What is tonality? You could argue that any music that organizes structure through pitch is, in some sense, "tonal." Most of Steve Reich's music is tonal as is that, most certainly, of Philip Glass. There have been arguments that a lot of Schoenberg's music is tonal in a very broad sense. Some pieces by Berg likely are. Perhaps some pieces by Ligeti. Certainly music by a great number of 20th century masters from Stravinsky to Shostakovich to Britten to Messiaen. The term "extended tonality" was doubtless coined to describe the many different ways composers have approached tonality. It is no longer, if it ever was, a question of following a fixed set of "rules" governing how tonality must be used. It would be hard to find a composer who didn't break the rules whenever it was necessary or useful--even Haydn and Beethoven!
So we find ourselves on the verge of claiming that any music that organizes pitches is in some sense "tonal." I don't find that terribly problematic, frankly. There are, of course, pieces that are in no sense at all tonal such as this one:
But how could you argue that this piece is not tonal:
Schoenberg fiercely resisted classifying his music as "atonal," he preferred "pantonal" or "music written with twelve-tones equally" or some variation of that. Because certainly his music uses tones in various structural ways. Only a piece without tones could accurately be called "atonal" as a person without a moral sense would be called "amoral."
The two biggest differences between traditional or common practice tonality and extended tonality are first, the tolerance of higher levels of dissonance and second, the organization of pitches in a symmetrical rather than asymmetrical way. If you replace perfect 4ths and 5ths with tritones you make a profound change in harmonic structure by dividing the octave equally. Similarly, if you use an octatonic collection you also divide the octave equally. This leaves it open as to which pitch you choose as a "final." Using the whole-tone scale has a similar effect as we see in Debussy. Incidentally, Messiaen was referring to these symmetrical pitch collections in his "modes of limited transposition" because, yes, they can only be transposed a limited number of times. Also, a symmetrical rhythmic structure is, in his terminology, "non-retrogradable" because, like a palindrome, is it the same backwards or forwards.
Setting aside the more extreme approaches such as we find in Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen, it seems to be mostly true that 20th (and possibly 21st) century composers have taken a myriad of approaches to the tonal organization of music without actually casting aside the idea of tonal organization! Asking the question is a particular piece of music tonal or not is actually a very, very complicated question. For most purposes I am going to answer "uh-huh, probably."
Here is a nice example for you: Renard by Stravinsky. In A. Or "on" A. Or "in the general neighborhood of A".
At bottom, I think tonal organization is simply a set of expectations as to which note or chord is likely to follow the current note or chord. In a new system listeners need more aural support for their limited expectations eg Early Baroque. As they become more sophisticated the expectations become more complex . More deviations are permitted for longer and longer time as long as there is an eventual met expectation. Indeed even the typical deviations and extensions become part of the expectation. I'm not sure that literature/writing is any different.
ReplyDeleteSymmetrical or 12 tone structures do set up their own expectations but apparently the expectation of a tonal goal is very strong so they seem inherently more difficult. Perhaps this is also a function of octave equivalence which is innate.
It is an interesting question whether any listener, one from a completely different culture isolated from Western music for example, would hear octaves as equivalent.
ReplyDeleteI was basing the comment on octave equivalence on animal studies, specifically mammals such as rats cats and monkeys. The animals are trained to press a bar for food when a tone say C5 is present. There is no food with no tone or a different scale tone. After the animal learns to press the bar only when C5 is heard, the researcher presented C4 or C6 for the first time. The animals pressed the bar as if C4 or C6 were also C5.
ReplyDeleteStudies of music with humans are very difficult because even isolated or illiterate humans have cognitive ability and can app;y concepts to music. Birds that sing do not seen to have octave equivalence but have other hard wired mechanisms to guide pitch selection. So only mammals seem to have octave equivalence hard wired.
Hmm, interesting.
ReplyDeleteEarly Boulez certainly can be called outright atonal. But Boulez’s output after 1970 or begins to show features that, while far, far indeed from any common-practice tonality, nevertheless ground the music in certain vaguely tonal reference points. (See Jonathan Goldman’s The Musical Language of Pierre Boulez.) If we are going to accept some Ligeti works as "tonal", then why not, say, Boulez’s Répons (which ultimately is built from the overtone spectra of the pitches in the Sacher hexachord)?
ReplyDeleteThanks so much Anonymous! That is a very interesting observation. I don't know later Boulez nearly as well as the earlier music.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous' point about Boulez tracks with the observation I made about the 2nd Viennese School composers in a different thread, namely that they showed a lot of backsliding to tonal sounding music in their later works. Webern was still atonal in the instrumental pieces but the later vocal works are noticeably more fluid with typical vocal gestures. Schoenberg reverted to outright tonality in some works.
ReplyDeleteIt just shows how hard it is to write truly atonal uncentered music. I think one would have to get away from pitches as with electronic sounds/noises to have a chance of avoiding a tonal feel to the work. But few people want to listen to that kind of music. Once specific pitches are introduced the struggle is pretty much lost. At best one can fluctuate between different tonal centers.
In Taruskin's book on Stravinsky he outlines a host of fascinating strategies to both reference tonal centers and to make them ambiguous. He does this by, for example, pulling out a triad from the octatonic collection and using it as an ostinato accompaniment while using the remaining notes from the collection for the melody.
ReplyDeleteMy pronouns went a little awry. The second "he" that begins the second sentence, refers to Stravinsky, not Taruskin.
ReplyDelete