about tonality

[adam kondor]

About tonality:
(BTW this is a pretty weird interview, David-Lynch-style)


(you see, Europeans always have this upper cat attitude - but that is only their problem!)

also, questionable views about democracy...


But I agree with him on tonality. At least I'm unable to hear anything (even Boulez) not-tonally. Probably that's because I was educated in Hungary, Kodaly-system, you know, ut-re-mi-fa sol-la, etc. In the smallest pieces of music instinctively searching for (or projecting into maybe?) tonal relationships. It is actually a hindrance, I feel, because there are pieces which are intentionally NOT tonal, and my tonality-based approach limits my understanding of them.

[adam kondor]

the indigenous culture of Europeans. :)



Greg Hooper said:

I have been thinking about tonality - not surprisingly - and for me it is not a strong perception. I grew up in a family without any music at all. As a teenager I listened to the radio and heard pop bands - it was very exciting when a band like Led Zeppelin was played. So I heard Beatles and stuff, but no classical at all. My first expansion out of pop was progressive rock, with Genesis. By the time I was 15 my friends and i were experimenting with detuned guitars and noise. The next expansion was Berio, gamelan and Bill Furlong and post world war 2. It was much much later I heard - other than in the background - Mozart or Beethoven or Ives - this is not a tradition I know that well at all.
So for me tonality - in the classical tradition- is not privileged. It is just another 'sound'. My ear is not strongly trained for that way of hearing. I hear in the context of the immediate piece more than in a broader context of listening and training. Which I see as an incredible limitation, but not a limitation I worry about anymore

[Jeff Harrington]

99% of Western music is tonal. Classical tonality/Country&Western tonality pretty much the same thing. The modal pop music world, just an extension of that.

Although it seems like a system, I think it's a lot deeper than that and that it's easier to say that Atonality is a system. You hear tonalities in the indigenous musics. Different cadences - but ultimately the modern era is about rejecting this type of consonance completely.

And remember, modernism today (at least the high-modernism we aspired to at Juilliard and the current flavor of the moment throughough Europe) pretty much rejects regular rhythms, melodic gestalts, any form of teleological intent and forms that are comprehensible to the ear.

When we talk about 'returning to tonality' there's a lot more involved.

adam kondor said:

the indigenous culture of Europeans. :)



Greg Hooper said:

I have been thinking about tonality - not surprisingly - and for me it is not a strong perception. I grew up in a family without any music at all. As a teenager I listened to the radio and heard pop bands - it was very exciting when a band like Led Zeppelin was played. So I heard Beatles and stuff, but no classical at all. My first expansion out of pop was progressive rock, with Genesis. By the time I was 15 my friends and i were experimenting with detuned guitars and noise. The next expansion was Berio, gamelan and Bill Furlong and post world war 2. It was much much later I heard - other than in the background - Mozart or Beethoven or Ives - this is not a tradition I know that well at all.
So for me tonality - in the classical tradition- is not privileged. It is just another 'sound'. My ear is not strongly trained for that way of hearing. I hear in the context of the immediate piece more than in a broader context of listening and training. Which I see as an incredible limitation, but not a limitation I worry about anymore

[Jeff Harrington]

Well it's the 'predictability' thing that makes any attempt to reintegrate it into art music a nightmare. You've once again get the old (jumping now to narrative fiction cuz we're in text ) 'He said, she said' problem for example.

When narrative fiction returned after being dumped for modernist anti-linear fiction in the 40's-70's in academia/art-circles all of a sudden you had all the old cliche's. How do you go from speaking to the hidden narrator, etc. all the old problems that every writer had to solve or accept the standard solution. Joyce had used the old '-' Faulkner, his devices, etc.

With returning to tonality, cadences, transitions, all of these cliche solutions to problems of shaping need to be re-invented.

Greg Hooper said:

Jeff - I think this is what I think of as predictability

Greg

Jeff Harrington said:

99% of Western music is tonal. Classical tonality/Country&Western tonality pretty much the same thing. The modal pop music world, just an extension of that.

Although it seems like a system, I think it's a lot deeper than that and that it's easier to say that Atonality is a system. You hear tonalities in the indigenous musics. Different cadences - but ultimately the modern era is about rejecting this type of consonance completely.

And remember, modernism today (at least the high-modernism we aspired to at Juilliard and the current flavor of the moment throughough Europe) pretty much rejects regular rhythms, melodic gestalts, any form of teleological intent and forms that are comprehensible to the ear.

When we talk about 'returning to tonality' there's a lot more involved.

adam kondor said:

the indigenous culture of Europeans. :)



Greg Hooper said:

I have been thinking about tonality - not surprisingly - and for me it is not a strong perception. I grew up in a family without any music at all. As a teenager I listened to the radio and heard pop bands - it was very exciting when a band like Led Zeppelin was played. So I heard Beatles and stuff, but no classical at all. My first expansion out of pop was progressive rock, with Genesis. By the time I was 15 my friends and i were experimenting with detuned guitars and noise. The next expansion was Berio, gamelan and Bill Furlong and post world war 2. It was much much later I heard - other than in the background - Mozart or Beethoven or Ives - this is not a tradition I know that well at all.
So for me tonality - in the classical tradition- is not privileged. It is just another 'sound'. My ear is not strongly trained for that way of hearing. I hear in the context of the immediate piece more than in a broader context of listening and training. Which I see as an incredible limitation, but not a limitation I worry about anymore

[Johnny & Faith]

Mmmmm. Faulkner's devices . . . I like the device where he circles and circles and beats around the bush and beats around the bush page after page becoming more and more audacious, stubbornly refusing to just come out and say it lol. He leaves you feeling as you've been pummeled or brain-raped or something. Dern dipsomaniac rawked

[Paul H. Muller]

"With returning to tonality, cadences, transitions, all of these cliche solutions to problems of shaping need to be re-invented..."

I think that the beauty of minimalism is that it manages to reinforce tonality by repitition rather than with the usual harmonic progressions, transitions and cadences typical of late romantic music (and by extension our contemporary country-western, pop and John Williams movie scores.)

Do you think minimalism is too limited to succeed in this? Do we need to revisit cadences?

Another thought: Late romantic/contemporary tonal music has a beginning, middle and end. The piece typically begins on the tonic chord, builds tension by harmonic progression and reinforces the tonality with a cadence at the end of the passage or phrase. This imparts a sense of the passage of time and becomes a metaphor for a sort of journey within the music. Some point out that this is an expression of modernism in the sense that we moderns organize our lives in a chronological, linear fashion - we are always "on the clock" - our day, our career and our life all have an arc to them. But tonal music confronts us with the reality that such an existance means we live between a past we cannot change and a future we cannot control. So another virtue of minimalism, in my view, is its lack of conventional musical syntax for progression or journey. Minimalism starts and stops, but it does not want to end.

Can we return to tonality and successfully avoid the danger of reinventing the quiet despiration of modernism?

[adam kondor]

my last attempt in white-key music:

score

audio

[Shane W. Cadman]

Very beautiful! I needed to hear something like this today.

To me, music at its best takes the listener out of the "real world" and into the sonic reality created by the piece without havingto understand how or why. It's not about intellect (even though it may have been constructed that way). It's about being immersed in the beauty of sound.

Thanks!

adam kondor said:

my last attempt in white-key music:

score

audio

[paul bailey]

that proves the point that white note music doesn't have to suck. very beautiful.

is that computer of live strings?

paul

Shane W. Cadman said:

Very beautiful! I needed to hear something like this today.

To me, music at its best takes the listener out of the "real world" and into the sonic reality created by the piece without havingto understand how or why. It's not about intellect (even though it may have been constructed that way). It's about being immersed in the beauty of sound.

Thanks!

adam kondor said:

my last attempt in white-key music:

score

audio

[Harriter88-aka terry harrington]

Indeed very beautiful Adam,whether you or anyone else thinks it's a path that has come to an end or not(i.e.late romantic-Mahler,Strauss.Kodaly,Barber etc),it carries a vibration from the Heart,and as far as i'm concerned is as valid as your Partita.A World where All is allowed,valued & appreciated-a nice place to visit but damn tough to live in.

[adam kondor]

Paul: "is that computer of live strings?"
This is a live concert recording of a half-amateur chamber orchestra playing the piece (excellently!), conducted by Geza Gemesi.
(especially the viola part is eminent)

Consider these paradoxes:
- the piece is quite "melodious" without having a real recognizable melodic gestalt in it
- the same is true harmonically: there is no logic in how the harmonies are changing, there is no real harmonical thinking, just a strong illusion of suspensions and solutions
- no rhytm either; what is happening rhytmically is very simple: on every beat one (or maximum two) parts move to a new note
- from beat to beat there is always the illusion of 'something going on' but altogether the general feeling is a directionless "floating". Still, the end strikes as a strong arrival to an unexpected place.
- moreover, it is a passacaglia: the bass repeats the same row of notes in every new key (just the lengths of the notes are changing from time to time)

[Alphonse Izzo]

It's a beautiful piece.

adam kondor said:

Paul: "is that computer of live strings?"
This is a live concert recording of a half-amateur chamber orchestra playing the piece (excellently!), conducted by Geza Gemesi.
(especially the viola part is eminent)

Consider these paradoxes:
- the piece is quite "melodious" without having a real recognizable melodic gestalt in it
- the same is true harmonically: there is no logic in how the harmonies are changing, there is no real harmonical thinking, just a strong illusion of suspensions and solutions
- no rhytm either; what is happening rhytmically is very simple: on every beat one (or maximum two) parts move to a new note
- from beat to beat there is always the illusion of 'something going on' but altogether the general feeling is a directionless "floating". Still, the end strikes as a strong arrival to an unexpected place.
- moreover, it is a passacaglia: the bass repeats the same row of notes in every new key (just the lengths of the notes are changing from time to time)