Stirling Newberry:

>Avoiding "triads and simple dissonances" was a stylistic imperative which
>Scheonberg wanted in addition to the necessities of the method of 12 tones
>- but nothing in the rules of row formation actually *forbid* tonality.

In fact, dodecaphonic technique doesn't forbids it neither; I talked
about Berg's Violin Concerto, but "Lulu" is another good example of this.
The Countess' music is serial, but it sounds as it were made out of a a
myxolidian scale. Schoenberg --as you point correctly-- gave only a
stylistic imperative. He was worried more about the historic implicancies
of his method (no deal with the past), than about some of its
possibilities.

>They [rows] do require a very extended tonality, because of the
>requirement of the hexachord and the requirement of using all 12 notes.

Right. Stravinsky said once that his music was not "atonal", but
"pantonal".

>Whether there is a sharp line between tonal and atonal depends, largely,
>on which definition you employ. Schenkeran analysis can usually demark
>pieces quite clearly - but clearly is not the same as correctly. In the
>strictest sense a piece is only tonal if the work is an expansion or
>extension of a tonal progression. That is *everything* must be related
>to the tonal cadence.

If one can employ several definitions of "tonality", then there's
definitively no sharp line between tonal and atonal. Schenkerian
analysis is often tautological, as one can see in the definition that
you give.

>It also means that if one uses largely triads and simple dissonances, that
>peopel will think of the work as "tonal" even if there is no functional
>cadence in it, nor any fuctional harmony. Many minimalist pieces are
>"atonal" in the sense that they have no tonal center, nor central cadence,
>nor set of key relationships - and yet are thought of as "tonal" because
>their surface consists of tonal material.

Very true. Good example of this is medieval and renacentist polyphony:
Perotin's "organa" have indeed certain vertical formations which are (in
a lazy sense) called "cadences", but they have not a functional harmony.
Because of the same reason, we can't say that Dufay's music is "tonal".  I
remember the opinion of a friend, which was not familiar to medieval music:
when he heard Perotin by the first time, he said "this is too old, or too
new".

>What this gets back to is that tonality is an effect which must be brought
>out by the performers.

This reminds me a conductor of our Camerata at the University of Buenos
Aires. During a rehearsal of Bach's St. Matthew's Passion, he turned his
head to us (the violins) and said: Well, well... are we playing Ligeti
today?.

Pablo Massa
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