Arnold Schoenberg debate thread

Cafe Society
21

I know I’m gonna regret getting sucked back into this, but the fact that 3rds were considered a dissonance for centuries is evidence FOR the connection between tonality and the overtone series. It’s no accident that the 5th was considered the ‘perfect’ interval in early music. Next to the octave, it’s the simplest mathematical division of the soundwave. The reason it took longer historically for people to hear 3rds as a consonance is because the 3rd is a more complex mathematical division, and hence sounds relatively more dissonant than a 5th. And the reason a tri-tone “wants” to resolve to a 3rd is because the tri-tone is more dissonant still than a third.

Seriously, try reading a book on music theory before you dismiss it out of hand.

22

The dominance of the fifth over the third has far more to do with the abscence of a functional bass, which only begins to occur around the time of Obrecht and Josquin.

And AGAIN…I ask “C major triad = C minor triad” - why? What do we hear as equivalent in these two chords?

23

Gee, I dunno. Could it be… C?

24

I basically know nothing about acoustics and so don’t have a puppy in this squabble.

But how about this answer: It just sounds good.–?

But I enjoy lots of different tonality, some which are tempered differently (Chinese, African) and some which use quarter tones, etc. (traditional Japanese and Indian and Middle Eastern).

Just about everything sounds good to my ear. :slight_smile:

25

Yeah. Very clever. But why C-E-G and C-Eb-G? Why not some other notes? Nothign in the overtone series, nothing in physics, can explain why we hear these two chords (and no others) as equivalent.

26

I like that answer! Things sound good, so we use them more and more. THAT I have no problem with. However, claiming they sound good because they’re the only possible explanation that fits in with a non-scientific understanding of acountics and superior to everything and blah blah… :smiley:

Careful, or I’ll send you some mp3s :stuck_out_tongue:

27

When you say “equivalent,” do you mean “equallly valid as modal triads”?

28

I mean that we hear them as equivalent. That a C major triad sounds “the same as” a C minor one. Which is something alien to overtone theories.

29

Gah. You’ve sucked me in.

Exactly what, GorillaMan, do you mean by “hear these two chords, and no others, as equivalent”? I really don’t understand what you’re saying.

30

I mean that if you play those two chords, one after another, to a “non musical” person (whatever that may be, that’s another topic), they’ll say they’re they’re similar chords. Change any other one note in a C major chord, and it sounds different.

My point, however, is that you can have any number of chords based around one tonal centre. None of them rely on the harmonic series which is becoming an obsession in this thread. Plenty of explanations have been written as to why the chromatic scale is only one possible use of the capabilities of sound.

31

OK, now I don’t get it. They sound different. One sounds minor and the other, well, major.

32

Major = minor.

We can accept that. That’s what any music teacher would tell us.

It’s false. Tonality is more complicated than that.

33

???

Alright, see my next post…

34

Let’s just bring this back to the original post, shall we?

There are two threads going on at the same time here:

[1] Why is Western music divided into 12 notes per octave?

[2] Why don’t people like serial music (Schoenberg, in particular)?

These are really very, very different questions. If I may:

[1] Why is Western music divided into 12 notes per octave?

Mathematically speaking, 12 notes per octave is the best mix of smallish-number-of-divisions-per-octave and interesting-enough-to-approximate-natural-overtone-intervals. Please read as much of this as you can. Essentially, the next best division after twelve occurs at 41. That’s just too much for us to be comfortable with, as listeners or performers.

Sure, you can have less than 12, but you get very few intervals that are reasonably close to small integer ratios. And, there’s less to work with, melodically.

GorillaMan, try as you might, you won’t be able to convince me that 12 notes per octave is arbitrary.

[2] Why don’t people like serial music (Schoenberg, in particular)?

It’s not because there are 12 tones per octave. Anyone ever hear of a little tune called The Well-Tempered Clavier?

No, it’s because he’s abandoned the concept of tonality. Gone are the relationships of tonic-dominant. Gone are the carefully-crafted modulations and whistleable tunes of the past.

Schoenberg’s music is all about mathematical beauty. If you like looking at fractals and pondering the nature of pi, you’ll find interest in well-written serial music such as his. It’s much more cosmic and cerebral than a polka. Essentially, it’s because the masses can’t dance to it or request it at wedding parties that snooty brainy types like it.

35

I think some of this is now in off-base territory.

But plenty of other scales, whether of more or fewer tones, have tempered differently (including previous Western scales/modes) or have chosen different intervals. I know the origin of even temperament. Fine. But don’t your statements beg the question of why Western music has chosen the intervals it has. And my feeling is that it comes down to a different aesthetic with a different history.

I’m not sure. I’d like to try (with electronic equipment) dividing the octave up differently and see what I come up with. Sure, I’d probably want to keep the fifth in there, but I’d be looking at other mathematical relationships, too.

[quote]
Obviously, even temperment is a compromise between the fundamental and the arbitrary. You also need to explain why other cultures use different intervals such as quarter tones, etc.

Schoenberg called his music “pantonal.” I had this argument with someone 20 years ago. It’s not atonal because the tonality is determined by the tone row. I lost that argument, btw.

Here’s where you’re just super incorrect. Here are some selections that run through my head all the time:

  1. Schoenberg’s 3rd string quartet. Very distinctive melody at the beginning. It’s a 12-toner.

  2. Berg’s string quartet. Extremely melodic.

  3. Chunks of Pierrot Lunaire. Not 12-tone and commonly described as “atonal” (though I would disagree).

Another thing that makes this statement wrong is that even a lot of Classic and Romantic era music is not particularly based on melody, or at least not melodies that are “hummable.” Brahms’s piano works? Masterpieces, but I don’t hum them. If anything, the tunes of Schoenberg’s piano pieces are more memorable. Beethoven could come up with a great melody, but a lot of his work too has the “mathematical beauty” you mention.

People don’t dance to Berlioz, either.

36

…and that’s it?

I ask because when I go to see a live concert of tonal music, I know I’m not saying “I appreciate this music because it’s written in Phrygian mode” or “Man, I love this last movement because it’s written in rondo-allegro form”. Similarly, I don’t go to see a performance of Schoenberg entirely because of the math contained in the score. Many times I wish I could pinpoint every single cell, row, or permutation thereof as it is played, but I lack the time to study ANY score that in-depth, much less a twelve-tone score of the density of Schoenberg.

I stand in awe of the facility and even care that Schoenberg used in employing serial technique in his scores. But for me that’s not what it’s “all about”.

The point I’m trying to make may be better expressed by addressing another member of the 2nd Viennese School, Webern. His music is of an even more austere serialized aesthetic than Schoenberg’s, IMHO. It’s all clean lines - each piece is an exercise in brevity, with an almost surgical arrangement of compositional elements. But it doesn’t end there, even for Webern.

Compare recordings of Webern’s music. Listen to Boulez play it with the Berlin Philharmonic - absolute precision. Boulez seems to want to give the listener a perfectly lucid image of what’s on the page. Then listen to Abbado with the Vienna Philharmonic - these ideas of Webern’s are all still there, but in this performance you hear a conscious effort to underscore each and every instance of angst and emotion. Totally different approaches to the same music.

The end point: The math is all there on the page, yes, but I don’t think, fundamentally, that the final idea is the math. If it were, why not just stop when the math is realized on the page? This music was written for instruments that were built for the purposes of expression. It is bound to communicate on a level more visceral than the intellectual, satisfying though that may be.

37

Bravo, Barrytown.

38

You’re obviously just here to try to goad people. Why don’t you go pollute someone else’s thread? Better yet, why don’t you go play on the freeway?

39

That quote gets halfway there. Xenakis’s examinations of alternate scales give a much more comprehensive theory of how different divisions can occur - any divisions.

What about half a millenia of recognisably-tonal music that does not have a tonic-dominant relationship? As for tonality being a prerequisite for popular appeal, that just ignores many popular and populist musics.

I’ve heard Schoenberg played at a wedding.