Christopher:
is a plagal cadence in a situation like this [the blues] tonal?
If you end with a seventh chord it's neither plagal (except in the same very broad sense by wh. a ii-I cadence could also be so called) nor tonal.
Or do you absolutely require a functioning leading tone to be able to apply the term "tonal"?
No, I don't. That was introduced into this thread at some point, but not by me. The point I am making is that in tonal harmony *every* chord has a defined function, and the relationships between them are the principal fuel that drives the music. No given one of these chords (except the tonic!) absolutely has to be there, but the strict, hierarchical deployment of them is central to the entire system.
And the work that will NOT be done is harmonic! Only the rhythmic form remains.
If that were true, there would be no musical distinction between my experiment (in wh. a single dissonant chord is played at different pitch levels) and the simple repetition of a single chord (dissonant or not) without any pitch motion whatsoever. That is quite obviously not the case. Your position, if generalized, would lead to the conclusion that there is no harmonic motion in, say, 15th-c. fauxbourdon, or the numerous passages in Debussy of strictly parallel harmony. I'm sorry but that is nonsense.
What I find most disturbing is that you seem to be claiming that all motion by fourth or fifth is inherently tonal and functional, which in turn necessarily leads to the conclusion (commonplace 100 years ago, but long since abandoned by most thinkers) that early music and world music are tonal and functional--a conclusion not in any way supported by the elaborate music-theoretical systems that the creators of these musics have used to explain what they were doing.
I can just imagine the reaction you would get if you told an Indonesian or Japanese or Indian musician that the understanding of their music would benefit from a numerical chord analysis. 'Nuff said.
-- Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press
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