About standing in key

[jancivil]

Also see Alan Forte:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9gAYDg3QWE&t=960s

this is on the combinatoriality aspect of Webern vis a vis Schoenberg. I read Forte on Webern until I burnt out on it.

Sonorities of Transformations of...

[jancivil]

Now we're almost off the topic of key altogether!

[jancivil]

Babbitt however was one of the proponents of serializing every component.

That thrust seems to have been inspired by Webern's attention to color and sonority as part of the schema.
For me Boulez is the interesting exponent of this idea. As he was essentially a sensualist and very interested in tone color.
A lot of percussion and mallets. Hammer Without a Master; [control but with] local indiscipline.

I'm with the local indiscipline, I can't be bothered with total control. I think I'm not clever like that. But this piece was certainly an influence, the possibilities...

[anomandaris1]

Sweetie; to understand modern theory, you will have to understand the basics that preceded it first, and you have shown abolutely no signs that you do that even at the most basic levels. If you talk tonal melodies without tonality, mode or root, you are contradicting the basis that makes any modern development comprehensible in the first place and you simply exclude yourself from any meaningful conversation within centuries of music theory.

Dude, I have a whole library, including untranslated in English works, old classics (Ptolemy, Riemann, Oettingen and many others), modern editions, subscription to JSTOR. You may forgive my sloppy English, I may have created some sentences with different meaning than intended, but your comments about what I wrote are totally off...
I'm not sure what exactly your point? How hard is to understand that the concept of "tonality" is way broaded than the narrow sense of 18th century major/minor musical system? You can go to your favourite Rameu, Riemann, Schenker or Schoenberg and find various interpretations of tonality... that are hopelessly outdated. Like I said, I've written way too much on tonality on other forums - talkclassical and reddit over the last few years, plus I don't have any time for this now.

"Why do we need Milton Babbitt specifically to talk about Combinatoriality in 12-tone serialism" - well, well, you may not be interested in his stuff (he was not really a mathematician, his father was one, so many of his papers are not very rigorous in mathematical sense or practical for the normal musician), but he is basically the one that really started the "real" modern music theory that has no bullshit in it.
Forte - his book and methods were very outdated even when it was written and lack much mathematical "machinery" (from group theory) for practical computations (which could be useful, if someone is interested in writing "(auto)composing" software).

Chinese people tried 14edo, because 7edo was used back then (it is still used in Thai ? folk music, I think ). (Just like Russians tried 24 edo, it was very trendy at some point, before the whole communist mess that tried to cover all this - there was a very interesting article on 24 edo and some of the scales in it, and its history in Western music in one of Springers' edition.) That's what I remember. There is lots of interesting information on various facebook music theory groups, but is quite a mess to find what you seek and order it chronologically. This was some years ago, so I don't remember very well the other discussions.
I've heard about 9000 years old 7-note flutes in China, but I don't know how were they tuned. Babylonians knew about our "modern Western" tunings (of course not equal steps), if current reconstructions are right.
Greeks could use any edo divisible by 2 or 3, because they knew how to extract the square and cube roots of 2 - see Archytas (but weren't interested in such stuff).
I hope everyone have a nice day, I'm out of this forum - going to write my 22,26 or 31 notes per octave EDM masterpiece album... Cya in a few year (I've spent too much time posting on forums and general online procrastination...)

[fmr]

My goodness... I took a day to work, and when I get back, this thread had exploded

[jancivil]

You're not talking about music in any of that post. I can't engage you on Milton Babbitt. I have not read anything beyond 'combinatorial' hexachords in serial dodecaphony from him, and I skim that because of Forte and Perle; it would be redundant. That is not a criticism, just that I wasn't that interested in more of it.
'He's the one guy who blah blah blah' tells me nothing of the content of the work.

It all looks like "Forte is outdated because..."
because of something which only becomes relevant later. Tautological fallacy, all of that. It's a circular argument, ultimately it all looks like begging for the answer to everything as seeded in your premise "I know better." I'm being honest, nothing personal; I don't know you, anyone that did this would produce this response in me.

[jancivil]

How hard is to understand that the concept of "tonality" is way broaded than the narrow sense of 18th century major/minor musical system?

As per the authority you wanted for this, anything is, Selog and Pendro are conceptually 'tonal'.*
You need to produce a working definition. The appeal to authority is fallacious unless there is a consensus as to the authority of the source. I never heard of Brian whatshisname and the whole thing reads as though a satire of the worst tendencies of postmodernist twaddle. He's very edumacated-sounding with a lot of cute words but what he's saying was reduced perfectly by IncarnateX. It's absurd.

Yet the abstract of that bullshit piece actually stated a clear definition; only to produce this:
*: In the broadest possible sense, however, it refers to systematic arrangements of pitch phenomena and relations between them....

So all of this dodecaphony, atonal serialism, is tonal. Because 'in the broadest possible sense' is this appealing?
Jesus F Christ.

"Tonal music" has to have a DEFINITION. A lack of a definition, as you're doubling down on, is no definition. There is no way to fake knowledge and not get caught eventually. You seem to have taken a cue from that kind of writing. Baffle them with bullshit. An educated person will tend to recognize all of this fallacy and the emptiness of the gestures.

[IncarnateX]

I'm not sure what exactly your point? How hard is to understand that the concept of "tonality" is way broaded than the narrow sense of 18th century major/minor musical system? You can go to your favourite Rameu, Riemann, Schenker or Schoenberg and find various interpretations of tonality... that are hopelessly outdated.

My point remains simple, you are talking about “tonal” melodies without tonality in the classic sense, e.g. Shoenberg’s approach is anti-tonal in a classic sense, so how does he broadens the concept of tonality to an extent where this “tonal” prefix makes sense if the “melody” has no tonic, mode and/or root? Plz explain. It does not make sense by default, but the term “12 note series” does as fmr pointed out. So again: Plz explain how a melody can be “tonal” within frameworks that try to break free from exactly that.

[anomandaris1]

It all looks like "Forte is outdated because..."
because of something which only becomes relevant later. Tautological fallacy, all of that. It's a circular argument, ultimately it all looks like begging for the answer to everything as seeded in your premise "I know better." I'm being honest, nothing personal; I don't know you, anyone that did this would produce this response in me.

No... it's outdated, because he skipped stuff that he should have included that he probably didn't knew at all. Mazzola (the guy with category/topos music theories - also has made some academic music composition software) has a critique on the whole American set theory (and Forte) in one of his books.
Forte and "Milton" (and the other guys around that generations) are important historically, but they lacked the math (if we talk here about music theory in isolation without any acoustic factors) needed for creating solid theories. (I find most avantgarde noise tasteless or lacking perceptually (Boulez experimenting with "convolutions"), so I won't comment such music - Lerdahl has several articles on why this type of music doesn't work - it's funny that he composes such stuff despite that - several were nominated for Pulitzer???)
About the definiton of tonality - why do you want me to give one - see the whole article (or any other good source) for historical context and why the standard textbook CPP tonality may not the end of it - it's quite problematic term even from purely Western music perspective. People are writing whole books on tonality - see Agmon for a good modern effort; Tymoczko is now writing a new one on Western tonality specifically.

"Plz explain how a melody can be “tonal” within frameworks that try to break free from exactly that."
You can't escape from "tonality" - you can make random noises that aren't even music or use the whole genus of a symmetrical set, avoiding any tonic (even with added rhythmical order or other organisational tricks it will sound like shit - see the youtube mock-commercial about best atonal pop hits for the general perception of such compositions).
I'm sorry, but like I said, I'm not here to lecture anyone. (I don't even know why I continue writing)

[jancivil]

Wait, I thought you left the building...

[jancivil]

You know what the total sign of the Dunning-Kruger Effect is here: repeatedly talking about lecturing us. Step back.

[jancivil]

It all looks like "Forte is outdated because..."
because of something which only becomes relevant later. Tautological fallacy, all of that. It's a circular argument, ultimately it all looks like begging for the answer to everything as seeded in your premise "I know better." I'm being honest, nothing personal; I don't know you, anyone that did this would produce this response in me.

No... it's outdated, because he skipped stuff that he should have included that he probably didn't knew at all.

EDIT: no, wait. You just reinforced what I said, that doesn't counter it at all. It's another stupid vicious circle, he SKIPPED stuff he didn't know. Quit stepping on your dick. No, go on, I need to laugh.

I'm asking you to show me your understanding. What stuff? It doesn't happen.

[jancivil]

About the definiton of tonality - why do you want me to give one

For a couple of reasons: 1) you asserted that a definition everyone else finds consensus on was no good;
2) because you refuse to, or can't say anything meaningful now that you're been called on it. You pointed to a text which I have addressed {which I had to work for} and rather thoroughly demonstrated to be a non-definition. And that seems to be the best you've got.

No one is baffled by the bullshit.

[IncarnateX]

You can't escape from "tonality"

But that was exactly what Shoenberg thought he did, wasn’t it? Now you say he did not? Seems like you want to equal any possible use of notes beyond noise with tonality but you have not given the argument yet and I cannot imagine you got that idea from Shoenberg. Correct me if I am wrong on that account but with quotes plz.

Further if you equal any movements of notes with tonality, I am afraid we need a new word to signify those melodies that for centuries have used the V-I paradigm, so we can distinguish them from all other kinds of “tonalities” in the world. Are you sure it’s worth it, mate?

[jancivil]

"lacked the math" to compose with all of twelve tones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyp9fh-u4w8