Tonality's Purpose Today

Dunno if this is 100% relevant

I see what you did ther.

lot to comment on this thread, but i'm a noob so just wanted to mention a few things.

i'm surprised no one mentioned the term/concept of "pantonality" ('pan' as in 'all),

which i thought cleared up a lot of these semantic arguments. where all tones are equal within the context of our 12 tone western scale.

although i disagree with much of what you said antiatonality,

i can identify with the prejudice in your education, i had to deal with many roadblocks with trying to use any kind of common-practice tonality in my work. In the end, I think i received a very good music education but the composition department was far steeped in the idea that modern is always better.

also, i saw several comments trying to be black or white about Wagner, whether he was common practice, functional, or not. I think Wagner was a great and "gray" turning point and influence from more functional harmony to Schoenberg's eventual pioneering in "atonality." This was through Wagner's intense chromaticism. I think atonality came about as the next step in harmonic thinking that was quickly departing from functional harmony. Chromaticism became heavier and heavier, avoiding tonal centers more and more, until Schoenberg decided that the next step was to make all 12 tones equal.

and simply put (without looking it up), i use the word harmony as the relationship between pitched tones.

anyhow, i may make an intro thread, but its nice to be on a forum with people who have some proper music education...i've been dealing with pop musicians, engineers, and djs for far too long.

What's wrong with "pop musicians"? :/

What's wrong with "pop musicians"? :/

i AM a pop musician. so hopefully nothing.

although actually in my case probably a lot. haha.

Well, I think it's sort of a derogatory thing to say but if you include yourself in the same category then I guess you didn't mean it that way.

Well, I think it's sort of a derogatory thing to say but if you include yourself in the same category then I guess you didn't mean it that way.

lol.

well i do have many self degrading qualities, which i would say is more common among us less successful pop musicians. :cool:

anyways it was intended as a compliment to this forum. cheers.

here we go:

tonality

+

Not to argue but I'm inclined to say

:>

PS: Oh been dyin' to use that at some point, hahaha!

HAHAHAHA!!!

Fancy graphics guys!

although i disagree with much of what you said antiatonality, i can identify with the prejudice in your education, i had to deal with many roadblocks with trying to use any kind of common-practice tonality in my work. In the end, I think i received a very good music education but the composition department was far steeped in the idea that modern is always better.

You disagree with much of what I said? What exactly did you disagree with, if I may ask?

also, i saw several comments trying to be black or white about Wagner, whether he was common practice, functional, or not. I think Wagner was a great and "gray" turning point and influence from more functional harmony to Schoenberg's eventual pioneering in "atonality." This was through Wagner's intense chromaticism. I think atonality came about as the next step in harmonic thinking that was quickly departing from functional harmony. Chromaticism became heavier and heavier, avoiding tonal centers more and more, until Schoenberg decided that the next step was to make all 12 tones equal.

This was more of my position on the matter. I think it's difficult to call Wagner "common-practice" for any reason other than his use of triads. The progressions actually don't proceed from dominant-of-dominant to dominant of another dominant and so on in Tristan, and Parsifal has its own harmonic ambiguities that seem to preclude it from being considered in what one might hear in common practice music.

The circle of fifths is almost turned upside down. Instead it's almost a circle of thirds - check out the Liebstod of Tristan for more on this. I actually consider it more of a harmonic extension of each phrase. For instance, the first Ab7 chord is followed by a C7, then a Eb7, G7, to Ab Major. Then we go to A Major and see the same thing. It's not like a typical secondary dominant progression would happen. The Ab7 would go to Eb7 or Db7, then to either Bb7 or Gb7 or who knows... the point being the normal secondary "functionality" of the dominant is not applied, yet still creates a cohesive progression. There's nothing "common-practice" about these progressions in Wagner. They just happen to use a LOT of dominants.

The hierarchy that defines the common practice (more or less) ended with the language of late Wagner in Tristan and Parsifal. It's too gray of an area to say, though, that Wagner WAS composing the common-practice language.