English as "tonal type", and systematically applied the concept of "tonal types" to Renaissance sacred and paraliturgical polyphony. Cristle Collins Judd found "tonalities" in this sense in motets of Josquin Desprez. Judd also wrote of "chant-based tonality", meaning "tonal" polyphonic compositions based on plainchant. Peter Lefferts found "tonal types" in the French polyphonic chanson of the 14th century, Italian musicologists Marco Mangani and Daniele Sabaino in the late Renaissance music, and so on.
The wide usage of "tonality" and "tonal" has been supported by several other musicologists ; it can be traced, e.g., in the articles collected in. A possible reason for this broader usage of terms "tonality" and "tonal" is the attempt to translate German "Tonart" as "tonality" and "Tonarten-" prefix as "tonal". Therefore, two different German words "Tonart" and "Tonalität" have sometimes been translated as "tonality" although they are not the same words in German.
In 1882, Hugo Riemann defined the term Tonalität specifically to include chromatic as well as diatonic relationships to a tonic, in contrast to the usual diatonic concept of Tonart. In the neo-Riemannian theory of the late 20th century, however, the same chromatic chord relations cited by Riemann came to be regarded as a fundamental example of nontonal triadic relations, reinterpreted as a product of the hexatonic cycle, defined without reference to a tonic.
In the 20th century, music that no longer conformed to the strict definition of common-practice tonality could nevertheless still involve musical phenomena arranged or understood in relation to a referential tonic. For example, the closing bars of the first movement of Béla Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta do not involve a composed-out triad, but rather a diverging-converging pair of chromatic lines moving from a unison A to an octave E and back to a unison A again, providing a framing "deep structure" based on a tritone relationship that nevertheless is not analogous to a tonic-dominant axis, but rather remains within the single functional domain of the tonic, A. To distinguish this species of tonality from the stricter kind associated with the 18th century, some writers use the term "neotonality", while others prefer to use the term centricity, and still others retain the term, tonality, in its broader sense, or use word combinations like extended tonality.