Tidying Tonal Terminology

including parts of ‘The Symbiosis of Epistemic Inertia’1st presented at Euromac Music Analysis Conference, Rome, 2011-10-02

Updated versions: Glasgow, 2011-10-12; Århus, 2011-11-18; Durham 2011-12-06; Liverpool 2012-01-31;

Newcastle 2012-02-22; Lancaster 2012-03-16; Nottingham 2012-03-20This online version, Huddersfield 2012-03-29

Philip TaggVisiting Professor (retired) ,Universities of Huddersfield and Salford, UK

www.tagg.org

N.B. No audiovisuals are embedded in this PowerPoint presentation. You will need to download or stream the

relevant files (see next slide) and play them at the points indicated in this presentation.

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Tidying Tonal TerminologyDownload all 8 clips to where you’ll find them on your computer

and play each of them when instructed to do so in this PowerPoint

1. The Female Drummer (all). www.tagg.org/Clips/FemDrumAll.mpg

2. 11 extracts of popular musics. www.tagg.org/Clips/RomeMontageV2.mpg

3. Aesthesic v. poïetic (Van Eyck v. Em9). www.tagg.org/Clips/VanEyckBond.mpg

4. Atonal, no! Atonical, yes! (Morricone). www.tagg.org/Clips/MissionM1Atonical.mpg

5. Ionian tertial parallels. www.tagg.org/Clips/RomeParallels.mpg

6. I or V or IV? Guantanamera-s with different endings. www.tagg.org/Clips/Guantanameras.mpg

7. Mixolydian Montage. www.tagg.org/Clips/MixolydV06.mpg8. Bimodality: ionian or aeolian? Aeolian or phrygian?

www.tagg.org/Clips/ Bimodality.mpgP Tagg Hudd1203

Tidying Tonal Terminology

presentation overview as intended 2012-02-22

• Brief overview of central epistemic issues (30%)

• Background (improvised) (5%)

• Troubles with tonal terminology (50%)

• Conclusions (15%)

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Tidying Tonal Terminology

• You can start either on the next slide or, to concretise the issue from the outset (if you have time), play The Female Drummer complete (www.tagg.org/Clips/FemDrumAll.mpg)

• Questions to ask of the recording: [1] does it have a main tonic or potential drone note and, if so, which? [2] Does it have a secondary (alternative) tonal centre and, if so, which? [3] What mode is used in the vocal and guitar riff parts? (Answers towards end of article “Troubles with Tonal Terminology” at http://www.tagg.org/xpdfs/Aharonian2011.pdf).

• If you run The Female Drummer here you can skip it in the first montage (slide 7).P Tagg

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Popular Music HistoryPopular Music Analysis

Music and the Moving Image

If you teach or study…

… you’ll need to talk about the SOUNDS of

music, about MUSICAL STUCTURES.That’s not easy if you’re only going to

use the standard terminology of

conventional, euroclassical music theory!

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Montage 1: 11 extracts

Play this montage exemplifying the range of musics to be covered in popular music studies:www.tagg.org/Clips/RomeMontageV2.mpg

• The Female Drummer is no. 11 in the montage and can be omitted if you already played it (slide 4).

• Main question: which extracts can and cannot be adequately described using the tonal terminology of conventional euroclassical music theory?

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Omitted from montage (for example)

• West African polymetricity• Appalachian old-time musica ficta and florid melismatics

Both important in charting origins of popular music in N. America and for counteracting racist reductionism in history of music

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Popular Music Analysis: structural denotation, the central problem

• Graphocentrism– The ‘work’ or ‘text’ as something written– Notatable parameters at expense of others

(e.g. timbre, metricity, aural staging)

• Poïetic v. aesthesic descriptors

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1. Music as knowledge (knowledge in music)

1a. Poïetic competence (construction)

involves: creating, originating, producing, composing, arranging, performing, etc.

institutionalised in: conservatories, colleges of music, etc.

1b. Aesthesic competence (perception)

involves: recalling & recognising musical sounds, distinguishing between them and between their culturally specific connotations and functions

institutionalised in: ……?

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2. Metamusical knowledge (knowledge about music)

2a. Metatextual discourse

involves: ‘music theory’, conventional music analysis, identification and naming elements and patterns of musical structure, etc.

institutionalised in: departments of music(ology), colleges of music, etc.

2b. Metacontextual discourse

involves: explaining how musical practices relate to culture and society, incl. approaches from semiotics, acoustics, business studies, sociology, anthropology, etc.

institutionalised in: departments of social science; literature, media, cultural studies.

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Aesthesic v. poïetic

Play Aesthesic v. poïetic www.tagg.org/Clips/VanEyckBond.mpg

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Canonic quotes

Music excites the body to automatic movement, an exhilaration that defeats boredom and inspires insight… Music gives the body control over itself, granting personal freedom and revealing sexual potential’ (Lull 1992)

‘[T]he power of pop lies not in its meaning but in its noise,… the non-signifying, extra-linguistic elements that defy “content analysis”: the grain of the voice, the materiality of the sound, the biological effect of the rhythm, the fascination of the star’s body’ (Reynolds 1990).

‘Passions must be powerful, the musician’s feelings [must be] unfettered — no mind control,… no clever ideas…(Diderot: Le neveu de Rameau, 1762)

[Listening to music the right way means] ‘fully surrendering the spirit to the welling torrent of sensations and disregarding every disturbing thought’…(Wackenroder, 1792)

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Absolutism and semiotics in music studies

Syntax

Semantics

Pragmatics

Conventionaleuroclassical

‘Pomo-Rockologist’

Lots of text, v. little context

All context, no text

‘Theory’

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Inflation of ‘theory’ c. 1980-2000‡

• The Adorno problem and empiriphobia - no ‘text’, no audience but left-wing credentials*• CCCS, multidisciplinarity and the need for intellectual commonality - inflation of theoretical litanies, ‘La French Theory’• Bourdieu’s critique of scholasticism† - lack of reflexivity on power agenda of discourse* Tagg & Clarida: Ten Little Title Tunes, pp. 39-47, 59-77 (MMMSP, 2003) and Mattelart & Neveu: Cultural Studies Stories (in Réseaux, 1996).† Bourdieu: Practical Reason pp. 127-140 (Stanford Uni. Press, 1998) and Pascalian Meditations pp. 49-84 (Polity, 2000). ‡ A J Bruce Johnson: Cultural Theory: Who Needs It? (Conference paper, 2009 at www.tagg.org/xpdfs/TheoryWhoNeedsIt.pdf).

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Tonal Terminology: focus

• Aspects of musical structure compatible with Western notation:

• i.e. a system of graphic representation developed to encode mainly monometric music whose pitches conform to the twelve notes of our chromatically divided octave.

• (a v. small % of all music in the world)

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¿¡“Atonal”!?

Play Atonal, no! Atonical, yes! (Morricone)www.tagg.org/Clips/MissionM1Atonical.mpg

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Definitions

• TONE a note with audible fundamental pitch

• TONALconsisting of or characteristic of tones

• TONALITYsystem of tonal configuration

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Linguistic derivative pattern (1)

centre central centrality centralist

form formal formality formalist

crime criminal criminality criminalistic

sense sensual sensuality sensualist

tone tonal tonality — ???

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…better than before but still a bit weird…

Linguistic derivative pattern 2

(better!)comic comical clinic clinical

ethic[s] ethical magic magical

music musical optic optical

polemic polemical rhetoric rhetorical

statistic statistical tropic[s] tropical

TONIC TONICAL – TONICALITYP Tagg

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Chordal mystery category

QUARTAL‘triadic’? ‘functional’ ? ‘diatonic’?TERTIAL

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Gm11

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3 categories of tonical tertial harmony

• Euroclassical tertial harmony• Non-classical ionian tertial harmony• Non-ionian tertial harmony

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Montage 2: Non-euroclassical tertial harmony

Play Ionian Tertial Parallels www.tagg.org/Clips/RomeParallels.mp

g

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Montage 3: Guantanameras

Play Guantanamera-swww.tagg.org/Clips/Guantanameras.mpg

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Mixolydian and ionian cadencing

Play Mixolydian Montage www.tagg.org/Clips/MixolydV06.mpg

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Aeolian cadencing to I (3)

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Same chords, different tonics

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Montage 5: bimodality

Play Bimodality: ionian or aeolian?

Aeolian or phrygian? www.tagg.org/Clips/Bimodality.mpg

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Conclusions (1 of 2)

• Tonal impoverishment• ‘Tonal’ and its illogical prefixes ‘pre-’, ‘post-’, ‘a-’• ‘Tonal’ as absurd opposite to ‘modal’: is the ionian not a mode, too?• Ethnocentricity

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Conclusions (2 of 2)

• Don’t confuse TONE with TONIC. Tonal music without a tonic is ATONICAL, not ‘atonal’.• Don’t confuse TRIADs with THIRDS. If harmony based on stacked fourths is quartal, harmony based on stacked thirds is TERTIAL.• Don’t propagate false contradictions like ‘TONAL v. MODAL’. Please conceptualise all modes, including the ionian, as modes.• Don’t use TONAL and TONALITY in a musically, culturally and intellectually restrictive manner. Please consider the PLURALITY OF TONAL SYSTEMS (TONALITIES) in the real world.

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What to do?• Go home, pretend that nothing is wrong and carry on as before (ostrich strategy)• Take note but no action. (‘We have to deal with “music theory” as is: we can’t change >100 years of ethnocentricity and inexactitude’.)• Risk alienation from conservative musicology (both ancient and modern) by making life easier for the popular majority of students through: - simple reform of a few basic terms; - recognition of vernacular musical competence; - reintegration of music as a specific form of symbolic production on a par with others,.

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Three numbers

127

14

0

Total # musicologists employed inItalian universities in 2008

of which ethnomusicologists

of which popular music specialists

1 (2009)

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THE ENDPhilip Tagg,

Huddersfield/Rome/Glasgow/Århus/Durham/Liverpool/Newcastle/Lancaster/Nottingham Sept 2011-March 2012This online version updated 2012-03-29

www.tagg.org

P Tagg Hudd1203