The+Nature+Of+Tonality

=**The Nature Of Tonality**= by Kris Calabio
 * How the West Was Won (by Tonality)**

Tonality can be defined as a sense of tonal center. An easy example would be to say that a song usually begins and ends in the same note. But how did tonality emerge and why is it the norm in many styles of music as we know it today? Many musicologists, philosophers, and scientific researchers have sought to answer this question.

Is tonality natural or cultural? It is interesting to realize that the idea of a "pitch center" is present in numerous cultures around the world. The tonic is played as a drone in traditional Indian music and as the gong tone in Indonesian music (Krumhansl, in our reader). What intrinsic element did worldwide cultures understand in music that established the concept of tonality?

Today, it is now known that a pitch consists of harmonic partials. If a fundamental frequency is multiplied by integer factors, and the tone chroma of the resulting frequencies were placed in such a manner according to tone height, one can obtain what is now known in music theory as the major scale.

[|The Harmonic Series by Reginald Bain]

Mathematical explanations of tonality date as far back to the time of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras. Pythagoras and his followers discovered interval ratios by experimenting with string lengths. Certain intervals were deemed more pleasant than others. The Pythagoreans used these mathematical findings to explain the "Music of the Spheres," a belief in which the planets and stars moved according to mathematical equations. These equations represent musical notes which comprise of a symphony.

[|Geometry in Art & Architecture: Music of the Spheres]

The art of tonality has gone a long way since Pythagoras. Richard Parncutt (Professor of Systematic Musicology in the University of Graz) created a nice time line outlining the development of tonality:

__Pretonal__ 12th century: 2-part counterpoint, discant improvisation 13th century: 3- and 4-part counterpoint, 3rds & 6ths imperfect consonances 14th century: Ars Nova; double-leading-tone cadence; parallels forbidden but tolerated __"emergence" of tonality__ 15th century: Dunstable, Dufay, Ockeghem; falling figth cadence in 3 and 4 parts; //Fauxbourdon// 16th century: Palestrina, Lassus; most sonorities are major and minor triads; final fifth replaced by triad; //tierce de Picardie// 17th century: all final sonorities become triads; seventh chords, clear progressions
 * History of tonal syntax: Milestones**

[|Western music history, pitch salience, key profiles, and the origins of tonality by Richard Parncutt]

So is tonality natural to humans? Tonality can be understood as a need to balance dissonance and consonance. Parncutt describes consonance as characterized by smoothness, fusion, and familiarity. Studies show that humans naturally perceive consonance as more pleasurable than dissonance. ([|See link posted by one Kristen_Z]) Perhaps a sense of tonality is a part of human development. Studies by Rupert Thackray show that by the age of eight, children acquire some sense of tonality. However, his findings do not explain if a sense of tonal center is natural because his subjects are immersed in a culture in which tonal music is everywhere. Maybe the cognitive and perceptual processes of the brain can give us some insight. Music psychologist Carol Krumhansl explains that if a piece is written in such a fashion to establish a tonic, that one note becomes a psychological reference point. The tonic is thus given highest priority in cognitive and perceptual processing. The other notes of the diatonic scale are then characterized by how stable or unstable they are in relation to the tonic.

(See p. 121 of your MUS 175 reader for "Quantifying tonal tonal hierarchies and key distances" by Krumhansl)

With these mathematical, psychological, and cultural reasons I have discussed in mind, I hope it is a little bit more clear why tonality exists as we know it today. Well, at least to me it makes a little more sense. 