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.
OK, I guess we're running out of words to describe things. Perhaps I've taken the term farther than it was originally intended to go when I call any chord with the key's 4th degree and no leading tone a sub-dominant function chord. But there IS adequate support on that, including the usual replacement for the IV chord in jazz cadences: the iim7 chord. But what else to call those chords, then? They are used like subdominants, they have no leading tone, and they go nicely to a tonic-area chord. They function as pre-tonics, and quite well, too. I use them all the time, as do my students. Do they not have a name, then?
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.
It WAS the case in early blues, where the antecedent-repetition-consequent structure of the present-day twelve-bar blues occured with or without the chords changing. And one of the examples I gave - "Slickaphonic Shuffle" - is an atonal blues, with a keyless ostinato until the consequent phrase.
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.
You'll have to step me through that one, as I would conclude no such thing.
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.
Huh? Where did I say that? In fact, I thought I was arguing the OPPOSITE, that harmony can be perfectly functional without dominant 7th chords resolving down by fifth, and that functional modal harmony exists with no leading tones, and that movement around the circle of fifths is not the only motion possible, and strong harmonic motion can exist with OTHER movements, in fact, even triadic harmony is not essential to hearing a key or mode.
I think we got off on the wrong foot when we disagreed on the meaning of the words "tonal", "modal", and "functional".
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.
Fine with me.
Christopher _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
