{"id":1362,"date":"2014-11-19T13:36:14","date_gmt":"2014-11-19T13:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/?p=1362"},"modified":"2020-05-19T13:40:38","modified_gmt":"2020-05-19T12:40:38","slug":"is-tonality-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/?p=1362","title":{"rendered":"Is tonality dead?"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>\u201cThat autopilot mentality \u2026 \u2013 and ditto the Classic BRITS\u2019 smorgasbord of stale musical leftovers \u2013 freeload off the hard fought-for expressive truths of others, reducing to nought those dark, sometimes unknowable, contradictions that give composers of integrity a reason to get up in the morning. Tonality is asset stripped; removed from the context of its own history and the word \u2018soundbite\u2019 becomes wholly apt.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Philip Clark,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gramophone.co.uk\/features\/focus\/a-new-tonality?pmtx=buy-all&amp;utm_expid=32540977-1.MaWDm8mkS6C4ZWAoxW1_Pw.4\">\u00a0Gramophone<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Philip Clark also writes in the same article: \u201cEarlier this summer my <i>Gramophone<\/i> colleague Ivan March wrote a blog post headlined \u2018The Art Of Melody\u2019 in which he floated that hoariest assumption of them all \u2013 that the word \u2018tonality\u2019 is somehow interchangeable with \u2018melody\u2019, while \u2018atonality\u2019 represents a simple negation of that, as Ivan put it, \u2018discordant groups of notes and chords, which entirely fail to appeal to the listener.\u2019\u00a0\u201c<\/p>\n<p>Stephen Strauss concludes from Harvard psychologist\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.greenwych.ca\/babies.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jerome Kagan<\/a>\u2018s research that\u00a0\u201cchildren seemed calmer and more content when harmonious sounds were played\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>And\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.compositiontoday.com\/blog\/29.asp\">Graham Lynch<\/a>\u00a0writes \u201cSo, is tonality dead or alive? I don\u2019t know. But I do notice that consonant harmony has made more of a return, but within a pacing and context that is clearly 21st century.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>First of all though,\u00a0what is tonality? And what is the difference between working <em>in<\/em> tonality and working <em>with<\/em> tonality\u2014a distinction that Reinhard Febel, my old colleague from the Mozarteum, makes.<\/p>\n<p>Must tonality be functional? Or is it more about consonance?<\/p>\n<p>Must it be triadic? Or is tension and release the key issue?<\/p>\n<p>To be considered alive and well, must tonality still be developing?<\/p>\n<p>Turning this another way, is tonal music dead music? Or is it a matter of the music\u2019s function i.e. to what end the music is being made (entertainment, spiritual services, advertisting)?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThat autopilot mentality \u2026 \u2013 and ditto the Classic BRITS\u2019 smorgasbord of stale musical leftovers \u2013 freeload off the hard fought-for expressive truths of others, reducing to nought those dark, sometimes unknowable, contradictions that give composers of integrity a reason to get up in the morning. Tonality is asset stripped; removed from the context of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,76],"tags":[43,42],"class_list":["post-1362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-composition-seminars","category-university-of-edinburgh","tag-atonality","tag-tonality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1364,"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362\/revisions\/1364"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}