David Arditti wrote:

>The fact is that there <is> such a thing as common practice music, more
>commonly known as "classical music", in the broad sense, hence the title
>of this list, which is not an invention of theorists, but is audible
>to listeners with no technical understanding of music whatever as a
>consistency of language spanning the music of the early renaissance to
>the late romantic; ...

Common practice refers the harmonic language founded on the musical period
refered to as the "classical" in the narrow sense.  It corresponds with
the "neo-classical" movement in painting and architecture, the word
"neo-classical" refering to a later period in music.

The assertion that there is one musical practice from the Renaisance
through the late romantic is one promulgated by the early moderns, there
being two somewhat different versions of the idea.  It also happens to
be false, but that is another story.

But to the roots of the "one practice" theory.  The neo-classical school
adopted the idea of "tonal laws" from Schenker and argued that from the
renaisance forward there was an underlying tonality.  Modes were derived
from the superposition of the I, IV and V chord, and everything could be
traced back to a natural gravitation towards tonality.

The avant-garde theorised that the commonality of harmonic language was
the result of evolutionary and small incremental change in dogma, and
that therefore there was nothing holding us to it except ossification
and tradition.  The first stirrings of this form of the idea can be seen
in Schoenberg's influential Harmoneliehre and later in his shorter text
books on composition.  Adorno, and later Danto reformulated this into more
polemical terms.  Danto in particular declared that music had been using
the same common patterns for the last thousand years, and that they were,
therefore correspondingly tired, but could reach everyone because of this
common use.

Now as readers here might be aware, the idea that there had been one common
practice since the Renaisance is a distinctly recent invention, until the
late 19th century there was not even a comprehensive edition of Bach, let
alone of many of the earlier composers.  More over, as has been pointed out
time and again, both formulations do not take into account one of the most
important changes in musical practice - that of the moving from tuning
systems based on pure intervals to an equal temperment system.

Taking this into account, one sees that an over lay of I, IV and V could
not create the basic mode, but instead it was the purity of fifths, as
intervals, which determined the central mode in a tuning set.  It also
shows why different chords were considered "dissonant" at different times
- it isn't that people got used to more dissonant language consistently, it
is that some intervals once *were* more dissonant, and the average interval
was much closer to consonant - hence smaller amounts of dissonance are more
audible, as the city is more audbile after a week in the country side.

But no matter, there are flaws and inaccuracies to numerous to catalog
in Mr. Arditti's account of music.  When ever I am faced with this in an
artist, I am reminded of the many very great artists who had warped views
of artistic history, and these views were essential to their art.  Hence
the only thing to do is ignore the rational and focus on the art work that
comes from it.

Since some of Mr. Arditti's music is available for inspection, I would
suggest that an examination of that would bear more useful information
than an examination of his doctrine of tonality.

stirling newberry
http://www.mp3.com/ssn
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