rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (06/15/84)
You know [HE SAID], I've been wondering what all this stuff really means with regard to those who say/said: "Well, if you follow the path that Wagner and other intensely chromatic composers were travelling on, you would get to the point where there just wasn't any tonality anymore, so let's take the next logical step and deliberately avoid tonality!" The fact is, even in the most intensely chromatic moments of 19th century music, you feel the grip of tonality. It may lead you astray by making you think the piece has reached a new tonal center, and then deceive you by making a sudden dart to the left that feels like yet another "key", finally (or is it really "finally"?) coming to rest on a harmonic base that feels like "home", only to suddenly make a dramatic move to a totally "unrelated" "key". Chromaticism wasn't destroying tonality; it *was* destroying the concept of *key*!!! And all the rules of musical comoposition that went with it about required modulations to the sub-dominant and the relative minor and such. Each *moment* had a tonal center, even if it was only implied, and the increasingly unusual movement between successive notes/harmonies was what chromaticism was all about (especially when the unusualness evolved from linear cross-webbing to form new and unheard of "modulations"). Combined with increasing acceptance of "out-of-place" notes in the midst of otherwise "normal" tonal harmonies THAT SIMPLY DID NOT CHOOSE TO RESOLVE THEMSELVES(!!!), one gets a picture of what chromaticism was (is?) all about. (Those like Debussy chose to go about doing the same thing, but in very different ways. While occasionally shucking the rules of traditional harmonic motion, Debussy retained the notions of harmonic tonalities, employing and extending and expanding upon them, denying the concept that a chord could be "wrong" in a given place in a certain harmonic motion pattern.) So what can you say about a school of thought that elects to negate the notion of tonality and tonal centers? When someone said that they threw away everything that went before, they weren't that far off the mark. Oh, sure, they kept up compositional rigor and rules, but they chose to ignore the very idea of harmonic motion and its place in the listener's fabric of understanding. (It always amazes me that those like Berg, Webern, Perle, et al have taken serialist notions and built such incredible music with them.) Compare this to Stravinsky's work. Remember the passage leading up to the finale of the Firebird? Every chord a simple TONAL major or minor chord. (Starting on the Eb minor chord and finally "resolving" on B major before employing a diminished chord to lead into the B major "6-4" chord.) But what is the "legal" harmonic basis on which he chooses to go from one chord to the next? None. Give that man a ticket! Next thing you know he'll be writing Eb major chords on top of E major chords. Dis-gusting! (It's been a while, but I once went through that passage to analyze what he was doing; all I can remember is that it's more "regular" than first impressions would indicate.) In almost all chromatic music, ranging from the deceptive simplicity of Chopin's Prelude in E minor (number escapes me) to the bombast of the Liebestod, every moment has a tonality all its own (implied or otherwise), and it is the passage from one moment's implied tonality (-ies?) to those of the succeeding moments (in unusual ways) that makes chromaticism. I'm not saying that dodecaphony is musically WRONG; it's just different, in much the way that other world musics differ from each other. But to say that it is a logical extension of Western tonal chromaticism seems to me to be a blatant falsehood. -- AT THE TONE PLEASE LEAVE YOUR NAME AND NET ADDRESS. THANK YOU. Rich Rosen pyuxn!rlr
mat@hou5d.UUCP (M Terribile) (06/19/84)
Would someone mind giving a little lesson?
I have a rough understanding of what constitutes a key (tho' if you throw
out all sorts of funny different ``7th'' chords, I will throw up my hands and
leave) but will someone please explain what constitutes a ``mode'', and
why certain modulations are/are not legal, etc? I realize that the answer
to all of this is probably ``42'' but as a listener who is trying to learn
ABOUT music (and even trying to learn to play, from time to time ...) I'd
appreciate it if some brave soul took a shot at it. How about a series of
articles?
--
from Mole End
Mark Terribile
(scrape..dig) hou5d!mat
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