Tonality Defined: A musical property that creates a sense of gravitation toward a key center. Most music is written in a key. That means all its harmony is related to a single tone known as the tonic. When the tonic is the tone C, the key is C, when the tonic is F, the key is F, and so on. Tonal Obscurity: In the nineteenth century composers began to experiment with tonal effects by using distantly related keys and sustained modulations. This experimentation resulted in the obscuring of key feeling, thus making it much more difficult to hear what key the music was in. Ultimately, in the twentieth century, some composers have arrived at an almost completely obscured tonality or have done away with tonality altogether. These results are achieved in a number of ways, one of which is atonality. Atonality Defined: The absence of key feeling or tonal center. The most important system in atonal music is called dodecaphonic or twelve-tone. Originated by Arnold Schoenberg in the 1920s, dodecaphonic music is based on a tone row created by arranging the twelve tones within an octave so as to avoid any implication of a tonic or key center. Melodic and harmonic factors are derived from the tone row, which can be manipulated in numerous ways with each repetition. |
