![Sch%C3%B6nberg%2C_Arnold_430[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/bqPAblY.jpg "Sch%C3%B6nberg%2C_Arnold_430[1].jpg")
"There's still a lot of great music to be written in C major." -Arnold Schoenberg
Is he right? Isn't tonal music(in the traditional sense) basically dead?
>>64544714
yeah tonal music is dead with Schoenberg
Of course he's right. There's plenty of great music to be written in all keys. Atonality was fun for a while but it doesn't hit us as hard in the feels as the old major-minor trade off.
Atonal music tends to sound either very neutral like Webern, or melodramatic and "spooky", where we just associate it immediately with horror films and without the visuals all you can say is "I dont see anything scary happening, why should I feel scared?"
Dont get me wong I love serialism and atonal music, but I feel traditional tonality and modes have more emotional impact.
>>64545557
Why do composers like Shostakovich, Adams, Part, Taverner, Rautavaara, Schnittke, Reich, Auerbach, Britten, Rutter and Glass exist then? People always say "x style of music is dead" but its almost never the case. styles dont usually die, they evolve.
>>64544714
>>64545557
Faggots.
Part of the process of writing is creating your own version of a typical progression. That's how new music styles, genres, etc. are created.
That's how you have 50 different subgenres of jazz or electronica. Because there are people that weren't dissuaded by conventional harmony and just wanted to write some fucking music.
Saying a type of music is dead, not only misses the entire point of music, its usually indicative of someone whose more interested in clique talk, not music talk. People trying to boost their own music ego.
>>64545617
when i said "tonal music is dead with Schoenberg" i don't meant to say: Schoenberg dodecaphony (not atonal music nor serialism) killed tonal system.
Instead i wanted to say: with the Schoenberg death is gone the last chances for a renewal in the collective consciousness around tonal system.
The composers you mention can maybe have wrote some good music in C major but also they are the demonstration that tonal system has ceased to evolve since Schoenberg death.
>>64545660
BRAVOOOOO
>>64545948
disagree with pretty much everything you said. People are continuing to evolve tonal music and there are groups of people who collectively see tonal music as the way forward.
>>64546050
agree we disagree
>>64544714
Saying this is like saying, "Isn't English basically dead? We need post-language literature, that's the only road".
Atonal was a fun application of critical theory to music. It was fun as a reaction to outdated art forms. But it's been a century, and surprise—atonal didn't overtake the traditional music.
In comparison, if we take design, modernists transformed everything from fonts and kettle shapes to architecture, and achieved both critical and commercial success. It made the "classical" design look vintage and obsolete. But what about atonality in music? It remains unmarketable. It mostly sounds creepy and incredibly unaccessible.
Many have tried to "construct" music and failed. We don't even really "invent" new music. Cultural globalization has incited the fusion of classical melody with African rhythms to create blues, jazz and all other derivative genres. Electric guitars, effect pedals and other electronics have introduced new distinctive sounds. But we still have very vague idea about the laws of music, about constructing it "from scratch". We mostly take already established scales/rhythms and so on.
Inventing a new sound is like inventing a smell. It's a mental task which human brain might not be up to yet with its current amount of knowledge.
>>64546261
This
>>64546261
>But we still have very vague idea about the laws of music
Because there isn't any. How do you derive a "law" from something that isn't anchored to any type of objective, immutable foundation?
I suppose music can have "weak" laws that correlate with human preferences, like for flavor (ex. most people like the taste of fresh fruit).
But the huge scope of subjective preference among people pretty much makes that idea untenable. I mean, rotten food is supposed to "objectively" taste bad, but I'd be willing to bet there's people out there who have a fetish for it.
And isn't that the great thing about the arts? That it defies quantification? That its quality and "usefulness" isn't locked into the rationalist/scientific paradigm that has come to dominate the worldviews of the 20th/21st centuries? (and I have no qualms with science, but I wholeheartedly disagree with the Steven Pinker's of the world that think you can use science to somehow "quantify" aesthetic value. You can only quantify it per human preference, and human preferences are constantly in flux, even if we are connected by a set of universal emotions, desires, etc, the variety within those universals are pretty much limitless).
what's c major? and what are some examples?
>>64546608
get out
>>64545573
>Atonal music tends to sound either very neutral like Webern, or melodramatic and "spooky",
Wholeheartedly agree.
While the structure of atonal music might be interesting from a theoretical perspective, its aesthetic is less varied, dynamic, and interesting than the traditional.
I always felt like the groundbreaking atonal composers made music for other academics to navel gaze over, and/or made it out of a desire to break with tradition instead of making something from a sincere place of expression.
"Schoenberg's music is more defended than listened to."
And I don't dislike the music at all, and enjoy its aesthetic. Like a sonic Hitchcock film, but the great tonal music is emotionally and even more intellectually involving.
>>64546608
>>64546558
I agree with you to an extent.
But we're not entirely "blind" in our creation of music. Ancient music has been shown to use the harmony of thirds; octaves obviously have mathematical/physical foundation too. And what about rhythm? Despite its laws may look impenetrable to human mind, consider this, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_rhythm
Of course this doesn't answer all our questions. Much like discoveries in physics, they only shed light on particular things. But they help us advance our knowledge further.
Of course this necessarily raises the questions: "is hearing music natural, is it a genetic trait, or is it but a social construct? And what is music, really?". It's a very broad question, but at least, according to Wikipedia, today most theorists have a view that "diatonic scales and tonality arise from natural overtones", thus confirming that it's "natural and inherent in acoustical phenomena".
I see the analogies in development of music and the development of painting: starting from simplistic stickmen, it evolved through time to incorporate perspective, composition, shading, color harmonies, color psychology and much more. And although it's up to dispute if these are indeed "objective" rules of art, evidence suggests that completely different cultures came to follow these laws "unconsciously".
Still, much like with the research of human mind, many "secrets" of music are still shrouded in mystery. We may have harnessed nuclear energy, been to the Moon and created microprocessors, but we still don't have the skeleton key to human sense of aesthetics (probably because it doesn't help us feed ourselves and has little impact on our physical well-being).
