problems with "atonal"

Everyone seems to be objecting to the word "atonal". . . but what about
the word "tonal"?

So Western Classical Music before 1910 (and after 1500 or whenever) is the
only music written with "tones"?

Jay here
Well, you've tapped on a hronet's nest of mine, namely, the plethora of
misnomers we've adopted as technical musical terms. Among whichn: what we
call an "inversion" isn't that at all, maybe a permutation or something,
but only one of those things is really an upside-down arrangement. And
modulation? I believe "modulation" and "Mode" have the same root in which
case, a change of key ain't no modulation. Pick your own from there. <grin>
At 07:06 PM 6/29/02 -0400, you wrote:
>
>Everyone seems to be objecting to the word "atonal". . . but what about
>the word "tonal"?
>
>So Western Classical Music before 1910 (and after 1500 or whenever) is the
>only music written with "tones"?
>
>
>
>
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Yes was what when before? pretonal? and if so shouldn't we have a posttonal and postatonal and
prepantonal? possibly a post-gothic-pretonal-post-ars-nova-revivalmostalgiaism

Christopher Bailey wrote:

> Everyone seems to be objecting to the word "atonal". . . but what about
> the word "tonal"?
>
> So Western Classical Music before 1910 (and after 1500 or whenever) is the
> only music written with "tones"?
>
>
> You do not need web access to participate. You may subscribe through
> email. Send an empty email to one of these addresses:
> tuning-subscribe@yahoogroups.com - join the tuning group.
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>
>
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-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
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The Wandering Medicine Show
Wed. 8-9 KXLU 88.9 fm

> Jay here
> Well, you've tapped on a hronet's nest of mine, namely, the plethora of
> misnomers we've adopted as technical musical terms. Among > whichn: what we
> call an "inversion" isn't that at all, maybe a permutation or > something,
> but only one of those things is really an upside-down arrangement. And
> modulation? I believe "modulation" and "Mode" have the same > root in which
> case, a change of key ain't no modulation. Pick your own from > there. <grin>
> At 07:06 PM 6/29/02 -0400, you wrote:
>>
>> Everyone seems to be objecting to the word "atonal". . . but >> what about
>> the word "tonal"?
>>
>> So Western Classical Music before 1910 (and after 1500 or >> whenever) is the
>> only music written with "tones"?

Well said, Jay !

Modulate and Mode both originate in the Latin 'modus', meaning measure. So yes, a change of key is not modulation. As for 'inversion', you're right. Permutation is indeed much more accurate and appropriate. An inversion is but one permutation.

Much of the common use language and theory in music is tainted by the conception of 12-ED2:1 as the one truth, remarkable narrowness of mainstream musical thought, and the accumulated misconceptions and fallacies . Far more complex and larger issues continue to be routinely fudged to fit into the 12-ED2:1 view of music.

The current common notion of 'tonal music' is flawed by it's myopic 12-ED2:1, major/minor foundations. In this context 'tonal' is supposed to refer to the tonality of a piece of music, well all music is inextricably tonal.

Tonality is the relationship between the notes of a scale. A scale is the set of all the notes in a system of music in an ascending or descending order. Incidentally, recently there was argument over what a 'set' is. Mark Gould was right when he said, 'What else is an ordered sequence of pitches but a set?'. There's a lot of nonsense out there about a supposed, 'pre-tonal period' in music.

- Joel

--- In tuning@y..., Joel Rodrigues <joelrodrigues@m...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_38317.html#38360

>
> Tonality is the relationship between the notes of a scale. A
> scale is the set of all the notes in a system of music in an
> ascending or descending order. Incidentally, recently there was
> argument over what a 'set' is. Mark Gould was right when he
> said, 'What else is an ordered sequence of pitches but a set?'.

***Hello, Joel!

I believe, definitionally, that's a *row* not a *set.* A *set* is
*un-ordered...* but I'm not going to get my diapers in a bunch about
it...

JP

Nice article on Atonality

<http://www.nupedia.com/article/504/>

Unnecessarily defeatist concluding sentence though.

- Joel