Stephen E. Bacher responds to Ron Chaplin who replied to Don Satz:
>>>... Concerning modern music without tonal centers, its appeal is still
>>>growing on me.
>>
>>Can you give me some examples of tonal centers?
>
>Sure: C. G. D, F, Bb, Eb, A, E, ...
Perhaps I can elaborate a bit on Stephen's rather glib and dare I say
useless answer to this question.
A tonal center is a primary key area upon which the harmonic structure
of a work is based. To give an example that most everyone would recognize,
Beethoven's fifth symphony is in the key of C minor. When Beethoven moves
into other keys, these keys are related, harmonically, to c minor. In
the common practice of western music, certain key relationships are
stronger than others, and it takes some clever use of related chords to
successfully wander too far outside of the realm of easily related keys.
For example, E-flat major is closely related to c minor since they are
related by the same key signature. (three flats) G minor is closely
related to c minor, since g is the fifth degree of the c scale, and
according to common practice the strongest relation to the tonic key.
(Hence at the end of Beethoven's fifth, you get a bunch of back and forth
between the five chord and the one chord, although by now it's in the
major mode)
Music without a tonal center is considered to be "a-tonal" or without
this relationship status between degrees of the scale, and therefore the
rules of traditional harmony do not apply. You can go wherever you wish
without regard to any harmonic or melodic structure.
It's complicated, but perhaps that helps a bit to explain what a tonal
center is.
Kevin Sutton
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