Tonality

tonalité

Worked through in 7 videos · 12 passages.

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Summary

Dominique Pagani defines tonality as the substantial unity of classical music: it is to the ear what gravity, or the vertical, is to the dancer, a privileged direction, with a fundamental note from which one sets out and to which one returns1 2. He sees it as a Western specificity that appeared late and became stable in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Combined with equal temperament, it serves as the framework for music from Bach to the end of the nineteenth century3 4. Where it appears, the geography of music becomes history, and that history develops with a speed that has no equivalent5. According to him, the chromaticism of Tristan dilutes it and Schoenberg ends up abolishing it: without the "dictatorship of the tonic", music becomes a weightless dance6. He compares tonality to a river with an upstream and a downstream, and atonality to a sea without direction7. In Mozart, he links certain keys to affects, D minor to the dramatic and C minor to the tragic, but he makes clear that this move from the musical to the psychological is not a bijection.

Summary produced automatically from 12 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Series · 27 Jul 2022Nietzsche: no pity for Wagner

1:52Fundamental reference point of classical music, equivalent to the vertical for a dancer: a fundamental note from which one departs and to which one returns.

Series · 13 Jul 2022Bartók: the unheard-of sound

3:58The framework that allowed classical music to endure: from Bach to the end of the 19th century, music remains tonal, under equal temperament.
5:01Schoenberg deduces from the chromaticism of late Wagner a completely atonal music.

Series · 22 Jun 2022From Bach to the Pygmies

1:39A specificity of Western history that appeared late and stabilized in the 16th and 17th centuries; it is the gravity for the dancer, the notes from which one departs and to which one returns.

Series · 7 Feb 2021#14 Mozart once more

6:06D minor is, for Mozart, the register of the dramatic, from the overture of Don Giovanni to the 20th concerto.
24:13D minor the dramatic, C minor the tragic, G minor desolation: a passage from the musical to the psychological that is not a bijection.

Series · 28 Jan 2021#12 Nietzsche (right up) against Wagner

9:11Tonality is the substantial unity of music: it is to the ear what gravity is to the dancer, a privileged direction.
18:22Tonality is a river with a course, an upstream and a downstream; atonality is the sea, an oceanic music without privileged direction.

Series · 24 Jan 2021#11 Modal and tonal music

47:54Tonality has a substantialist side: the tonic is a privileged direction, like the vertical for the dancer.
1:07:35Appeared in the 16th-17th centuries, called into question from the late 19th century onward by the chromaticism of Tristan.
1:10:13Where tonality appears, the geography of music becomes history, with an evolution of unparalleled speed.

Series · 3 Dec 2020#3 What is called modern music?

47:41Schoenberg pushes the tonality diluted by Tristan to the point of suppressing it; no more dictatorship of the tonic, like a dance in weightlessness.