From: mccomt@aix.rpi.edu (Todd Michel McComb)
Subject: Re: tonality and modern music
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 02:16:53 GMT

In article <1992Nov18.002107.24042@credence.com> Jeff Winslow writes:
>In article <x#w1+yc@rpi.edu> Todd Michel McComb writes:
>>       There is also an explosion of musical experiences available from
>>all over the world: from India, Indonesia, China and the Middle East.  These
>>powerful and varied traditions are to me the most damaging evidence against
>>assigning any priority to the "traditional" tonal idiom.  Clearly, these
>>cultures have produced and are producing direct and powerful music in an
>>"atonal" idiom. 

>This is the only thing I really balk at. Certainly no other culture's
>traditional music is based on what we call "functional harmony", but
>I would be very surprised to find music from a non-western tradition
>which neither a) has a pitch center, or b) doesn't use some (probably
>unequal-tempered) version or subset of a diatonic scale. 

Well... you're probably right.  Anything I can think of at the moment
involves some sort of pitch hierarchy, to some extent.  In Indian music,
ragas are defined by structures of upper and lower tetrachords (as well as
other things, like ascents and descents with scale elements out of order) and
each raga has prominent notes associated with it.  The notes have the same
names, corresponding to our diatonic scale, and so the important note in a
raga might be at any particular degree (i.e. the fourth, the seventh, etc.)
Sa is always the base note, and many ragas exhibit characteristics in which
this base is obscured (usually by omission of Sa and the fifth Pa, or
omission only in ascent or descent in the mode); as it happens, some of
the most common ragas (like Yaman) involve this sort of game.  So, it's
a different sort of concept of pitch center.  Of course, there are also
microtones involved.  In Indian music, the tuning of many of the scale
degrees will vary depending on the raga, though they are usually diatonic
or some subset thereof -- in South Indian music, some ragas are more
chromatic and involve multiple versions of the same scale degree.  In Arabic
music, the basic 'chromatic' scale is based on a 24-note division of the
octave -- the maqamat are based on some subset of this, and modulation is
quite common and a major part of performance; in Kurdish music, there is
only one mode (the Dorian) and transpositions are performed within the
mode, hence obscuring pitch centricity.  In Javanese music, there are two
scales (one of five notes, one of seven) super-imposed -- they also happen
to do this with days of the week; there are five day weeks and seven day
weeks at the same time, such that every 35 days is especially important.
In Chinese music, there is always some sense of base note, but in the
intellectual music the scale is sub-divided at will depending on the piece;
variations (which are common) involve playing the melody inverted in various
intervals.  And, of course, in pentatonic music there is often no priority
given to any particular note.

>I'm not trying to prove a point here; I'd be damn tickled if someone
>pointed out some examples. I've just never heard of them. As a result I
>don't believe there's anything out there that most western listeners
>would classify as "atonal" music.

After rambling on in the previous paragraph, I don't know what my point
is.  Is "nontonal" better?  There is some highly dissonate stuff out there:
try Tibetan wind and percussion music, or Japanese Gagaku.

I guess the point is that this music challenges our ideas about how pitches
should naturally be ordered, and by extension encourages us to come up with
new concepts.

T. M. McComb

PS. On your tone-row, Jeff, you and Mozart both, eh?