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To Gary, Diatonic Analysis Insufficient

🔗Matt Nathan <mattn@...>

2/24/1997 9:59:58 AM
> From: Gary Morrison
>
> > > > ...tone should be considered a "wandered" tonic, or the major
> > > > third of the V of ii (near C# in C) should be considered a
> > > > "wandered" tonic. "
> > > Frankly I wouldn't buy that. If the harmony makes clear
> > > that you're playing a vi chord, then its third is the tonic.
> > > That's built into the definition of diatonic triads.
> > Sure, but definitions are not music. I say let the
> > music make the definitions, not the reverse. ...
> > If a diatonic analysis is crippled enough to confuse 81/80
> > with 1/1, then it doesn't fall within the realm of usefulness.
>
> Well, then I recommend you avoid diatonic-triad nomenclature
> and concepts (e.g., "V", "ii", or "vi") if you're not interested
> in diatonic harmony!

True, I know, but I was reponding to the topic, also it's
hard to criticise something without saying its name. Note
that in my examples I used ratio notation.

> I'm certainly not suggesting by any means that that
> is the only valid or useful mindset from which to write
> music. But it's far from useless just
> because it doesn't comprehend the idea of a comma.

It's useless for describing music which doesn't stick to 7
pitches. I'm also trying to argue that much of what is called
diatonic music actually makes use of progressions which imply
more than 7 pitches, and if played on instruments which are
pitch-adjustable, including voice, the progressions can
naturally lead the ear of the performer to play these pitches.
In these cases, diatonic notation and thinking is worse than
useless; (IMO) it's harmful, because it gives a truncated
explanation of musical reality.

> The ideas of traditional harmony has value applied to certain
> microtonal systems - as much or as little value as it has in
> 12TET. Traditional theory is based upon triadic harmony, but
> its most basic emphasis is functional harmony:
> * Leading tones want to go up,
> * Sevenths want to go down,
> * Dominant seventh chords want to resolve to tonic chords, etc.

I can agree heartily with a melodic-tendancy basis for
functional harmony, but there is still the sense of
tonality which is like the reference map that functional
harmony plays over. When you move into "romantic"
chromaticism as an extension of diatonic thought
with added deceptive resolutions, secondary dominants,
"distant" modulations, etc. it becomes even more important
to consider the real harmonic areas which these voice
leading tendancies are leading you into. I suggest that
12-tone chromatic tonal music implies more than 12 pitches
and that a chromatic analysis is just as incorrect and
harmful (by not telling the whole truth) as a diatonic
analysis is for much of supposedly diatonic music.

> Functional harmony is also the basis behind wandering tonics:
> If you can convince an audience that some pitch is the leading
> tone, and you resolve it upward by half-step, then they'll
> believe that the pitch you land on is the tonic, even if it's
> not the tonic you started on. Taken out of the framework of
> functional harmony, and of tonality, the idea of wandering
> tonics is no longer meaningful.

Let me recount one of my formative microtonal experiences: the
first 81/80 I heard. In the mid 70's, then-schoolmate Kraig Grady
introduced me to Erv Wilson and Erv played for me the following
sequence, 1/1 5/4 5/3 10/9 40/27 160/81, then he paused, and
followed it with 2/1. Believe me, when my ear heard the real
tonic it could tell THAT was home, no matter that my
diatonic-solfege-trained brain had analyzed "do mi la re so do".
The fact that the final melodic 81/80 movement was so small
and yet so clearly correct convinced me by-experience of the
reality of microtonal hearing.

What I'm trying to say is that even though you may write
music which you think leads your audience to a "wandered
tonic", if you follow it with the real tonic, they will
recognize it. This makes me think it better to call the
supposed "wandered tonic" by another name, to reflect the
ear's ability to differentiate, rather than reflecting
the false assumption at the base of a diatonic analysis.

> So it's certainly not unreasonable to think that the tonic
> could wander down to the original pitch of the leading tone,
> for example. But if it does, it's still functionally the
> tonic, because that's how our ears will perceive it.

Maybe that example should be called a modulation rather
than a wandered tonic, or maybe it's all a matter of who's
listening. All I can really go by is my own ear.

Matt Nathan

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