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From: robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison)
Newsgroups: net.music.classical
Subject: Re: Tonality/Atonality
Message-ID: <986@eosp1.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Jul-84 13:19:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: eosp1.986
Posted: Tue Jul  3 13:19:09 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Jul-84 03:40:26 EDT
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References:

It must have been very difficult for composers like Schoenberg
and Webern to write music that does not use tonality, and tonal
associations, since they were brought up in a tonal environment.
Early Schoenberg is of course genuinely tonal, and I believe
that in many of his later compositions he did not worry about
tonal associations in his music.  One should distinguish several
degrees of tonality in music:

(1) Music that is consistently tonal in its structure and procedures.

(2) Music that is not consistently tonal in the sense of (1),
but still intentionally uses tonal techniques that will inevitably
arouse tonal responses in listeners.

(3) Non-tonal music.

The composer's intentions may be any of these, but he may fail in
any particular case due his conditioning and degree of technique.
Regardless of the composer's success, a listener may easily impose
more or less tonal association on the work than the composer intended.

Given all this uncertainty, I find it an intersting internal problem to
examine whether I am listening to a particular piece in a tonal way,
and whether I seem to be making a choice that is good for that
piece.  I, like many modern listeners, have an extensive mental
apparatus for listening tonally, and a less developed apparatus
for listening to music that lacks tonal associations.

In the late 50's and early 60's people did write formal serial
music based on 12-tone rows that sounded entirely tonal.  I
remember 12-tone composers commenting on these experiments with
fascination rather than anger.  Sorry, I remember no names.

I am particularly fascinated by music that uses tonal techniques,
but lacks a truly tonal structure.  Such music assumes (with
great success) that we have internalized the means to the ends
of tonal music, and can now respond to the means alone.
It is much as if one could serve a white sauce to gourmet diners,
and get them to respond to it joyously with the same attitudes
they reserve for dishes utilizing white sauce.

A favorite example of mine: popular songs that occasionally make a
sudden and violent keychange to go up one half step.  A song
might start in e-flat major and end in e-major.  Composers
have found their own reasons for the sudden modulation, but no one
seems bothered that the song ended in a different, and entirely
unprepared, key.

Schubert's Lied, "Gruppe Aus der Tartarus", contains sudden
changes from C-major to C# major that (I think) evoke much of
the modern excitement of this kind of keychange in pop songs.
But Schubert prepares for this very carefully, by placing it
in the context of many other chromatic upward sequences in the song.
And the song does not end in C#-major; each transition from C to
C# is mathced by a truly wild transtion back to C.  To
Schubert's listeners, these transitions were not prepared
enough; to modern listeners, in modern pop music, the preparations
are wholly unnecessary.

I have composed a half-Kaddish which is based on a 12tone row,
and consists almost purely of a recital of the row, its inverse,
its retrograde, and its retrograde inversion.  It sounds weird
enough that the congregation feels a little unsure of itself
coming in twith the customery responses, but I have used it
on various occasions with reasonable success.  The Kaddish
relies heavily upon tonal associations of the particular subset
that is common in Ashkenazic prayer music, so that it does not
sound really out of place.
					- Toby Robison (not Robinson!)
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