On 6 Feb 2005 at 13:17, Don B. Robertson wrote: > Owain Sutton wrote: > 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. > > Me: The Western musical scale, be it tempered, pathagorian, mean or > whatever, closely follows a VERY natural phenomena, and similarities > in musical scales can be found in all major musical cultures. . . .
Scales are not music. Scales are not tonality. Many radically different pieces are built from the same collection of basic notes, so pointing out that many musical traditions may boil down to a reduction of notes that happens to be the same says more about the "boiling down" process than it does about the content of the music that is being represented by the scale. > . . . The > octave and the overtone series IS what music and sound is all about. I'll bet Mozart and Bach and Beethoven and any number of non-Western musical geniuses (whose names I don't know) would vehemently disagree with you. These things are the *least* important part of *music*. > . . . Schoenberg's idea was > simply a product of his own personal agenda; his own studies in > harmonic theory should have shown him that. . . . Do you know Schoenberg's theories of tonality? They are actually pretty sound. But he was trying to invent a different kind of tonality, 12-tone tonality. Thus, whatever psycho-acoustic underpinnings traditional tonality might have were irrelevant to his endeavor. > . . . I think it is time we > start to realize that there is something besides culture and tradition > involved in musical harmony/concordance. It's called science. . . There is nothing important in music that comes from science. > . . . If > people are defensive, what is so scary about that? If that is scarry, > then perhaps it could be considered equally scary that people have > swallowed Shoenberg's theory of the equality of intervals. I think those who continually harp on the importance of acoustics as "fundamental" to music are missing all the music. As Schoenberg in effect said of Schencker's analysis "but all my favorite parts are in the little notes, the ones that get left out." -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
