On 15 Nov 2002 at 16:40, Andrew Stiller wrote: > John Howell. > > >Key tonality > >and functional harmony are alive and well in the marketplace, including > >Broadway, Country, Pop, Rock in its miriad forms, Jazz, and virtually all > >church music and educational music. > > I beg to differ, but Rock (of which Pop, for the past 40 years, is a > synonym, not a different genre) is not tonal. Triadic yes, diatonic > yes, but not tonal. A genre in which one may cadence with any > progression at all *except* the authentic, may end on a suspension or > a seventh chord, or may fade out without any conclusion at all, > cannot be called tonal in any sense that I would recognize.
I would disagree completely with this. The fact that they can do this is due to the tonal context. It is the context of tonality that gives these devices the meaning they have. This reminds me of the people who argue that the 4/4 of rock is different from the 4/4 of "art music" because the strongest beats in rock are 2 and 4. They may be the *loudest*, but that doesn't mean they are the primary beats. In all music, gestures can gain significance by being different from the norms. The departures from the norms can become more common than the systemic norms themselves (plagal cadences instead of authentic, for instance), but that doesn't mean that the system itself is not in use. -- David W. Fenton | http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates | http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
