No one is arguing that the Western system of functional harmony is "natural" or innate. Only that there might well be some innateness to more general concepts of "consonance" and "dissonance."
- Darcy ----- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY
On 05 Feb 2005, at 7:20 PM, Owain Sutton wrote:
David W. Fenton wrote:
And when you eliminate the concept of dissonance in the musical text (i.e., the dissonances are never resolved), then you no longer have a distinction between the two types of intervals beyond the culturally defined meanings the listeners bring to the table.
This is a good explanation of the situation - unfortunately it's beyond the distance that even musicians are prepared to go to question whether their understanding of music is inate or acquired. I do find is scary, that people can react so vociferously against any suggestion that the major/minor tonality that *feels* natural to them is actually not something inherent or natural. They wouldn't react the same way if I told them that English wasn't the 'natural' language, or that base-10 wasn't 'natural' maths (assuming we got that far in the maths class :p ) But I find the defensiveness that surrounds western tonality quite scary, and very puzzling.
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