Tonality
Tonality is a musical system that arranges pitches or chords to induce a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, and attractions. The pitch or triadic chord with the greatest stability is called the tonic. The most common use of the term ..."is to designate the arrangement of musical phenomena around a referential tonic in European music from about 1600 to about 1910" (Hyer 2001). Modern classical music may practice or avoid any sort of tonality—but harmony in popular music remains tonal in some sense, and harmony in jazz music includes many, if not all, tonal characteristics, while having different properties from common-practice classical music.
"All harmonic idioms in popular music are tonal, and none is without function" (Tagg 2003, 534).
Tonality is an organized system of tones (e.g., the tones of a major or minor scale) in which one tone (the tonic) becomes the central point for the remaining tones. In tonality, the tonic (tonal center) is the tone of complete relaxation, the target toward which other tones lead (Benward & Saker 2003, 36).
Podcasts:
Tonality
ALBUMS
- Daily Star: Summer Seduction, Volume 2 released: 2003
Latest News for: tonality
“Great that Composers like Alexey Shor are Writing Tonal Music”, says Roman Kim
Gulf Today 04 Apr 2025‘Great that composers like Alexey Shor are writing tonal music,’ says Roman Kim
Gulf Today 03 Apr 2025‘We are gutted’: Mundelein’s Tonality Brewing to shutter this month
Daily Herald - Chicago 01 Apr 2025- 1