This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I don't know who F['e]tis is and this info is now in the first paragraph. Hyacinth 06:12, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)
"The term tonality seems to have been introduced into music by the Belgian composer and musicologist Joseph Fétis around the middle of the nineteenth century. It was meant to signify a musical state, which had for several centuries already been in general use, according to which a musical group is conceived (by the composer as well as the listener) as a unit related to, and so to speak derived from, a central tonal fundament, the tonic. This tonal fundament is understood as one note, or, in a more comprehensive sense, as the full triad-harmony of a note, be it major or minor. In fact, the word tonality was probably chosen merely as a linguistically pleasant abberviation of tonicality (thus also presaging atonality instead of the tongue-twisting atonicality)." (Reti, 1958, Tonality: Harmonic Tonality)
In this article tonality is described as a set of rules, which are actual guidelines created after the fact, and not as a system of relations and perceptions. Hyacinth
Note that most or all of the problems identified here have been corrected.
The article, as written, isn't very useful at all to someone without a strong working knowledge of music theory and musicology. Also, style of prose is more appropriate for a graduate-level college essay than for an encyclopaedia. For example, there is no need to sum up a section - if you need to sum up, you haven't done a good enough job breaking down the information into digestible bits. Along those lines, paragraphs and sentences should be shorter, and the whole thing needs to be further subdivided into sub-sections.
Also the content is wanting. First, remember that "tonal music" redirects here. This can't just be an article about the theory of tonality! If I wanted to know about tonality and tonal music, I'd probably want to see the following information (i.e., this is my propsoed outline):
Dave 21:19, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)
Compositional resources
I propose that compositional resources in the common practice period can be described in terms of practical sets.
The ultimate source set is the harmonic series. Common Practice composers and theoreticians have responded to this basic fact of nature by creating sets of:
Major scales, minor scales (all flavors), diatonic triads and extensions (tertian structures.) cadences, non-harmonic tones, secondary functions, partwriting procedures. harmonic progression practices,and the reconciliation of dissonance and consonance. Transition technics such as modulation were developed to tie everything together as coherently as possible.
To mold these basic resources into what Suzanne Langer would call "significant forms" composers craft phrases, melodies and genres and seek meaningful unity, variety and symmetical and asymmetical balance. This constitutes the raw materials of grammar and rhetoric of musical ideas within style periods, nationalities, individual composers and even specific works. In other words the common practice period languages provided ample room for individuality for a very long period of time.
Impressionistic Set Repertoire
The revolutionary vision of the impressionist composers expanded the repertoire of sets described above to include:
Modes, whole tone scales, pentatonic scales, quartal and quintal chords, pan diatonic, pan pentatonic and pan whole tone structures.
New grammar such as planing and new types of modulations were invented to bind this expanded wealth of resources together. A heightened interest in timbre and new rhythmic designs added even more dimension to the new language.
The genius of Debussy and Ravel was to create a great number of works that effectively blended old and new resources into significant forms. There seems to have been no trial and error or "mannererist" period of experimentation involving gimmicky failures and half successes. They also proved that the musical wheel could be effectively reinvented.
Beyond Impressionism
The challenge to composers ever since has been to craft a personal language whose new and old sets can be combined into expressive and formally significant compositions. In this quest 20th century composers often forgot that the audience is the client for their products. Verbose and convoluted annotations were typically provided to beg for respect for fundamentally unlikable experiments.
Enough! As 21st. century composers we must now direct our efforts to successfully serve the only population who, in the final analysis, justifies our existence. To paraphrase Bill Clinton's famous campaign slogan, "It's the audience, stupid."
Robert C. Howard
The article currenlty has sections titled "Vocabulary of Tonal Organization" and "Tonal Theory" and "History". What exactly do those title mean? Is the "Vocabulary of Tonal Organization" the vocabulary use to describe organization according to traditional theory? Is "Theory" then the history of theory? Is "History" the history of the "use" of tonality, or the history of the theory of tonality, or both? Hyacinth 05:54, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
The article has an accumulation of material. The Vocabulary of tonal organization is a description of chord names and functions - which is required to able to read tonal analysis of almost any kind. The theory and history sections should probably be rewritten to make each clearer. The current article is defective in that it spends a great deal of time on some POVs which, while interesting, are not the dominant meanings of the word as it is generally used.
Stirling Newberry I would have to say that Reti gets a good deal more attention in the article than he does in the real world, particularly with respect to Schenker and Schoenberg who are still the most influential theorists on the subject of tonality. The use of tonality in Jazz is, similarly, given a somewhat short shrift. I feel we should rebalance the article to put more emphasis on the sort of material that most people will encounter and want information on.
Stirling Newberry added a great deal to the vocabulary section. I want the poor stiff who reads "and then cadence on vi leads back to the tonic triad" to at least feel that there is some sense there.
User:Stirling Newberry, thanks for integrating the section on Reti into the history section.
I removed the above sentence because the article, as of yet, in no way mentions Dahlhaus' seven definitions. Hyacinth 00:10, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
In a way, this is completely appropriate, since the concept of tonality itself is a mess. But it's also probably the most important motivating concept in modern music theory, so it'd be nice to have a good article on it. This passage is a particular offense:
<< Music is considered to be tonal if it includes the following five descriptions of tonality: (1) it uses a Major or minor (diatonic) scale system (2) it contains triadic harmonies (three note chords) (3) it has a tonic (central tone) (4) it has a leading tone (7th scale degree) (5) resolution of dissonance (that is: if a chord or note is played (like a leading tone 7th scale degree) that doesn't sound final, the final sounding chord is played after it (like the tonic) to resolve the piece) >>
(1) is disputable; it isn't hard to think of examples of music that are recognizably tonal but for which it would be a stretch to try to interpret them as diatonic. (2) is completely ill-worded. It suggests that any old three-note chords will do! What it should say is that the music uses functional harmony (based on major and minor triads, etc.). Not that everyone would agree that this is a necessary condition for tonality. (4) is completely absurd. I've never heard anyone suggest that a leading tone is a necessary condition for tonality. I suppose functional harmony requires a leading tone, but its silly to make this a self-standing entry in a definition. Finally, (5) is the most poorly, confusingly worded thing I've ever seen in a Wikipedia article. I think the idea here is that tonality requires a consonance/dissonance distinction, which is fine. At that point, why not just cite the consonance/dissonance article, rather than tie oneself in knots trying to explain it in multiply embedded parentheses?
I think if the article is going to include a "definition" of tonality, not in itself a bad idea, it has to acknowledge that there is no agreed upon definition. The strongest contenders, it seems to me, are (a) a sense of tonal center (a "home" pitch class), itself not an entirely well-defined property of music (in fact, more of a way of hearing than an intrinsic musical property), and (b) the use of functional harmony, which is also a little tricky to define (with the appropriate breadth for dealing with chromatic harmony). Diatonicity and consonance/dissonance are important adjunct ideas, but too slippery for a definition. (What are the criteria for a musical passage to be diatonic? How do you know when dissonance is being "treated as dissonance"?)
Jason D Yust 15:28, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
There is no discussion concerning the innovations of Russian composers such as Alexander Scriabin and Nikolay Roslavets. Schoenberg may not be the singular pioneer that Euro-centric people think he is. Roslavets may have produced a rational 12 tone system before Schoenberg did, and Scriabin was before them both. The 1907 fifth sonata breaks from conventional western tonality, and some shorter pieces may predate it and involve similar innovation. Because of politics, revolutionary-Soviet-Cold War, the work of Roslavets has been practically forgotten, but he deserves to be discussed just as much as Schoenberg does, and Scriabin definitely does as well. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.133.103.221 ( talk) 20:33, 14 May 2007 (UTC).
I will attempt to do this over a number of weeks, and would be pleased to receive feedback from the previous writers. I've had a go at the opening. Tony 14:50, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
I have to admit that I've learnt something new here: a term for the lowered seventh degree of a tonal scale. It's unfamiliar to most musicians, although I'm having second thoughts about having removed it from the table. Tony 14:57, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
I have several factual and POV problems with Tony 01's edits.
1. While the focus on tonic triad is historically correct, it hasn't been the case for a century in theory or practice for a century. Quartal harmony has been regarded as tonal for almost a century.
2. Calling it "European". This is excessively ethnocentric, it may have originated in a certain area of Europe - and many folk musics are not tonal even in Europe proper, however, it isn't "European" in the same sense as the "European parliament" or being tied on a continuing basis to Europe.
3. The second inversion is the second inversion, it shouldn't be removed.
4. A great deal of music is not made by the media system, and there is a far amount of commercial popular music based on india's system of ragas, which is not, in the definition that Tony argues for "tonal".
5. Other modes that church modes have become very common - including blues and the magic scale - in modern tonal practice.
The changes seemed more appropriate to say, common practice, which was far more a European or European derrived musical system.
Stirling Newberry 20:25, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
Oh my god, you've reverted the entire effort? That's hard to believe. I'm afraid I have problems with WAY too much of the previous, and sadly, current text. We're going to have to go through the entire text, bit by bit, I'm afraid, because the existing article is woefully inadequate. To take the points you raise, one by one:
(1) Please provide references and justify your statement that quartal harmony is tonal. I think that you'll find little support for this assertion among music theorists. Tonality is almost universally regarded as being based on the triad, and thus having ended in art-music during the 20th century. Quartal harmony, as practised by, say, Bartok, is regarded as being a move away from tonality. The article should be plain and simple for a non-specialist to read. Going with the conventional notion of tonality is the easiest way to do this. Alternatives, such as quartal harmony, might be mentioned further down in the article.
(2) Whether you like it or not, tonality WAS a European development, just as the drone was an Indian innovation; pointing that out doesn't mean that the drone is solely Indian. I felt that NOT mentioning 'European' was ethnocentric, since it may have implied that what was essentially European was global. Constraining the definition to a geographical and cultural area is necessary if tonality is to be compared and contrasted with other music traditions.
(3) I'll accept reference to 'second inversion', but not without explaining that it's essentially different from root position and first inversion.
(4) Please be logical: I wrote that tonality 'remains the dominant feature of popular music'—that DOESN'T mean that popular music is entirely tonal, as you assume I stated or implied in your fourth point. The statement stands perfectly well here, since it's important to explain the waning of the system in traditional European music, against its flourishing in popular music worldwide. Why on earth shouldn't the article start by positioning tonality in cultural terms?
(5) I don't understand the relevance of that point; it can be dealt with later, and is not inconsistent with my proposed opening. The opening should paint the big picture in cultural and technical terms. The new text doesn't seem to be inconsistent with most of your objections.
Chords are quite different from triads, and tones from notes. Let's use the terminology precisely and consistently, to minimise confusion in the relatively uninformed reader.
I hope that we can do this co-operatively rather than fighting a war. Doing a complete revert is like starting a war.
Tony 02:59, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
PS, Stirling, I've just read your personal page, which is very much to my liking, politically and musically. I do hope that we can co-operate in the rewriting of this article. Tony
Stirling: Thanks for your reply, which contains some good points; I think we have to come to a consensus about the semantic boundaries surrounding the term 'tonal/tonality'.
I'm very on-side with Schenker; although I don't know as much as I should about Schenkerian analysis, his basic theory informs my outlook on tonal language.
I'm unsure of the ramifications of making the article 'temp', since I'm relatively new to Wikipedia; is it explained somewhere? I'll respond in detail soon. Tony 15:50, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
1. Setting up a temp page is easy, we copy the current article there, work on the temp version,a and when there is consensus move it forward.
2. Remember we are here to document notable uses of the term, and label where they come from, so that a reader who comes here with a reference to tonality in hand, will be able to find the use they see in the source.
Stirling Newberry 16:24, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
Are you able to set up the temp page, then? I wonder whether it would be diplomatic to signal to other stakeholders that this process is occurring.
So you advise opening with a semantic, definitional approach? Is it appropriate to list the various meanings of the term 'tonality', and then perhaps to embark on further, more detailed explanation of one or more of these meanings?
Tony <tony1@iinet.net.au>
Tony 07:35, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
Currently it's this:
Tonality is the character of music written with hierarchical relationships of pitches, rhythms, and chords to a "center" or tonic. Tonic is sometimes used interchangeably with key. The term tonalité was borrowed from Castil-Blaze (1821, François Henri Joseph Blaze) by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840 (Reti, 1958; Judd, 1998; Dahlhaus). The term is often used as being synonymous with Major-Minor tonality, but is, in more recent theory, used more broadly to encompass a number of systems of musical organization.
In my view, there are several problems that we need to address.
(1) 'is the character of'—what does it mean? How about: 'Tonality is a system of writing music with hierarchical relationships ...'. (2) I don't understand the inclusion of 'rhythms' in the hierarchical relationship to the centre. (3) A central note applies to most of the music cultures in the world, and doesn't distinguish tonality from pretonal music in the European tradition. I've always understood the unique aspect of tonality to be the central triad. Much renaissance and medieval music, for example, lacks a sense of triadic/root movement. Isn't this important in defining the tonal system? (4) The second sentence may confuse the reader; can someone give an example of exact interchangeability between 'tonic' and 'key'. In any case, is it important enough to put in the second sentence? (5) 'is often used as being synonymous' needs to be reworded. (6) If 'tonality' is to be broadly defined, as appears here, I wonder whether a separate article is required, perhaps entitled 'The tonal period', or 'European tonality', or something like that. Alternatively, an account of tonality as many people understand it (i.e., the system that was dominant from about 1600 to 1910) could be dealt with in a separate section here.
Tony 04:28, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
Having undertaken a typo cleanup of this otherwise excellent article, I found several references to the term "through bass". As these linked terms have no target article, I wonder if they too are typos and should actually be "thorough-bass". Thanks, Chas 2 October 2005 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.66.100.17 ( talk • contribs) 20:28, 1 October 2005
Sorry, but I think it's far from excellent, and requires a complete rewrite. Tony 07:09, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
I hope that it is helpful. The term should be "thorough bass", normally without hyphen. However, why not use the more common term "figured bass" (after mentioning t b on first occurrence)? Tony 00:47, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't think that the term "tonicality" is common or accepted enough to appear in the introduction, so I removed it. Hyacinth 09:03, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Peter Schat, in Tone Clock ( ISBN 3718653699, 1993, p.26), argues that "'tonal' and 'atonal' are the wrong words" yet puts tonicality in scare quotes at its first appearance. Leigh Landy, in What's the Matter with Today's Experimental Music?; Organized Sound Too Rarely Heard ( ISBN 3718651688, 1991, p.94), explains that he uses the term to embrace "all music, be it modal, strict tonal, pentatonic, or whatever, as long as it is based on tone centers". Hyacinth 12:26, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
The article is too long. Hyacinth 09:21, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
The audio samples of mozart are too fast to get the point across. Someone should make them slower.
I just read this article for the first time today, and I'd like to help with the copy editing because there is a lot of material here that I could more readily agree with if it were only expressed in simpler, easier-to-understand language.
The first suggestion I'd like to make is about the "chart" of tonal functions. It seems to me that this is completely anti-intuitive and more difficult to understand than it should be because the whole thing is arranged upside down. I mean, heck, the first this you see is that the "supertonic" is below the "tonic!" So I'd like to suggest that the table be rearranged as follows. I need to learn a little bit more about how to center the text before I can do this myself, but in the meantime if anybody has any objections or comments about how to improve this, please state them over the next few days, and I'll proceed accordingly. Spventi 06:34, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Table of Tonal Functions
Roman Numeral | Solfege | Name (Function) | |||||||
I | Do/Ut | Tonic | |||||||
VII | Ti / Si | Leading/ Subtonic | |||||||
VI | La | Sub-Mediant | |||||||
V | Sol | Dominant | |||||||
IV | Fa | Sub-Dominant | |||||||
III | Mi | Mediant | |||||||
II | Re | Supertonic | |||||||
I | Do / Ut | Tonic |
Did you mean to make this table?
Function | Roman Numeral | Solfege |
Leading/ Subtonic | VII | Ti/Si |
Sub-Mediant | VI | La |
Dominant | V | Sol |
Sub-Dominant | IV | Fa |
Mediant | III | Mi |
Supertonic | II | Re |
Tonic | I | Do/Ut |
Hyacinth 07:41, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
No, actually, I meant exactly what I proposed, although perhaps it is better to have the numerals and solfege names to the left.
I would like to find a way to make this table easier to understand for people who do not already understand these concepts. Musically, these relations only have meaning along a time line, and I think that spreading it out horizontally helps illustrate that. After all, we never show scales as clusters of notes on a single stem. Also, it would be nice to find something that implies visually that things beging and end at the tonic. Maybe we need a graphic showing these relationships arranged around circle with the tonic at the top. See what I mean?
Spventi 08:34, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
This article makes a number of claims about the relationship of perceptual processes, the overtone series, and musical tonality that should be identified as being more controversial than they currently are-- see specifically the section "Uses of the Term", subsection "By nature". Far more seriously, the citations backing up these assertions are of the lowest quality- not to peer-reviewed journal articles, but to self-published books and personal web-pages which make extremely broad and untenable claims that are far from mainstream viewpoints in music theory, history, or cognitive science.
If the relationship of tonality to the overtone series should be handled (which is certainly interesting and important), it needs to be done by citing reputable sources.
There are also a number of factual errors. Eg:
This is not why the scale is called diatonic.
I'd go as far as saying that this is probably the worst article I've ever seen on Wikipedia!
Chris 19:41, September 6, 2006 (UTC) User:Redpony
As always, if you are knowledgeable about a topic, improving the article yourself is allowed and encouraged. Factual errors? Fix them! Don't see the cites you want? Add them! Kwertii 20:21, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Redpony 03:49, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Sorry for the carelessness. Fixed it right away —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Greenwyk ( talk • contribs) 11:09, 4 December 2006 (UTC). Sorry -- like you (whoiever originally accidentally removed the introduction) I also accidentally removed your comment about it, and replaced it as fast as I could -- but forgot to sign "Greenwyk." I seem to have lost your identity in the process. Greenwyk 01:01, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Agreeing with the call for citations about the "natural" basis for tonality, since they exist, I have added them.
To make the article a little shorter, someone may wish to move the citations down below, under references and sources, and possibly refer to the quotes and viewpoint descriptions only by author's name & year (Reti, Gustin, etc.) in the "by nature:" category.
Using the number format may not be agreeable to some. So change that if desired. Or put the whole list of quotes, descriptions of theories and views, & authors down below under "Theory of tonal music" where there is more room (which would be best I think) -- and simply outline the list of various authors on both the "nature" and the "nurture" side of the debate (the latter has many sources, but I haven't chosen them yet -- or someone else may know better which should be chosen & quoted), and put the short list under the "by nature:" subhead under "Uses of the term."
No strong feelings about this, except that the sources and quotes, now known, should be listed to meet Wiki "balanced POV" guides, whatever one may agree with about any of the views. I don't believe the accepted view of this controversy is as "nurture" as some say -- maybe in music academia, it may be. But in science & archaeology academia, and in the general public (tonal popular music as evidence) it isn't that settled by far, and much more leans toward "nature". Greenwyk 08:53, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Redpony 21:10, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
To Bob Fink: I hope you reconsider your decision. As an experienced author you should contribute - and test your patience with other editors. That's Wikipedia. Old Palimpsest 19:20, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Removal of all of Pleasant's views left item 2 without its reference (for "similar findings"). Reposted short description of Pleasant's findings & work. Also entered missing source for Pleasant's book.) Greenwyk 17:53, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
The midi which demonstrates to listeners that the Kilmer version of the oldest known song is tonal-sounding provides information that removal of the midi prevents readers from hearing. I will replace the midi unless there is some reason for suppressing it from being heard. After all, this article is about tonality.
The observation that the holes in the Neanderthal flute match the spacing of a do-re-mi-fa sequence found in modern flutes (such as an Irish whistle) is not a POV. It is a fact verified simply by looking at the match of the spacings which have been measured. The match can be visually seen at Divje Babe (and at other websites which have requested permission to reproduce the picture).
Removing this factual observation appears to have no reason for it. The holes, whether human-made or chance-made, are there and can be seen and measured. Describing the actual appearance of a match is valid whether the disputed bone is a flute or not. Unless a relevant reason for claiming it is a "POV" is provided (other than asserting it's POV), the comment will be replaced. Bob Fink, 65.255.225.41 14:54, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Most of the statements in your above paragraph are outrageously untrue, false, and unfounded. I will not continue to be provoked by statments the facts of which -- to correct -- will simply use up time, disrupt everything, and serve only your desire to target me, my edits, references, or verified information. Nothing to be done except to revert or replace your ridiculous edits for the incompetence that they are. Since you won't read -- or cannot understand accurately what you read -- of Turk, or me (even in Talk) and of others in the literature, or quote them or me rather than invent your own warped meaning about what was written or what I said, I'm finally aware I'm discussing with a deaf wall. You are impervious to evidence, facts, and believe you are infallible. You don't even seem able to consistently or accurately express the meaning of, or define the word "hole." You'll find someone else to drive crazy with distractions, but not me any longer. If you don't like it take it to an arbitrator. Happy New Year. --Bob Fink 65.255.225.52 05:14, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
For the sake of understanding the difference between "observations" (or measurements or evidence) and interpretations: Let's say the hole spacing matched the tooth-span of a wolf? Would making that unqualified observation be "misleading"? Or is it fair to mention as an accurate item of evidence? If truthful, it would not prove a wolf made the holes. Nor disprove it. It would just be an accurate observation. It's not necessary to assume holes are carnivore made just because the holes match an animal's tooth-span. Likewise, it isn't necessary or true that noting the holes match a diatonic sequence assumes the POV that it actually was intended to be diatonic.
To say that either observation cannot be made would in effect suppress evidence the reader has a right to know was measured. (BTW, for the record: None of the holes matched any animal's tooth-spans. That issue was examined and measured, and agreed upon.) The reader of those observations (re: wolf, or diatonic, either of which match is provable --or not-- by simple measurements) can him/herself decide what to make of those matches, without qualifying hints from the article's writers or editors. Thus the separating of POV or interpretation from observations and measurements should remain separate, as part of the scientific method. Bob F. Greenwyk 02:08, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Well you took out the observation of a match that indicated a possible tonal scale sequence. The article is about tonality, after all. I haven't put your edit back and doubt if I'll bother. It depends how many more POV edits you plan to do. The other observations you mention are not relevant to tonality -- only to the "is it a flute-or-not" dispute. But -- If you reverted my "possible early tonality" evidence, then mentioning that the object is disputed regarding even being anthropic in origin could be said too. Because the evidence of very early tonality may not stand if proof of non-human origins turns up. Bob F. 65.255.225.36 15:57, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
This page is tagged at the very top with "The factual accuracy of this article is disputed." -- but having read the page and this talk page, I am not sure just what facts are disputed. Is it the whole page, or just parts? If just parts, could the tag be moved to the disputed sections, whatever they are? Pfly 08:04, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I have read through the article, and the discussion. It seems to me that many of the terms used here need defining. One that causes a great deal of trouble is "diatonic". Because of the serious uncertainties it has caused at several other Wikipedia articles, and in the broader literature, some of us thought that it and "chromatic" needed special coverage, and we have therefore started up a new article: Diatonic and chromatic. Why not have a look, and join the discussion? Be ready to have comfortable assumptions challenged! – Noetica♬♩ Talk 22:06, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Maybe this should wait until things get sorted out from previous talk page posts, but more contemporary, reputable musicological trends from McClary to Taylor (I'm reading his Beyond Exoticism now) relate the development of tonality and its heirarchies to European colonialization and self identification. While the old fogeys out there will scoff, it is now an accepted academic practice to discuss historical context in the arts, and I'm sure it can be presented in a non-biased manner. Any thoughts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.197.30.11 ( talk) 04:28, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
On 15 May 2007 the article was vandalised by deleting a whole section ( http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Tonality&diff=131150858&oldid=130985513). It seems that nobody noticed the incident, and the data hasn't been put back into the article. Someone with more insight to the article might want to check if the deleted part contains any relevant information. Liffey ( talk) 21:08, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
ESSAY by Sean McHugh 02 Sean McHugh 02 ( talk) 06:04, 13 April 2008 (UTC) REMOVED by Hyacinth ( talk) 22:39, 13 April 2008 (UTC).
This talk page is for discussing improvements for the article. Hyacinth ( talk) 22:39, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Mention if e.g., if the David Bowie song TVC 15 has tonality, or is it just limited to classical music, etc. Jidanni ( talk) 01:27, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
What about that section is confusing? What needs explanation? Hyacinth ( talk) 23:15, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
I came to this article seeking to learn something about the concept of tonality. All I have learned is that I lack a solid enough grounding in music theory to separate fact from the heaped-on balderdash someone or someones has passed off as an 'article', when the only aim of this piece is to bury a music concept so far in its own jargon that it defies any description other than mystical.
Please work at making some of these concepts understandable either by way of example or extensive hyperlinking to reference material. As it stands, one learns nothing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.190.149.48 ( talk) 05:25, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
I agree with the many comments that this article is just a mess, especially stylistically and organizationally. For instance, the section on Terms begins with a torturous sentence about Dahlhaus and the "characteristic schemata of tonal harmony," and then a few paragraphs later we get to the C major scale! I have less quibbling about the factual veracity of some of the entries than others who have posted here, but the way the information is presented is not very professional or clear. Such an important concept needs a better article. I've made a few minor edits to help clarify certain concepts and will continue doing so to help tighten things up a bit. But I think a more major revision is in order, something that presents the relevant information in a more concise, less rambling fashion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 5000fingers ( talk • contribs) 15:09, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
I am a music theory PhD precandidate in a US university and would be glad to try my hand at some repairs. Much of what is contained is technically correct in that it accurately quotes the listed sources. However, it is not presented well or logically and does not reflect current thinking in the field. Not to mention that it seems to be written by an aficionado (a scholar would do a better job). Are there any thoughts on what people would like to see in terms of additional subject headings? For the record, I am not familiar with wikipedia editing, format, etc., but could provide solid content. Blap Splapf ( talk) 02:58, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
The writing on which the article is based seems too confusing to begin with. I would second the proposal above - we need a concise set of headings under which to fashion an article which is clear and presents the information usefully, comprehensibly and in an appropriate order.
Andrew w munro ( talk) 20:44, 23 February 2009 (UTC)andrew_w_munro
One problem is the inconsistent usage of "note" and "tone" to mean the unique individual pitches. Might I suggest using "note" exclusively to avoid ambiguity with both the article title and the technical term for a major second (two "semi-tones")? -- Jubilee♫ clipman 20:22, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
Why, what, where, and how does this article need additional citations for verification? Hyacinth ( talk) 20:27, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
Why and where does this article need cleanup? How should this be done? Hyacinth ( talk) 22:40, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
This article refers to the I,V,IV as tonic dominant and predominant. I changed it to subdominant. Jerome Kohl, a well respected Wikipedian, changed it back. I am quite sure however that the IV chord is frequently, if not usually, referred to as the subdominant or sub-dominant. I also believe that a predominant chord is any chord that resolves to the dominant (e.g. II,1V etc.) I believe the more specific term (subdominant) is preferable.
I believe the following articles support this opinion: Chord progression - Basics P2, Subdominant, Predominant.
Thanks in advance for corrections and comments. BobbyBoykin ( talk) 15:32, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
That's easy. Let's say I haven't yet introduced myself to you. I still know my own name and am able to write my signature. In the same way, if I haven't yet introduced some knowledge to Germany, I am still capable of knowing and using it. Hyacinth ( talk) 04:27, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
So are we saying that Bach didn't describe notes in relation to the tonic, didn't use chord progressions, and didn't use cadences? Hyacinth ( talk) 04:29, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
I've just removed this sentence from the opening caption: "This is the strongest cadence type, almost always found at the main formal articulative points" (Benjamin 2003, 284). It's patently untrue. Tony (talk) 13:02, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Haven't a clue what this means: "the major–minor parallelism: minor v–i–VII–III equals major: iii–vi–V–I; or minor: III–VII–i–v equals major: I–V–vi–iii. The last of these progressions is characterized by "retrograde" harmonic motion." I've copy-edited the typography, but it's still a mystery. Tony (talk) 13:22, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
These scales are not tonal, so I've removed this paragraph, which is a needless complication so early in the article: "Other important scales include the blues scale, the whole tone scale, the pentatonic scale, and the chromatic scale. As these are not the major or minor diatonic scales, music written exclusively with them is not tonal by the definition above."
This paragraph is weird: " Triads are built primarily from notes of a diatonic scale, or secondarily from chromatic notes treated as variations or embellishments of the basic scale. The identity of the scale is important, as the size of the steps between notes are used to determine the system of chord relationships." Does such foggy complexity need to appear so early in the article? It's hard enough to explain to a wide readership how the system works just within a key; I suggest that this be done first. Tony (talk) 13:27, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
But to the task at hand—this article. I wonder what you think about my urge to explain the emergence of tonality better. I'm going to look up Rosen's chapter on tonality in The Classical Style to see if it might be a useful source. Do you know of other good sources on this aspect? Tony (talk) 02:20, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
This is very ambiguous and undefined. Example of the excessive indulgence of Wikipedia "writers" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.239.250.100 ( talk) 01:53, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
"in which each the root of each triad has a tonal function in relation to the tonic.."
grammar — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.239.250.100 ( talk) 18:54, 19 January 2014
Although Fétis used it as a general term for a system of musical organization and spoke of types de tonalités rather than a single system, today the term is most often used to refer to major–minor tonality
In the New Grove "tonality" in the broad sense is mentioned as actual. This 'broad' tonality (in a Fétis sense) is (according to B.Hyer, the author of the article of this renown encyclopedia) applied to any music of any region (slendro, plainchant, raga etc.). Moreover, it is the 1st in a row of definitions given by Hyer. Just have a look. Olorulus ( talk) 12:47, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Dahlhaus 1990,[page needed]
Carl Dahlhaus should be placed earlier in this listing. His famous book had been published in 1968, based on the Habilitationsschrift "Untersuchungen über die Entstehung der harmonischen Tonalität" which appeared even earlier (Kiel 1966). Also, the editorial request mark 'page needed' is evidently absurd to anyone who saw the work (where 'Tonalität' occurs on almost every page including the title of this most valuable book). Olorulus ( talk) 08:29, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
First one: "Tonality functions "locally", in the mid-range"—what does that mean? Tony (talk) 10:51, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
Second one, which I've partly fixed ... triads are the building blocks of the tonal system, not tones. I've removed two references to "the root of" at the opening. The pre-tonal church modes might be better described as built on tones, as opposed to triads. Tony (talk) 10:54, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
Fétis considered tonalité moderne as "trans-tonic order" (having one established key, and allowing for modulation to other keys)
In fact, Fétis differentiated 3 phases (stages) of tonalité moderne: ordre transitonique was only the 'transitional stage' (Monteverdi); the later stages -- ordre pluritonique (Mozart, Rossini etc.) and ordre omnitonique (Berlioz, Wagner) -- also belong to the tonalité moderne, Generally, "Traité complet" represents the first in the history diachronic view of the Western tonality, this is important. Olorulus ( talk) 08:45, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron (1810) and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840 (Judd 1998a, 5)
Colleague, just have a look in the book! I hesitate that you read it, really. Prof. Judd never wrote about the fact you want to ascribe to her authority. She didn't even mention Choron (as your reference falsely implies). Olorulus ( talk) 07:21, 13 February 2014 (UTC) PS. I uploaded p.5 from the discussed article by Judd; in case an editor might have a limited access to the book, she/he can check there. Olorulus ( talk) 10:30, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
I didn't understant the request for 'better source for claim' of different meanings of German 'Tonart' and 'Tonalität'. Also, what did you mean with your request of Reichert's exact page? The title of Reichert's article itself plainly implies the difference of terms. In short: 'Tonart' is used for all possible 'systematic arrangements of pitches', while 'Tonalität' is used mainly as synonym for 'Dur-Moll-Tonalität' (or Dalhaus' 'harmonische Tonalität'). Do you really want me to prove this? May I ask you, for the start, to read 'Tonart' and 'Tonalität' in German WP for the further (and maybe more competent) discussion of the point you requested. Olorulus ( talk) 07:45, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
According to Choron, this pattern, which he called tonalité moderne, distinguished modern music's harmonic organization from that of earlier [pre 17th century] music, including "tonalité des Grecs" (ancient Greek modes) and "tonalité ecclésiastique" (plainchant), which Choron generally called tonalité antique (Brown 2005, xiii; Choron 1810, xxxvii–xl; Hyer 2001).
On the page xiii of Brown 2005 there is nothing about Choron's generalization of early tonal types as tonalité antique. I also didn't find this term in the (voluminous) Choron's preface. For those who added this edit, may I ask for a precise page of Choron's article with the tonalité antique. Olorulus ( talk) 06:29, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Define central triad. Is it the same as the tonic triad? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:7:8500:982:BD88:CCEF:1D4:9744 ( talk) 02:20, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
"The tonal system prevalent in the common-practice period is often known as major-minor tonality, in which each triad has a tonal function in relation to the tonic triad and with other triads in the key."
The term tonal function is redundant. It refers to the tonalsyatem. Too many hands in the kitchen on Wikipedia trying to show off their writing skills. It ends up to be ambiguous and wordy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:7:8500:982:BD88:CCEF:1D4:9744 ( talk) 02:27, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
Independent of the very appropriate comments that other readers did, there is a basic concept that requires to be clearly founded and explained: The physically origin of the major and minor chords, an issue of acoustics and not of the music. Pef890 ( talk) 00:37, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
It is nevertheless possible to sort uses of the term into two basic categories, corresponding to its noun and adjective forms, and while its noun forms suggest a greater degree of abstraction and therefore tend to be more controversial, in practice the two forms often converge:
(a) As an adjective, the term is often used to describe the systematic organization of pitch phenomena in both Western and non-Western music. Tonal music in this sense includes music based on, among other theoretical structures, the eight ecclesiastical modes of medieval and Renaissance liturgical music, the sléndro and pélog collections of Indonesian gamelan music, the modal nuclei of Arabic maqām, the scalar peregrinations of Indian rāga, the constellation of tonic, dominant and subdominant harmonies in the theories of Rameau, the paired major and minor scales in the theories of Gottfried Weber, or the 144 basic transformations of the 12-note row (Perle thus refers to his complexes of interrelated row forms as ‘twelve-tone tonalities’: Twelve-Tone Tonality, D1977).
(b) As a noun, then, the term is sometimes used as an equivalent for what Rousseau called a sistême musicale, a rational and self-contained arrangement of musical phenomena: accordingly, Sainsbury, who had Choron translated into English in 1825, rendered the first occurrence of tonalité as a ‘system of modes’ before matching it with the neologism ‘tonality’. While tonality qua system constitutes a theoretical (and thus imaginative) abstraction from actual music, it is often hypostatized in musicological discourse, converted from a theoretical structure into a musical reality. In this sense, it is understood as a Platonic form or prediscursive musical essence that suffuses music with intelligible sense, which exists before its concrete embodiment in music, and can thus be theorized and discussed apart from actual musical contexts.
I now got time to have a first look at the article. The problem appears to arise from the very start, from the "lead", which fails to clearly state what the article is about. No further organization is possible, I think, if the purpose is not made clear from the start. I don't know yet how to organize that, but let me make a few general proposals.
These different aspects seem connoted by the quotations presently forming the lead, but it is a very shy idea to present such concepts, which deserve explanation, merely under the cover of (often unclear) quotations. The lead could further discuss the possible links between Tonality properly speaking and Modality on the one hand, Atonality on the other. Modality is at present defined in the disambiguation Mode article as "a system of musical tonality involving a type of scale coupled with a set of characteristic melodic behaviors" and, in the Mode (music) article, more simply as "a type of scale, coupled with a set of characteristic melodic behaviours." (I for one would hardly endorse any of these definitions.) And Atonality is defined mainly with reference to the lack of centricity: "music that lacks a tonal center, or key."
We might also discuss in the lead the origin and early meanings of the term, both in French and in English, but that might better be reserved to one of the first sections of the article, on the history of the term. The term certainly is in Choron, but in a rather general meaning. It probably gained some specificity through Castil-Blaze and Fétis; but it had been prepared by other terms, such as "octave" (as in "règle de l'octave"), or "modulation". I should probably be able to untangle some or this. I won't be able on the other hand to discuss the earliest usages in English: Webster Online says 1838, but Etymonline says 1824 – both are quite early after Choron!
Tell me what you think. — Hucbald.SaintAmand ( talk) 21:04, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
I tried reviewing the recent history of the article, but it proves an impossible task; besides, I can easily suspect where the problems came from. My suggestions did not point to a rewriting of the lead, but to what it might look like in the end – they also reflected a possible organization of the article as a whole.
We do agree, I think, that " common practice tonality" should occupy a central position in the article. We do not need to propose a synthesized theory: this is an encyclopedy article, not a pedagogical textbook; for the same reason, I think we should quote the theories themselves, whenever possible, not their avatar in a textbook. On the contrary, we should list theories and try to classify them in categories. Dmitri Tymoczko wrote a paper [1] in which he describes and comments three categories of tonal theories:
This seems to me to offer an interesting overview of tonal theories – even if Tymoczko's description is somewhat biased (his article is now ten years old). I think that most existing theories of common practice tonality can be linked to one or another of these three categories (or possibly several; Rameau could figure in all three). One might discover a fourth category, but I am not aware of it at this point. At any rate, I would find it more effective to classify theories in this type of categories, rather than chronologically. This also indirectly makes a point about which one might disagree, but which I think essential: tonality, in my opinion, is a matter of theory. It cannot be discussed merely as a fact, as a phenomenon, it must be discussed as a theoretical construct. Otherwise, we would soon reach in unsolvable problems all reducing to oppositions between contradictory "truths". (If we agree on this position, it might be wise to state it somewhere in the article.)
Some points may be discussed separately, for instance the question whether tonality has its origin in nature (the harmonic series), or in human physiology, or in human psychology. Here again, the point in an encyclopedy is to list existing theories, not to synthesize them. And of course, after having discussed common practice tonality, the article should turn to other senses of the term.
But let's first agree or disagree on the above. Does Wikipedia offer any means of beginning the rewriting in some sort of "sandbox" somewhere? I presume one might use one of our personal sandboxes, but can anyone write in someone's sandbox? — Hucbald.SaintAmand ( talk) 09:23, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
After an unsuccessfull attempt to append some kind of sandbox to this page, I created a page User:Hucbald.SaintAmand/Tonality that can be used as a sandbox for the article, and I gave there a few first suggestions for the rewriting. I feel concerned that this new page may not be easy to find for those wanting to collaborate to the revision: I strongly suggest, therefore, that any change or comment made there be advertized here, with a link recalling the address of the new page. — Hucbald.SaintAmand ( talk) 20:06, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
While jazz is certainly based on major-minor tonality (which is described in the edited first section), the folk music is not. Some later folk music did experience the influence of major-minor tonality, this is true (as e.g. in Russia of the 19th century), but at the level of a universal generalization, 'harmony' of folk music is not a major-minor tonality phenomenon. Olorulus ( talk) 07:41, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I don't know who F['e]tis is and this info is now in the first paragraph. Hyacinth 06:12, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)
"The term tonality seems to have been introduced into music by the Belgian composer and musicologist Joseph Fétis around the middle of the nineteenth century. It was meant to signify a musical state, which had for several centuries already been in general use, according to which a musical group is conceived (by the composer as well as the listener) as a unit related to, and so to speak derived from, a central tonal fundament, the tonic. This tonal fundament is understood as one note, or, in a more comprehensive sense, as the full triad-harmony of a note, be it major or minor. In fact, the word tonality was probably chosen merely as a linguistically pleasant abberviation of tonicality (thus also presaging atonality instead of the tongue-twisting atonicality)." (Reti, 1958, Tonality: Harmonic Tonality)
In this article tonality is described as a set of rules, which are actual guidelines created after the fact, and not as a system of relations and perceptions. Hyacinth
Note that most or all of the problems identified here have been corrected.
The article, as written, isn't very useful at all to someone without a strong working knowledge of music theory and musicology. Also, style of prose is more appropriate for a graduate-level college essay than for an encyclopaedia. For example, there is no need to sum up a section - if you need to sum up, you haven't done a good enough job breaking down the information into digestible bits. Along those lines, paragraphs and sentences should be shorter, and the whole thing needs to be further subdivided into sub-sections.
Also the content is wanting. First, remember that "tonal music" redirects here. This can't just be an article about the theory of tonality! If I wanted to know about tonality and tonal music, I'd probably want to see the following information (i.e., this is my propsoed outline):
Dave 21:19, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)
Compositional resources
I propose that compositional resources in the common practice period can be described in terms of practical sets.
The ultimate source set is the harmonic series. Common Practice composers and theoreticians have responded to this basic fact of nature by creating sets of:
Major scales, minor scales (all flavors), diatonic triads and extensions (tertian structures.) cadences, non-harmonic tones, secondary functions, partwriting procedures. harmonic progression practices,and the reconciliation of dissonance and consonance. Transition technics such as modulation were developed to tie everything together as coherently as possible.
To mold these basic resources into what Suzanne Langer would call "significant forms" composers craft phrases, melodies and genres and seek meaningful unity, variety and symmetical and asymmetical balance. This constitutes the raw materials of grammar and rhetoric of musical ideas within style periods, nationalities, individual composers and even specific works. In other words the common practice period languages provided ample room for individuality for a very long period of time.
Impressionistic Set Repertoire
The revolutionary vision of the impressionist composers expanded the repertoire of sets described above to include:
Modes, whole tone scales, pentatonic scales, quartal and quintal chords, pan diatonic, pan pentatonic and pan whole tone structures.
New grammar such as planing and new types of modulations were invented to bind this expanded wealth of resources together. A heightened interest in timbre and new rhythmic designs added even more dimension to the new language.
The genius of Debussy and Ravel was to create a great number of works that effectively blended old and new resources into significant forms. There seems to have been no trial and error or "mannererist" period of experimentation involving gimmicky failures and half successes. They also proved that the musical wheel could be effectively reinvented.
Beyond Impressionism
The challenge to composers ever since has been to craft a personal language whose new and old sets can be combined into expressive and formally significant compositions. In this quest 20th century composers often forgot that the audience is the client for their products. Verbose and convoluted annotations were typically provided to beg for respect for fundamentally unlikable experiments.
Enough! As 21st. century composers we must now direct our efforts to successfully serve the only population who, in the final analysis, justifies our existence. To paraphrase Bill Clinton's famous campaign slogan, "It's the audience, stupid."
Robert C. Howard
The article currenlty has sections titled "Vocabulary of Tonal Organization" and "Tonal Theory" and "History". What exactly do those title mean? Is the "Vocabulary of Tonal Organization" the vocabulary use to describe organization according to traditional theory? Is "Theory" then the history of theory? Is "History" the history of the "use" of tonality, or the history of the theory of tonality, or both? Hyacinth 05:54, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
The article has an accumulation of material. The Vocabulary of tonal organization is a description of chord names and functions - which is required to able to read tonal analysis of almost any kind. The theory and history sections should probably be rewritten to make each clearer. The current article is defective in that it spends a great deal of time on some POVs which, while interesting, are not the dominant meanings of the word as it is generally used.
Stirling Newberry I would have to say that Reti gets a good deal more attention in the article than he does in the real world, particularly with respect to Schenker and Schoenberg who are still the most influential theorists on the subject of tonality. The use of tonality in Jazz is, similarly, given a somewhat short shrift. I feel we should rebalance the article to put more emphasis on the sort of material that most people will encounter and want information on.
Stirling Newberry added a great deal to the vocabulary section. I want the poor stiff who reads "and then cadence on vi leads back to the tonic triad" to at least feel that there is some sense there.
User:Stirling Newberry, thanks for integrating the section on Reti into the history section.
I removed the above sentence because the article, as of yet, in no way mentions Dahlhaus' seven definitions. Hyacinth 00:10, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
In a way, this is completely appropriate, since the concept of tonality itself is a mess. But it's also probably the most important motivating concept in modern music theory, so it'd be nice to have a good article on it. This passage is a particular offense:
<< Music is considered to be tonal if it includes the following five descriptions of tonality: (1) it uses a Major or minor (diatonic) scale system (2) it contains triadic harmonies (three note chords) (3) it has a tonic (central tone) (4) it has a leading tone (7th scale degree) (5) resolution of dissonance (that is: if a chord or note is played (like a leading tone 7th scale degree) that doesn't sound final, the final sounding chord is played after it (like the tonic) to resolve the piece) >>
(1) is disputable; it isn't hard to think of examples of music that are recognizably tonal but for which it would be a stretch to try to interpret them as diatonic. (2) is completely ill-worded. It suggests that any old three-note chords will do! What it should say is that the music uses functional harmony (based on major and minor triads, etc.). Not that everyone would agree that this is a necessary condition for tonality. (4) is completely absurd. I've never heard anyone suggest that a leading tone is a necessary condition for tonality. I suppose functional harmony requires a leading tone, but its silly to make this a self-standing entry in a definition. Finally, (5) is the most poorly, confusingly worded thing I've ever seen in a Wikipedia article. I think the idea here is that tonality requires a consonance/dissonance distinction, which is fine. At that point, why not just cite the consonance/dissonance article, rather than tie oneself in knots trying to explain it in multiply embedded parentheses?
I think if the article is going to include a "definition" of tonality, not in itself a bad idea, it has to acknowledge that there is no agreed upon definition. The strongest contenders, it seems to me, are (a) a sense of tonal center (a "home" pitch class), itself not an entirely well-defined property of music (in fact, more of a way of hearing than an intrinsic musical property), and (b) the use of functional harmony, which is also a little tricky to define (with the appropriate breadth for dealing with chromatic harmony). Diatonicity and consonance/dissonance are important adjunct ideas, but too slippery for a definition. (What are the criteria for a musical passage to be diatonic? How do you know when dissonance is being "treated as dissonance"?)
Jason D Yust 15:28, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
There is no discussion concerning the innovations of Russian composers such as Alexander Scriabin and Nikolay Roslavets. Schoenberg may not be the singular pioneer that Euro-centric people think he is. Roslavets may have produced a rational 12 tone system before Schoenberg did, and Scriabin was before them both. The 1907 fifth sonata breaks from conventional western tonality, and some shorter pieces may predate it and involve similar innovation. Because of politics, revolutionary-Soviet-Cold War, the work of Roslavets has been practically forgotten, but he deserves to be discussed just as much as Schoenberg does, and Scriabin definitely does as well. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.133.103.221 ( talk) 20:33, 14 May 2007 (UTC).
I will attempt to do this over a number of weeks, and would be pleased to receive feedback from the previous writers. I've had a go at the opening. Tony 14:50, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
I have to admit that I've learnt something new here: a term for the lowered seventh degree of a tonal scale. It's unfamiliar to most musicians, although I'm having second thoughts about having removed it from the table. Tony 14:57, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
I have several factual and POV problems with Tony 01's edits.
1. While the focus on tonic triad is historically correct, it hasn't been the case for a century in theory or practice for a century. Quartal harmony has been regarded as tonal for almost a century.
2. Calling it "European". This is excessively ethnocentric, it may have originated in a certain area of Europe - and many folk musics are not tonal even in Europe proper, however, it isn't "European" in the same sense as the "European parliament" or being tied on a continuing basis to Europe.
3. The second inversion is the second inversion, it shouldn't be removed.
4. A great deal of music is not made by the media system, and there is a far amount of commercial popular music based on india's system of ragas, which is not, in the definition that Tony argues for "tonal".
5. Other modes that church modes have become very common - including blues and the magic scale - in modern tonal practice.
The changes seemed more appropriate to say, common practice, which was far more a European or European derrived musical system.
Stirling Newberry 20:25, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
Oh my god, you've reverted the entire effort? That's hard to believe. I'm afraid I have problems with WAY too much of the previous, and sadly, current text. We're going to have to go through the entire text, bit by bit, I'm afraid, because the existing article is woefully inadequate. To take the points you raise, one by one:
(1) Please provide references and justify your statement that quartal harmony is tonal. I think that you'll find little support for this assertion among music theorists. Tonality is almost universally regarded as being based on the triad, and thus having ended in art-music during the 20th century. Quartal harmony, as practised by, say, Bartok, is regarded as being a move away from tonality. The article should be plain and simple for a non-specialist to read. Going with the conventional notion of tonality is the easiest way to do this. Alternatives, such as quartal harmony, might be mentioned further down in the article.
(2) Whether you like it or not, tonality WAS a European development, just as the drone was an Indian innovation; pointing that out doesn't mean that the drone is solely Indian. I felt that NOT mentioning 'European' was ethnocentric, since it may have implied that what was essentially European was global. Constraining the definition to a geographical and cultural area is necessary if tonality is to be compared and contrasted with other music traditions.
(3) I'll accept reference to 'second inversion', but not without explaining that it's essentially different from root position and first inversion.
(4) Please be logical: I wrote that tonality 'remains the dominant feature of popular music'—that DOESN'T mean that popular music is entirely tonal, as you assume I stated or implied in your fourth point. The statement stands perfectly well here, since it's important to explain the waning of the system in traditional European music, against its flourishing in popular music worldwide. Why on earth shouldn't the article start by positioning tonality in cultural terms?
(5) I don't understand the relevance of that point; it can be dealt with later, and is not inconsistent with my proposed opening. The opening should paint the big picture in cultural and technical terms. The new text doesn't seem to be inconsistent with most of your objections.
Chords are quite different from triads, and tones from notes. Let's use the terminology precisely and consistently, to minimise confusion in the relatively uninformed reader.
I hope that we can do this co-operatively rather than fighting a war. Doing a complete revert is like starting a war.
Tony 02:59, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
PS, Stirling, I've just read your personal page, which is very much to my liking, politically and musically. I do hope that we can co-operate in the rewriting of this article. Tony
Stirling: Thanks for your reply, which contains some good points; I think we have to come to a consensus about the semantic boundaries surrounding the term 'tonal/tonality'.
I'm very on-side with Schenker; although I don't know as much as I should about Schenkerian analysis, his basic theory informs my outlook on tonal language.
I'm unsure of the ramifications of making the article 'temp', since I'm relatively new to Wikipedia; is it explained somewhere? I'll respond in detail soon. Tony 15:50, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
1. Setting up a temp page is easy, we copy the current article there, work on the temp version,a and when there is consensus move it forward.
2. Remember we are here to document notable uses of the term, and label where they come from, so that a reader who comes here with a reference to tonality in hand, will be able to find the use they see in the source.
Stirling Newberry 16:24, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
Are you able to set up the temp page, then? I wonder whether it would be diplomatic to signal to other stakeholders that this process is occurring.
So you advise opening with a semantic, definitional approach? Is it appropriate to list the various meanings of the term 'tonality', and then perhaps to embark on further, more detailed explanation of one or more of these meanings?
Tony <tony1@iinet.net.au>
Tony 07:35, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
Currently it's this:
Tonality is the character of music written with hierarchical relationships of pitches, rhythms, and chords to a "center" or tonic. Tonic is sometimes used interchangeably with key. The term tonalité was borrowed from Castil-Blaze (1821, François Henri Joseph Blaze) by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840 (Reti, 1958; Judd, 1998; Dahlhaus). The term is often used as being synonymous with Major-Minor tonality, but is, in more recent theory, used more broadly to encompass a number of systems of musical organization.
In my view, there are several problems that we need to address.
(1) 'is the character of'—what does it mean? How about: 'Tonality is a system of writing music with hierarchical relationships ...'. (2) I don't understand the inclusion of 'rhythms' in the hierarchical relationship to the centre. (3) A central note applies to most of the music cultures in the world, and doesn't distinguish tonality from pretonal music in the European tradition. I've always understood the unique aspect of tonality to be the central triad. Much renaissance and medieval music, for example, lacks a sense of triadic/root movement. Isn't this important in defining the tonal system? (4) The second sentence may confuse the reader; can someone give an example of exact interchangeability between 'tonic' and 'key'. In any case, is it important enough to put in the second sentence? (5) 'is often used as being synonymous' needs to be reworded. (6) If 'tonality' is to be broadly defined, as appears here, I wonder whether a separate article is required, perhaps entitled 'The tonal period', or 'European tonality', or something like that. Alternatively, an account of tonality as many people understand it (i.e., the system that was dominant from about 1600 to 1910) could be dealt with in a separate section here.
Tony 04:28, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
Having undertaken a typo cleanup of this otherwise excellent article, I found several references to the term "through bass". As these linked terms have no target article, I wonder if they too are typos and should actually be "thorough-bass". Thanks, Chas 2 October 2005 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.66.100.17 ( talk • contribs) 20:28, 1 October 2005
Sorry, but I think it's far from excellent, and requires a complete rewrite. Tony 07:09, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
I hope that it is helpful. The term should be "thorough bass", normally without hyphen. However, why not use the more common term "figured bass" (after mentioning t b on first occurrence)? Tony 00:47, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't think that the term "tonicality" is common or accepted enough to appear in the introduction, so I removed it. Hyacinth 09:03, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Peter Schat, in Tone Clock ( ISBN 3718653699, 1993, p.26), argues that "'tonal' and 'atonal' are the wrong words" yet puts tonicality in scare quotes at its first appearance. Leigh Landy, in What's the Matter with Today's Experimental Music?; Organized Sound Too Rarely Heard ( ISBN 3718651688, 1991, p.94), explains that he uses the term to embrace "all music, be it modal, strict tonal, pentatonic, or whatever, as long as it is based on tone centers". Hyacinth 12:26, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
The article is too long. Hyacinth 09:21, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
The audio samples of mozart are too fast to get the point across. Someone should make them slower.
I just read this article for the first time today, and I'd like to help with the copy editing because there is a lot of material here that I could more readily agree with if it were only expressed in simpler, easier-to-understand language.
The first suggestion I'd like to make is about the "chart" of tonal functions. It seems to me that this is completely anti-intuitive and more difficult to understand than it should be because the whole thing is arranged upside down. I mean, heck, the first this you see is that the "supertonic" is below the "tonic!" So I'd like to suggest that the table be rearranged as follows. I need to learn a little bit more about how to center the text before I can do this myself, but in the meantime if anybody has any objections or comments about how to improve this, please state them over the next few days, and I'll proceed accordingly. Spventi 06:34, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Table of Tonal Functions
Roman Numeral | Solfege | Name (Function) | |||||||
I | Do/Ut | Tonic | |||||||
VII | Ti / Si | Leading/ Subtonic | |||||||
VI | La | Sub-Mediant | |||||||
V | Sol | Dominant | |||||||
IV | Fa | Sub-Dominant | |||||||
III | Mi | Mediant | |||||||
II | Re | Supertonic | |||||||
I | Do / Ut | Tonic |
Did you mean to make this table?
Function | Roman Numeral | Solfege |
Leading/ Subtonic | VII | Ti/Si |
Sub-Mediant | VI | La |
Dominant | V | Sol |
Sub-Dominant | IV | Fa |
Mediant | III | Mi |
Supertonic | II | Re |
Tonic | I | Do/Ut |
Hyacinth 07:41, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
No, actually, I meant exactly what I proposed, although perhaps it is better to have the numerals and solfege names to the left.
I would like to find a way to make this table easier to understand for people who do not already understand these concepts. Musically, these relations only have meaning along a time line, and I think that spreading it out horizontally helps illustrate that. After all, we never show scales as clusters of notes on a single stem. Also, it would be nice to find something that implies visually that things beging and end at the tonic. Maybe we need a graphic showing these relationships arranged around circle with the tonic at the top. See what I mean?
Spventi 08:34, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
This article makes a number of claims about the relationship of perceptual processes, the overtone series, and musical tonality that should be identified as being more controversial than they currently are-- see specifically the section "Uses of the Term", subsection "By nature". Far more seriously, the citations backing up these assertions are of the lowest quality- not to peer-reviewed journal articles, but to self-published books and personal web-pages which make extremely broad and untenable claims that are far from mainstream viewpoints in music theory, history, or cognitive science.
If the relationship of tonality to the overtone series should be handled (which is certainly interesting and important), it needs to be done by citing reputable sources.
There are also a number of factual errors. Eg:
This is not why the scale is called diatonic.
I'd go as far as saying that this is probably the worst article I've ever seen on Wikipedia!
Chris 19:41, September 6, 2006 (UTC) User:Redpony
As always, if you are knowledgeable about a topic, improving the article yourself is allowed and encouraged. Factual errors? Fix them! Don't see the cites you want? Add them! Kwertii 20:21, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Redpony 03:49, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Sorry for the carelessness. Fixed it right away —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Greenwyk ( talk • contribs) 11:09, 4 December 2006 (UTC). Sorry -- like you (whoiever originally accidentally removed the introduction) I also accidentally removed your comment about it, and replaced it as fast as I could -- but forgot to sign "Greenwyk." I seem to have lost your identity in the process. Greenwyk 01:01, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Agreeing with the call for citations about the "natural" basis for tonality, since they exist, I have added them.
To make the article a little shorter, someone may wish to move the citations down below, under references and sources, and possibly refer to the quotes and viewpoint descriptions only by author's name & year (Reti, Gustin, etc.) in the "by nature:" category.
Using the number format may not be agreeable to some. So change that if desired. Or put the whole list of quotes, descriptions of theories and views, & authors down below under "Theory of tonal music" where there is more room (which would be best I think) -- and simply outline the list of various authors on both the "nature" and the "nurture" side of the debate (the latter has many sources, but I haven't chosen them yet -- or someone else may know better which should be chosen & quoted), and put the short list under the "by nature:" subhead under "Uses of the term."
No strong feelings about this, except that the sources and quotes, now known, should be listed to meet Wiki "balanced POV" guides, whatever one may agree with about any of the views. I don't believe the accepted view of this controversy is as "nurture" as some say -- maybe in music academia, it may be. But in science & archaeology academia, and in the general public (tonal popular music as evidence) it isn't that settled by far, and much more leans toward "nature". Greenwyk 08:53, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Redpony 21:10, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
To Bob Fink: I hope you reconsider your decision. As an experienced author you should contribute - and test your patience with other editors. That's Wikipedia. Old Palimpsest 19:20, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Removal of all of Pleasant's views left item 2 without its reference (for "similar findings"). Reposted short description of Pleasant's findings & work. Also entered missing source for Pleasant's book.) Greenwyk 17:53, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
The midi which demonstrates to listeners that the Kilmer version of the oldest known song is tonal-sounding provides information that removal of the midi prevents readers from hearing. I will replace the midi unless there is some reason for suppressing it from being heard. After all, this article is about tonality.
The observation that the holes in the Neanderthal flute match the spacing of a do-re-mi-fa sequence found in modern flutes (such as an Irish whistle) is not a POV. It is a fact verified simply by looking at the match of the spacings which have been measured. The match can be visually seen at Divje Babe (and at other websites which have requested permission to reproduce the picture).
Removing this factual observation appears to have no reason for it. The holes, whether human-made or chance-made, are there and can be seen and measured. Describing the actual appearance of a match is valid whether the disputed bone is a flute or not. Unless a relevant reason for claiming it is a "POV" is provided (other than asserting it's POV), the comment will be replaced. Bob Fink, 65.255.225.41 14:54, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Most of the statements in your above paragraph are outrageously untrue, false, and unfounded. I will not continue to be provoked by statments the facts of which -- to correct -- will simply use up time, disrupt everything, and serve only your desire to target me, my edits, references, or verified information. Nothing to be done except to revert or replace your ridiculous edits for the incompetence that they are. Since you won't read -- or cannot understand accurately what you read -- of Turk, or me (even in Talk) and of others in the literature, or quote them or me rather than invent your own warped meaning about what was written or what I said, I'm finally aware I'm discussing with a deaf wall. You are impervious to evidence, facts, and believe you are infallible. You don't even seem able to consistently or accurately express the meaning of, or define the word "hole." You'll find someone else to drive crazy with distractions, but not me any longer. If you don't like it take it to an arbitrator. Happy New Year. --Bob Fink 65.255.225.52 05:14, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
For the sake of understanding the difference between "observations" (or measurements or evidence) and interpretations: Let's say the hole spacing matched the tooth-span of a wolf? Would making that unqualified observation be "misleading"? Or is it fair to mention as an accurate item of evidence? If truthful, it would not prove a wolf made the holes. Nor disprove it. It would just be an accurate observation. It's not necessary to assume holes are carnivore made just because the holes match an animal's tooth-span. Likewise, it isn't necessary or true that noting the holes match a diatonic sequence assumes the POV that it actually was intended to be diatonic.
To say that either observation cannot be made would in effect suppress evidence the reader has a right to know was measured. (BTW, for the record: None of the holes matched any animal's tooth-spans. That issue was examined and measured, and agreed upon.) The reader of those observations (re: wolf, or diatonic, either of which match is provable --or not-- by simple measurements) can him/herself decide what to make of those matches, without qualifying hints from the article's writers or editors. Thus the separating of POV or interpretation from observations and measurements should remain separate, as part of the scientific method. Bob F. Greenwyk 02:08, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Well you took out the observation of a match that indicated a possible tonal scale sequence. The article is about tonality, after all. I haven't put your edit back and doubt if I'll bother. It depends how many more POV edits you plan to do. The other observations you mention are not relevant to tonality -- only to the "is it a flute-or-not" dispute. But -- If you reverted my "possible early tonality" evidence, then mentioning that the object is disputed regarding even being anthropic in origin could be said too. Because the evidence of very early tonality may not stand if proof of non-human origins turns up. Bob F. 65.255.225.36 15:57, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
This page is tagged at the very top with "The factual accuracy of this article is disputed." -- but having read the page and this talk page, I am not sure just what facts are disputed. Is it the whole page, or just parts? If just parts, could the tag be moved to the disputed sections, whatever they are? Pfly 08:04, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I have read through the article, and the discussion. It seems to me that many of the terms used here need defining. One that causes a great deal of trouble is "diatonic". Because of the serious uncertainties it has caused at several other Wikipedia articles, and in the broader literature, some of us thought that it and "chromatic" needed special coverage, and we have therefore started up a new article: Diatonic and chromatic. Why not have a look, and join the discussion? Be ready to have comfortable assumptions challenged! – Noetica♬♩ Talk 22:06, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Maybe this should wait until things get sorted out from previous talk page posts, but more contemporary, reputable musicological trends from McClary to Taylor (I'm reading his Beyond Exoticism now) relate the development of tonality and its heirarchies to European colonialization and self identification. While the old fogeys out there will scoff, it is now an accepted academic practice to discuss historical context in the arts, and I'm sure it can be presented in a non-biased manner. Any thoughts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.197.30.11 ( talk) 04:28, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
On 15 May 2007 the article was vandalised by deleting a whole section ( http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Tonality&diff=131150858&oldid=130985513). It seems that nobody noticed the incident, and the data hasn't been put back into the article. Someone with more insight to the article might want to check if the deleted part contains any relevant information. Liffey ( talk) 21:08, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
ESSAY by Sean McHugh 02 Sean McHugh 02 ( talk) 06:04, 13 April 2008 (UTC) REMOVED by Hyacinth ( talk) 22:39, 13 April 2008 (UTC).
This talk page is for discussing improvements for the article. Hyacinth ( talk) 22:39, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Mention if e.g., if the David Bowie song TVC 15 has tonality, or is it just limited to classical music, etc. Jidanni ( talk) 01:27, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
What about that section is confusing? What needs explanation? Hyacinth ( talk) 23:15, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
I came to this article seeking to learn something about the concept of tonality. All I have learned is that I lack a solid enough grounding in music theory to separate fact from the heaped-on balderdash someone or someones has passed off as an 'article', when the only aim of this piece is to bury a music concept so far in its own jargon that it defies any description other than mystical.
Please work at making some of these concepts understandable either by way of example or extensive hyperlinking to reference material. As it stands, one learns nothing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.190.149.48 ( talk) 05:25, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
I agree with the many comments that this article is just a mess, especially stylistically and organizationally. For instance, the section on Terms begins with a torturous sentence about Dahlhaus and the "characteristic schemata of tonal harmony," and then a few paragraphs later we get to the C major scale! I have less quibbling about the factual veracity of some of the entries than others who have posted here, but the way the information is presented is not very professional or clear. Such an important concept needs a better article. I've made a few minor edits to help clarify certain concepts and will continue doing so to help tighten things up a bit. But I think a more major revision is in order, something that presents the relevant information in a more concise, less rambling fashion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 5000fingers ( talk • contribs) 15:09, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
I am a music theory PhD precandidate in a US university and would be glad to try my hand at some repairs. Much of what is contained is technically correct in that it accurately quotes the listed sources. However, it is not presented well or logically and does not reflect current thinking in the field. Not to mention that it seems to be written by an aficionado (a scholar would do a better job). Are there any thoughts on what people would like to see in terms of additional subject headings? For the record, I am not familiar with wikipedia editing, format, etc., but could provide solid content. Blap Splapf ( talk) 02:58, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
The writing on which the article is based seems too confusing to begin with. I would second the proposal above - we need a concise set of headings under which to fashion an article which is clear and presents the information usefully, comprehensibly and in an appropriate order.
Andrew w munro ( talk) 20:44, 23 February 2009 (UTC)andrew_w_munro
One problem is the inconsistent usage of "note" and "tone" to mean the unique individual pitches. Might I suggest using "note" exclusively to avoid ambiguity with both the article title and the technical term for a major second (two "semi-tones")? -- Jubilee♫ clipman 20:22, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
Why, what, where, and how does this article need additional citations for verification? Hyacinth ( talk) 20:27, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
Why and where does this article need cleanup? How should this be done? Hyacinth ( talk) 22:40, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
This article refers to the I,V,IV as tonic dominant and predominant. I changed it to subdominant. Jerome Kohl, a well respected Wikipedian, changed it back. I am quite sure however that the IV chord is frequently, if not usually, referred to as the subdominant or sub-dominant. I also believe that a predominant chord is any chord that resolves to the dominant (e.g. II,1V etc.) I believe the more specific term (subdominant) is preferable.
I believe the following articles support this opinion: Chord progression - Basics P2, Subdominant, Predominant.
Thanks in advance for corrections and comments. BobbyBoykin ( talk) 15:32, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
That's easy. Let's say I haven't yet introduced myself to you. I still know my own name and am able to write my signature. In the same way, if I haven't yet introduced some knowledge to Germany, I am still capable of knowing and using it. Hyacinth ( talk) 04:27, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
So are we saying that Bach didn't describe notes in relation to the tonic, didn't use chord progressions, and didn't use cadences? Hyacinth ( talk) 04:29, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
I've just removed this sentence from the opening caption: "This is the strongest cadence type, almost always found at the main formal articulative points" (Benjamin 2003, 284). It's patently untrue. Tony (talk) 13:02, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Haven't a clue what this means: "the major–minor parallelism: minor v–i–VII–III equals major: iii–vi–V–I; or minor: III–VII–i–v equals major: I–V–vi–iii. The last of these progressions is characterized by "retrograde" harmonic motion." I've copy-edited the typography, but it's still a mystery. Tony (talk) 13:22, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
These scales are not tonal, so I've removed this paragraph, which is a needless complication so early in the article: "Other important scales include the blues scale, the whole tone scale, the pentatonic scale, and the chromatic scale. As these are not the major or minor diatonic scales, music written exclusively with them is not tonal by the definition above."
This paragraph is weird: " Triads are built primarily from notes of a diatonic scale, or secondarily from chromatic notes treated as variations or embellishments of the basic scale. The identity of the scale is important, as the size of the steps between notes are used to determine the system of chord relationships." Does such foggy complexity need to appear so early in the article? It's hard enough to explain to a wide readership how the system works just within a key; I suggest that this be done first. Tony (talk) 13:27, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
But to the task at hand—this article. I wonder what you think about my urge to explain the emergence of tonality better. I'm going to look up Rosen's chapter on tonality in The Classical Style to see if it might be a useful source. Do you know of other good sources on this aspect? Tony (talk) 02:20, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
This is very ambiguous and undefined. Example of the excessive indulgence of Wikipedia "writers" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.239.250.100 ( talk) 01:53, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
"in which each the root of each triad has a tonal function in relation to the tonic.."
grammar — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.239.250.100 ( talk) 18:54, 19 January 2014
Although Fétis used it as a general term for a system of musical organization and spoke of types de tonalités rather than a single system, today the term is most often used to refer to major–minor tonality
In the New Grove "tonality" in the broad sense is mentioned as actual. This 'broad' tonality (in a Fétis sense) is (according to B.Hyer, the author of the article of this renown encyclopedia) applied to any music of any region (slendro, plainchant, raga etc.). Moreover, it is the 1st in a row of definitions given by Hyer. Just have a look. Olorulus ( talk) 12:47, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Dahlhaus 1990,[page needed]
Carl Dahlhaus should be placed earlier in this listing. His famous book had been published in 1968, based on the Habilitationsschrift "Untersuchungen über die Entstehung der harmonischen Tonalität" which appeared even earlier (Kiel 1966). Also, the editorial request mark 'page needed' is evidently absurd to anyone who saw the work (where 'Tonalität' occurs on almost every page including the title of this most valuable book). Olorulus ( talk) 08:29, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
First one: "Tonality functions "locally", in the mid-range"—what does that mean? Tony (talk) 10:51, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
Second one, which I've partly fixed ... triads are the building blocks of the tonal system, not tones. I've removed two references to "the root of" at the opening. The pre-tonal church modes might be better described as built on tones, as opposed to triads. Tony (talk) 10:54, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
Fétis considered tonalité moderne as "trans-tonic order" (having one established key, and allowing for modulation to other keys)
In fact, Fétis differentiated 3 phases (stages) of tonalité moderne: ordre transitonique was only the 'transitional stage' (Monteverdi); the later stages -- ordre pluritonique (Mozart, Rossini etc.) and ordre omnitonique (Berlioz, Wagner) -- also belong to the tonalité moderne, Generally, "Traité complet" represents the first in the history diachronic view of the Western tonality, this is important. Olorulus ( talk) 08:45, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron (1810) and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840 (Judd 1998a, 5)
Colleague, just have a look in the book! I hesitate that you read it, really. Prof. Judd never wrote about the fact you want to ascribe to her authority. She didn't even mention Choron (as your reference falsely implies). Olorulus ( talk) 07:21, 13 February 2014 (UTC) PS. I uploaded p.5 from the discussed article by Judd; in case an editor might have a limited access to the book, she/he can check there. Olorulus ( talk) 10:30, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
I didn't understant the request for 'better source for claim' of different meanings of German 'Tonart' and 'Tonalität'. Also, what did you mean with your request of Reichert's exact page? The title of Reichert's article itself plainly implies the difference of terms. In short: 'Tonart' is used for all possible 'systematic arrangements of pitches', while 'Tonalität' is used mainly as synonym for 'Dur-Moll-Tonalität' (or Dalhaus' 'harmonische Tonalität'). Do you really want me to prove this? May I ask you, for the start, to read 'Tonart' and 'Tonalität' in German WP for the further (and maybe more competent) discussion of the point you requested. Olorulus ( talk) 07:45, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
According to Choron, this pattern, which he called tonalité moderne, distinguished modern music's harmonic organization from that of earlier [pre 17th century] music, including "tonalité des Grecs" (ancient Greek modes) and "tonalité ecclésiastique" (plainchant), which Choron generally called tonalité antique (Brown 2005, xiii; Choron 1810, xxxvii–xl; Hyer 2001).
On the page xiii of Brown 2005 there is nothing about Choron's generalization of early tonal types as tonalité antique. I also didn't find this term in the (voluminous) Choron's preface. For those who added this edit, may I ask for a precise page of Choron's article with the tonalité antique. Olorulus ( talk) 06:29, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Define central triad. Is it the same as the tonic triad? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:7:8500:982:BD88:CCEF:1D4:9744 ( talk) 02:20, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
"The tonal system prevalent in the common-practice period is often known as major-minor tonality, in which each triad has a tonal function in relation to the tonic triad and with other triads in the key."
The term tonal function is redundant. It refers to the tonalsyatem. Too many hands in the kitchen on Wikipedia trying to show off their writing skills. It ends up to be ambiguous and wordy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:7:8500:982:BD88:CCEF:1D4:9744 ( talk) 02:27, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
Independent of the very appropriate comments that other readers did, there is a basic concept that requires to be clearly founded and explained: The physically origin of the major and minor chords, an issue of acoustics and not of the music. Pef890 ( talk) 00:37, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
It is nevertheless possible to sort uses of the term into two basic categories, corresponding to its noun and adjective forms, and while its noun forms suggest a greater degree of abstraction and therefore tend to be more controversial, in practice the two forms often converge:
(a) As an adjective, the term is often used to describe the systematic organization of pitch phenomena in both Western and non-Western music. Tonal music in this sense includes music based on, among other theoretical structures, the eight ecclesiastical modes of medieval and Renaissance liturgical music, the sléndro and pélog collections of Indonesian gamelan music, the modal nuclei of Arabic maqām, the scalar peregrinations of Indian rāga, the constellation of tonic, dominant and subdominant harmonies in the theories of Rameau, the paired major and minor scales in the theories of Gottfried Weber, or the 144 basic transformations of the 12-note row (Perle thus refers to his complexes of interrelated row forms as ‘twelve-tone tonalities’: Twelve-Tone Tonality, D1977).
(b) As a noun, then, the term is sometimes used as an equivalent for what Rousseau called a sistême musicale, a rational and self-contained arrangement of musical phenomena: accordingly, Sainsbury, who had Choron translated into English in 1825, rendered the first occurrence of tonalité as a ‘system of modes’ before matching it with the neologism ‘tonality’. While tonality qua system constitutes a theoretical (and thus imaginative) abstraction from actual music, it is often hypostatized in musicological discourse, converted from a theoretical structure into a musical reality. In this sense, it is understood as a Platonic form or prediscursive musical essence that suffuses music with intelligible sense, which exists before its concrete embodiment in music, and can thus be theorized and discussed apart from actual musical contexts.
I now got time to have a first look at the article. The problem appears to arise from the very start, from the "lead", which fails to clearly state what the article is about. No further organization is possible, I think, if the purpose is not made clear from the start. I don't know yet how to organize that, but let me make a few general proposals.
These different aspects seem connoted by the quotations presently forming the lead, but it is a very shy idea to present such concepts, which deserve explanation, merely under the cover of (often unclear) quotations. The lead could further discuss the possible links between Tonality properly speaking and Modality on the one hand, Atonality on the other. Modality is at present defined in the disambiguation Mode article as "a system of musical tonality involving a type of scale coupled with a set of characteristic melodic behaviors" and, in the Mode (music) article, more simply as "a type of scale, coupled with a set of characteristic melodic behaviours." (I for one would hardly endorse any of these definitions.) And Atonality is defined mainly with reference to the lack of centricity: "music that lacks a tonal center, or key."
We might also discuss in the lead the origin and early meanings of the term, both in French and in English, but that might better be reserved to one of the first sections of the article, on the history of the term. The term certainly is in Choron, but in a rather general meaning. It probably gained some specificity through Castil-Blaze and Fétis; but it had been prepared by other terms, such as "octave" (as in "règle de l'octave"), or "modulation". I should probably be able to untangle some or this. I won't be able on the other hand to discuss the earliest usages in English: Webster Online says 1838, but Etymonline says 1824 – both are quite early after Choron!
Tell me what you think. — Hucbald.SaintAmand ( talk) 21:04, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
I tried reviewing the recent history of the article, but it proves an impossible task; besides, I can easily suspect where the problems came from. My suggestions did not point to a rewriting of the lead, but to what it might look like in the end – they also reflected a possible organization of the article as a whole.
We do agree, I think, that " common practice tonality" should occupy a central position in the article. We do not need to propose a synthesized theory: this is an encyclopedy article, not a pedagogical textbook; for the same reason, I think we should quote the theories themselves, whenever possible, not their avatar in a textbook. On the contrary, we should list theories and try to classify them in categories. Dmitri Tymoczko wrote a paper [1] in which he describes and comments three categories of tonal theories:
This seems to me to offer an interesting overview of tonal theories – even if Tymoczko's description is somewhat biased (his article is now ten years old). I think that most existing theories of common practice tonality can be linked to one or another of these three categories (or possibly several; Rameau could figure in all three). One might discover a fourth category, but I am not aware of it at this point. At any rate, I would find it more effective to classify theories in this type of categories, rather than chronologically. This also indirectly makes a point about which one might disagree, but which I think essential: tonality, in my opinion, is a matter of theory. It cannot be discussed merely as a fact, as a phenomenon, it must be discussed as a theoretical construct. Otherwise, we would soon reach in unsolvable problems all reducing to oppositions between contradictory "truths". (If we agree on this position, it might be wise to state it somewhere in the article.)
Some points may be discussed separately, for instance the question whether tonality has its origin in nature (the harmonic series), or in human physiology, or in human psychology. Here again, the point in an encyclopedy is to list existing theories, not to synthesize them. And of course, after having discussed common practice tonality, the article should turn to other senses of the term.
But let's first agree or disagree on the above. Does Wikipedia offer any means of beginning the rewriting in some sort of "sandbox" somewhere? I presume one might use one of our personal sandboxes, but can anyone write in someone's sandbox? — Hucbald.SaintAmand ( talk) 09:23, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
After an unsuccessfull attempt to append some kind of sandbox to this page, I created a page User:Hucbald.SaintAmand/Tonality that can be used as a sandbox for the article, and I gave there a few first suggestions for the rewriting. I feel concerned that this new page may not be easy to find for those wanting to collaborate to the revision: I strongly suggest, therefore, that any change or comment made there be advertized here, with a link recalling the address of the new page. — Hucbald.SaintAmand ( talk) 20:06, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
While jazz is certainly based on major-minor tonality (which is described in the edited first section), the folk music is not. Some later folk music did experience the influence of major-minor tonality, this is true (as e.g. in Russia of the 19th century), but at the level of a universal generalization, 'harmony' of folk music is not a major-minor tonality phenomenon. Olorulus ( talk) 07:41, 16 October 2015 (UTC)