Materials and Techniques of Post-Tonal Music

Stefan Kostka, Matthew Santa

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351859219
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Materials and Techniques of Post-Tonal Music, Fifth Edition provides the most comprehensive introduction to post-tonal music and its analysis available. Covering music from the end of the nineteenth century through the beginning of the twenty-first, it offers students a clear guide to understanding the diverse and innovative compositional strategies that emerged in the post-tonal era, from Impressionism to computer music.

This updated fifth edition features:

• chapters revised throughout to include new examples from recent music and insights from the latest scholarship;

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• the introduction of several new concepts and topics, including parsimonius voice-leading, scalar transformations, the New Complexity, and set theory in less chromatic contexts;

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• expanded discussions of spectralism and electronic music;

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• timelines in each chapter, grounding the music discussed in its chronological context;

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• acompanion website that provides students with links to recordings of musical examples discussed in the text and provides instructors with an instructor's manual that covers all of the exercises in each chapter.

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Offering accessible explanations of complex concepts, Materials and Techniques of Post-Tonal Music, Fifth Edition is an essential text for all students of post-tonal music theory.

CHAPTER 1
The Twilight of the Tonal System

INTRODUCTION

Before beginning our study of the materials of music since 1900, we will first look back briefly at what happened to the system of triadic tonality, the primary organizing force in the music of the preceding three centuries. In the course of doing this, we will find it convenient to introduce a few terms that may be new to you. Throughout this book, new terms will appear in boldface type the first time they are used in the text.

Tonal music and the principles that govern it did not develop overnight, of course, nor did they decline overnight. In fact, tonal music still thrives today in music for television and film, commercials, jazz, and some popular music, and it has even seen a limited revival in the past few decades in the “serious” music of some postmodern composers. Nevertheless, it is safe to say that by around 1900 the tonal system had become so strained by chromaticism and by the desire for originality that further development of the system seemed impossible.

We will use the term post-tonal in this book to refer to music that does not follow the traditional conventions of tonal harmony. This does not necessarily mean, however, that the music being referred to is without a tonal center. The whole issue of tonality in post-tonal music will be discussed more thoroughly in Chapter 5.

DIATONIC TONAL MUSIC

Almost all of the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is essentially diatonic on all levels. ¹ Of course, diatonic tonal music does not lack accidentals or altered tones; after all, a tonal piece of almost any length will almost certainly contain altered tones. But in diatonic tonal music the difference between diatonic and altered tones is always clear, and seldom do we lose our tonal bearings, our sense of key and scale, and our immediate understanding of the function of the altered tones.

Diatonic relationships also prevail at the background levels of a diatonic tonal composition. Think of the keys that Bach is apt to reach in the course of a fugue, or the traditional key schemes for sonata forms and rondos. All represent diatonic relationships because in all cases the secondary tonalities are closely related to the primary tonality of the movement.

Even at the highest level—key relationships between movements—diatonicism prevails. For example, all of the movements of a Baroque suite were in a single key, whereas in multiple-movement works of the Classical and Romantic periods the first and last movements are always in the same tonality (although sometimes in a different mode), and this is considered the tonal center of the composition as a whole.

CHROMATIC TONAL MUSIC

The point at which the organization of tonal music becomes chromatic instead of diatonic is not an absolute one. Much of the harmony of chromatic tonal music can be analyzed by using the same vocabulary for altered chords, modulations, chromatic nonchord tones, and so forth, that we use in the analysis of diatonic music. It is partly a matter of emphasis. Instead of a texture in which diatonic tones predominate over nondiatonic tones, both in number and in significance, we are dealing here with music that is so saturated with chromaticism that the diatonic basis of the music is no longer apparent to the listener. One writer puts it this way: “The critical distinction between the two styles lies in the transformation of the diatonic scalar material of the classical tonal system into the equally-tempered twelve note chromatic complex of the diatonic tonal system.” ² In the next few pages we will look at some features of chromatic tonal music that will have particular relevance to our study of the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

SOME ASPECTS OF CHROMATIC HARMONY

Two fundamental root movements in diatonic tonal harmony are the circle-of-5ths progression, as in vi–ii–V–I, and the diatonic mediant progression, as in I–vi–IV–ii. Though these progressions by no means disappear in chromatic harmony, another relationship, the chromatic mediant relationship, finds a popularity that it did not have in earlier styles. Two triads or keys are in a chromatic mediant relationship if they are of the same quality (major or minor) and their roots are a major 3rd or minor 3rd apart. These relationships are illustrated in Example 1-1 (lowercase indicates minor).

EXAMPLE 1-1 Chromatic Mediant Relationships

The term pitch class is used to refer to any of the 12 notes of the equal-tempered scale regardless of spelling or octave placement. For example, every C, every B♯, and every D♭♭ belongs to the same pitch class. (We will often number the 12 pitch classes from 0 to 11, with 0 usually representing the pitch class to which C belongs.) Notice that in Example 1-1 each of the pairs of triads shares exactly one pitch class. Third-related triads of opposite quality (major and minor) sharing no pitch classes at all are said to be in a doubly chromatic mediant relationship, as in Example 1-2. Sometimes chords in chromatic or doubly chromatic mediant relationships are spelled enharmonically (as in G–d♯), but the spelling does not alter the relationship because the pitch clas...