Tonality and modality.

[Enrique]

Quijote mentioned what he called a myth, in these words: "Tonality already contained within itself the seeds of its own destruction". As he intends to start a thread to elucidate the truth that may be contained in it or to proof its complete falsehood, here goes some thought as a preliminary to his promised thread. Because I asked him to develop on the subject and, if he could, give some references.

Before tonality music was modal. And it was so during the entire Antiquity and the age that followed. It seems obvious that the rise of major and minor meant a loss of liberty in music. There were now to tyrants: the bar line and the tonic. In the old era the was infinite metric flexibility. And a great number of modes. Tonality was contained in these modes in a diluted form. And in many cases, there were strong tonal implications. Among the twelve (or fourteen) modes were two, the Ionian and Aeolian, which survived to become the basis of our tonal system. I read somewhere that it was the development of polyphonic styles and the increasingly harmonic nature of those styles that brought about the fall of the modal system.

Says Eric Salzman, Twentieth-century Music, An Introduction, 2nd ed, 1974: "The growth of equal temperament, chromaticism, and modulation had made possible the historical rise of functional tonality in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and destroyed it in the twentieth; thus tonality contained within itself from the start the seed of its own destruction". The Tristan and Debussy were natural outgrows of the tonal period. The Tristan dilutes the tonality into chromatism. Debussy uses tonality in complex ways. Tristan paved the way to the second Vienesse School.

I think composers just got tired and chose other tracks. The post-romanticism could be called hyper-romanticism. Seen at a distance, the creations of that period seem hollow and inflated, a thing that could have been perceived by some composers at the turn of the century (XIX-XX).

[Chaszz]

...Before tonality music was modal. And it was so during the entire Antiquity and the age that followed. It seems obvious that the rise of major and minor meant a loss of liberty in music. There were now two tyrants: the bar line and the tonic. In the old era the was infinite metric flexibility.

Was the tonic not a strong presence in modal music? Each modal scale begins on a tonic note, and if there is simple harmony it is probably a tonic chord of notes one and five. Rising and descending horizontal phrases seem to end back on the tonic just as they do in tonal music.

Also what evidence is there that there was "infinite metric flexibility" in Western modal music? We know very little about how ancient Western modal music actually sounded, especially its rhythms. Medieval and Renaissance music, at least as we hear them performed today, seem to me rather perfunctory in rhythm. In my experience this description would be applied more fittingly to African music and some parts of its American offspring, and to Indian classical music.

Or perhaps you mean that before bar lines, metrical and rhythmic patterns did not repeat but were varied freely as the music unfolded. Since virtually all music seems to have repetition in rhythm (except perhaps some experimental modern Western classical music), that would seem to me unlikely. The rhythmic freedom of African and Indian music consists of elaborating in complicated ways within a repeating pattern, rather than in continually migrating to different patterns.

[Enrique]

My knowledge of music, Chaszz, is very general and rudimentary. I can't particularize in the history or theory of music. Some words, then, which are generalities.

I find it difficult to speak about tonality in a time when harmony had not yet made its appearance. Tonality, if I am not wrong, is all about resolution. This, in the modern sense, is the progression from a dissonance into a consonance. So, in an era that systematically avoided dissonance, how could there be tonality?

Also what evidence is there that there was "infinite metric flexibility" in Western modal music? We know very little about how ancient Western modal music actually sounded, especially its rhythms. Medieval and Renaissance music, at least as we hear them performed today, seem to me rather perfunctory in rhythm.

About the second point, and here I was including the late renaissance and the technique of imitative counterpoint, I can say that one thing is metrics and another one is rhythm. From the moment when music began to be notated it is possible to study it's metrics. Look at any motet by Palestrina, look at the score, and you will see how complex the metrics is and, therefor, necessarily the rhythm. To the complexity of each voice taken separately, we must add that arising from the juxtaposition of all them. In this stage, the cadence is being born and we are in the way to tonality, but a long distance from the hieratic rhythm exemplified in the minue of Haydn and Mozart.

Those remarks I made in post #1 were not absolute. They are about a period in relation to another period, within the history of West Europe.

[Peter]

Was the tonic not a strong presence in modal music? Each modal scale begins on a tonic note, and if there is simple harmony it is probably a tonic chord of notes one and five. Rising and descending horizontal phrases seem to end back on the tonic just as they do in tonal music.

Also what evidence is there that there was "infinite metric flexibility" in Western modal music? We know very little about how ancient Western modal music actually sounded, especially its rhythms. Medieval and Renaissance music, at least as we hear them performed today, seem to me rather perfunctory in rhythm. In my experience this description would be applied more fittingly to African music and some parts of its American offspring, and to Indian classical music.

Or perhaps you mean that before bar lines, metrical and rhythmic patterns did not repeat but were varied freely as the music unfolded. Since virtually all music seems to have repetition in rhythm (except perhaps some experimental modern Western classical music), that would seem to me unlikely. The rhythmic freedom of African and Indian music consists of elaborating in complicated ways within a repeating pattern, rather than in continually migrating to different patterns.

Yes in Gregorian chant the music would centre around a set note known as the Final on which the melody would end, and also as in modern tonality the 5th was also important.

[Peter]

My knowledge of music, Chaszz, is very general and rudimentary. I can't particularize in the history or theory of music. Some words, then, which are generalities.

I find it difficult to speak about tonality in a time when harmony had not yet made its appearance. Tonality, if I am not wrong, is all about resolution. This, in the modern sense, is the progression from a dissonance into a consonance. So, in an era that systematically avoided dissonance, how could there be tonality?



About the second point, and here I was including the late renaissance and the technique of imitative counterpoint, I can say that one thing is metrics and another one is rhythm. From the moment when music began to be notated it is possible to study it's metrics. Look at any motet by Palestrina, look at the score, and you will see how complex the metrics is and, therefor, necessarily the rhythm. To the complexity of each voice taken separately, we must add that arising from the juxtaposition of all them. In this stage, the cadence is being born and we are in the way to tonality, but a long distance from the hieratic rhythm exemplified in the minue of Haydn and Mozart.

Those remarks I made in post #1 were not absolute. They are about a period in relation to another period, within the history of West Europe.

I'm not sure when or what you are referring to by 'a time when harmony had not yet made its appearance'? The first evidence of polyphony in western culture dates from around 900AD though in other traditional cultures it probably predates that considerably. The oldest known 6 part writing is the English piece 'Sumer is icumen in' dating from 1240 and later in 1364 Guillaume de Machaut produced the first polyphonic setting of the mass. As to dissonance, it was only the church that opposed such intervals, it was still common in secular music.

[Enrique]

I went to Wikipedia, the common man's knowledge source, and found this:

Jean-Philippe Rameau's Treatise on Harmony (1722) is the earliest effort to explain tonal harmony through a coherent system based on acoustical principles (Girdlestone 1969, 520). He claimed that his work represents "the practice of the last 40 years" (Rameau 1722,[page needed]).

So, for Rameau, the "harmonic period" begins at 1722 - 40 = 1682. I take tonal harmony = harmony and major and minor system = tonality. I read in a book:

The system of vocal polyphony seemingly evaporated towards the end of the sixteeenth century, leaving a residue of instrumental dance music, music for keyboard, accompanied song, and chordal music --all based on harmony and metrical regularity.

And I was saying that the shift towards harmony began in the high rennaisance.

The most important reason for this style-change was the trend in musical thinking from horizontal-melodic to vertical-chordal composition due to the widespread use of imitative counterpoint. Regardless of any of the social, religious, and economic changes during this period, the revolutionary trend towards harmony and regular metrics would alone, sooner or later , have caused the eclipse of polyrhythmic polyphony.

So, here harmony is opposed to polyphony. The fact that the two principles coexisted for a time does not contradict their opposition.

However, it was inevitable that historical events should have an effect upon musical development. Thus the classical revival, the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter Reformation, the invention of printing, the development of technology, and the rise fo the merchant classes all had an impact on music which hastened the change from counterpoint to harmony or from polyphony to homophony.

Thus, according to this author, there was a contrapuntal period followed by a harmonic period.

[Chaszz]

Harmony was never completely absent from modal music; as Peter and I both commented, simple vertical chords such as a 1 paired with a 5 were used. Most musics which developed independently of Western music and are largely modal, such as Indian, Arabic and Chinese music, have some elementary harmony such as a 1 and 5. This is very common. You can imagine, in a horizontal music which is largely melodic and rhythmic and almost devoid of stated (rather than implied) harmony, the powerful effect a chord of even two notes might have. So to us this harmony may be rudimentary, but to its audience it may be intense.

By implied harmony, I mean that a vibrating string will produce its own harmonic overtones of other notes, which can also be very intense within a simple musical structure.

Then when in the West the 3rd was added to the 1st and 5th to form what we know as a major triad chord, the bridge was definitely crossed away from modality and toward tonality, and there was no turning back.

I am confused as to what you mean by metrics.

[Peter]

I went to Wikipedia, the common man's knowledge source, and found this:


So, for Rameau, the "harmonic period" begins at 1722 - 40 = 1682. I take tonal harmony = harmony and major and minor system = tonality. I read in a book: And I was saying that the shift towards harmony began in the high rennaisance.

So, here harmony is opposed to polyphony. The fact that the two principles coexisted for a time does not contradict their opposition.
Thus, according to this author, there was a contrapuntal period followed by a harmonic period.

Yes I think this is down to the use of the word harmony which is actually Greek in origin 'harmonia'. You are using the word to mean tonality, the major/minor system which is I think too limited a use of the term. Harmony means a combination of 2 or more sounds and sometimes (as in Bach's unaccompanied solo works) just one line can imply harmony. The issue is further confused because I think I'm right in saying that to the medieval ear our most consonant sounds 3rds and 6ths were considered discordant!

Carl Dahlhaus:
"It was not that counterpoint was supplanted by harmony (Bach’s tonal counterpoint is surely no less polyphonic than Palestrina’s modal writing) but that an older type both of counterpoint and of vertical technique was succeeded by a newer type. And harmony comprises not only the (‘vertical’) structure of chords but also their (‘horizontal’) movement. Like music as a whole, harmony is a process."

[Enrique]

Harmony was never completely absent from modal music; as Peter and I both commented, simple vertical chords such as a 1 paired with a 5 were used.

If by 1 and 5 you mean the intervals of unison and fifth, this is not what was spoken of before. Peter refered to the first degree and the fifth degree having prominence within the scale. If by 1 and 5 you refer to scale degrees, then your "simple vertical chords" are chords built upon those scale degrees, and their juxtaposition ("pairing") would yield polytonalism!

The first attempts at polyphony consisted of a Gregorian melody and its exact duplicate moving parallel to the original at the interval of a fourth of fifth (strict parallel organum). If you call this harmony, I remind you that I'm speaking about what Rameau calls harmony in his treatise (see post #6 please). In trying to comment on the statement "Tonality carried the seeds of its own destruction" I made a reference to modal music. There were two distinct periods in the history of music. One ruled by tonality, the other ruled by the modes. Now, if I say "there is an industrial age in the history of civilization, which began with the Industrial Revolution", you could reply that, in Ancient Greece there was the industry of ceramics or that in the France of the Louises, there was the industry of tapestry. But that does not keep us from defining an industrial period and make it to begin somewhere around 1800.

By implied harmony, I mean that a vibrating string will produce its own harmonic overtones of other notes, which can also be very intense within a simple musical structure.

Any vibrating body, including the vocal chords but also a metal rod, will produce a set of overtones. Their distribution over frequency (energy vs frequency) makes us differentiate a flute from an oboe. I do not see how your implied harmony fits into polyphony. The overtones in the human voice are very difficult to perceive. When we speak of implied harmony we usually refer to what happens when a monophonic instrument is playing. When a flute plays E-G#-B-D it implies a dominant seventh chord.

Regarding metrics, perhaps a more familiar term is meter. Meter is the underlying structure behind rhythm, the skeleton of rhythm. There is meter in music as well as in poetry. Grossly speaking, 3/4 and 4/4 are different meters. But before entering the matter, why don't we arrive at some consensus about the periodization of music history with respect to tonality?

[Chaszz]

If by 1 and 5 you mean the intervals of unison and fifth, this is not what was spoken of before. Peter refered to the first degree and the fifth degree having prominence within the scale. If by 1 and 5 you refer to scale degrees, then your "simple vertical chords" are chords built upon those scale degrees, and their juxtaposition ("pairing") would yield polytonalism!

The first attempts at polyphony consisted of a Gregorian melody and its exact duplicate moving parallel to the original at the interval of a fourth of fifth (strict parallel organum). If you call this harmony, I remind you that I'm speaking about what Rameau calls harmony in his treatise (see post #6 please). In trying to comment on the statement "Tonality carried the seeds of its own destruction" I made a reference to modal music. There were two distinct periods in the history of music. One ruled by tonality, the other ruled by the modes. Now, if I say "there is an industrial age in the history of civilization, which began with the Industrial Revolution", you could reply that, in Ancient Greece there was the industry of ceramics or that in the France of the Louises, there was the industry of tapestry. But that does not keep us from defining an industrial period and make it to begin somewhere around 1800.



Any vibrating body, including the vocal chords but also a metal rod, will produce a set of overtones. Their distribution over frequency (energy vs frequency) makes us differentiate a flute from an oboe. I do not see how your implied harmony fits into polyphony. The overtones in the human voice are very difficult to perceive. When we speak of implied harmony we usually refer to what happens when a monophonic instrument is playing. When a flute plays E-G#-B-D it implies a dominant seventh chord.

Regarding metrics, perhaps a more familiar term is meter. Meter is the underlying structure behind rhythm, the skeleton of rhythm. There is meter in music as well as in poetry. Grossly speaking, 3/4 and 4/4 are different meters. But before entering the matter, why don't we arrive at some consensus about the periodization of music history with respect to tonality?

I just meant that harmony is never completely absent in a modal system, because there are some simple chords. I agree with you that modality gave way to tonality from about 1700 or 1725 or 1740 onward in the West. The conventional wisdom is to say that tonality itself began to break down in the late 19th C. with Tristan, preceded by some experiments in that direction by Liszt (Wagner asked one of his acolytes to please keep quiet about that).

But perhaps the atonalists are less representative of current day music than the popular artists, where those old tonal chords are alive and well. I think it's quite interesting that jazz defined pop for much of its history, then when it became more abstract with bebop in the 40s and tonality started to dissolve there also, almost immediately rock replaced it in popularity and guess what, those old tonal chords were back in the saddle.

They are still going strong today. So whether the age of tonality is over or not depends on what you consider good modern music. I will risk being considered a philistine by saying I prefer Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones to almost any modern 'serious' classical music. And I still love those old tonic, subdominant and dominant chords and what they can do to the emotions, whether in the finale of Beethoven's Fifth* or in Elton John.

*Why is this astonishing movement (the finale) hardly ever mentioned and the first movement with its four knocking chords gets all the fame? The first movement is of course great, but to me the finale is more stunningly great.

[Enrique]

*Why is this astonishing movement (the finale) hardly ever mentioned and the first movement with its four knocking chords gets all the fame? The first movement is of course great, but to me the finale is more stunningly great.

The finale is imposing. At times, it really seems as if "the house collapses". What makes the first movement stand as a model (see that every student of composition studies this movement) is its unity. It is unitary. It is monolithic.

I agree with the first part of your post. But I do not think rock is the heir of Western musical tradition.

[Chaszz]

The finale is imposing. At times, it really seems as if "the house collapses". What makes the first movement stand as a model (see that every student of composition studies this movement) is its unity. It is unitary. It is monolithic.

I agree with the first part of your post. But I do not think rock is the heir of Western musical tradition.

Maybe not, but it is certainly the heir of the chords, and not only the big 3.

[Peter]

But I do not think rock is the heir of Western musical tradition.

Perhaps it can be seen as a by-product?

[Peter]

Speaking to one of my pupils today, she told me she was studying at school for music GCSE an atonal work by Schoenberg (unfortunately I've forgotten which) - a piece which none of the students in her class like! Now something has to be wrong here - why is it that music that is now no longer modern still fails to connect to young modern ears? I'm hoping Don Quijote can deal with this when he comes to explain his quote that inspired Enrique's thread.

[Quijote]

Still connects to my 'young' modern ears! And anyway, Enrique is doing perfectly fine and will not appreciate the dead hand of my interventions.
... For the moment.
(Add "evil grin" icon.)