Tonality and meaning

Tonality and meaning

The most troublesome problem not only for the untutored listener but also for the professional musician has been, in much contemporary work, the loss of explicit tonality; and this accounts for the tardy popular response to Schoenberg and his school: the vocabulary is esoteric. Nineteenth-century compositions did, indeed, stretch the tonal system to its outer limits; but it is now clear that Wagner and Richard Strauss, and even the early Schoenberg, had not broken from it. As for Debussy, his use of “exoticisms” was filigree upon a secure tonal base. So were such practices as the juxtaposition of keys by Stravinsky. This is not to say that the tonality of the Western world, fecund though it has been, is superior or more natural than other systems. Ethnomusicology and comparative musicology have proved this to be a parochial view, though there are still those who champion harmonic practices based on the physical laws governing overtones—as Western tonality is—as the only “natural” source of development. It should not be irrelevant, however, to inquire if any folk music has been discovered that exhibits atonal characteristics.

Tonality in Western music, though a significant aspect, cannot be considered the crux of musical meaning. The tone rows that are used in the 12-tone compositions of Schoenberg, like major–minor tonality in earlier music, are a technical substratum and must be no more explicit in the finished work than the chemical makeup of pigments in the “Mona Lisa.” The devices selected may affect the comprehensibility or accessibility of the work, but they are not, per se, the determinants of its worth or quality. Similarly with musical colour, or timbre; the 19th century produced a great profusion of compositions, particularly in the orchestral repertoire (e.g., works by Liszt and Berlioz) that exploited the unique sonorities of instruments; control of volume was, in itself, a rich source of colour. Works with literary or other extramusical associations were excellent vehicles for sonorous effects, but colour, like tonality, must be evaluated in musical context. Langer, among present-day aestheticians, regards words themselves as musical, rather than discursive, ingredients; they are “assimilated” by the song.