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Tonality is a musical system in which pitches or chords are arranged so as to induce a hierarchy of perceived stabilities and attractions. The pitch or chord with the greatest stability is called the tonic. Tonality was the predominant musical system in the European tradition of classical music from the late 1500s until early in the 20th century. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron (1810) and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840 (Reti 1958,[page needed]; Simms 1975, 119; Judd 1998a, 5; Heyer 2001; Brown 2005, xiii). According to Carl Dahlhaus, however, the term tonalité was only coined by Castil-Blaze in 1821 (Dahlhaus, 1967, 960; Dahlhaus 1980, 51).


Characteristics and features[edit]

Main article: Diatonic scale

The tonal system prevalent in the common-practice period is often known as major-minor tonality, in which each triad has a tonal function in relation to the tonic triad and with other triads in the key. The functions/relationships of the triads, in analysis, are now usually labeled with Roman numerals. The basic harmonic functions are the tonic (I) and the dominant (V). There are many pre-dominant (dominant preparation) triads: II6 or II; IV or IV6, vi, and chromatic variants of these.[citation needed]


Carl Dahlhaus (1990,[page needed]) lists the characteristic schemata of tonal harmony, "typified in the compositional formulae of the 16th [sic] and early 17th centuries" as the "complete cadence" I–ii–V–I, I–IV–V–I, I–IV–I–V–I; the circle of fifths progression I–IV–vii°–iii–vi–ii–V–I; and the major–minor parallelism: minor v–i–VII–III equals major: iii–vi–V–I; or minor: III–VII–i–v equals major: I–V–vi–iii. The last of these progressions is characterized by "retrograde" harmonic motion.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, other scales or modes have been introduced for variety within the context of a major–minor tonal system without disturbing the diatonic nature of the work. The major scale predominates, and the melodic minor contains nine pitches (seven with two alterable). The seven basic notes of a scale are notated in the key signature, and whether the piece is in major or minor mode is either stated in the title or implied in the piece (there is a major and minor key for each key signature).[citation needed]


Main article: Musical form

At the macro-level, the traditional form of tonal music begins and ends in a home key, and many tonal works move to a closely related key relative key. The key signature of the closely related key will be one accidental different from the tonic, with the exception of the tonic minor or major. A tonality is established in many ways, traditionally accomplished through the harmonic implications of a cadence, which is two chords in succession which give a feeling of completion or rest at the end of a phrase, with the most common being <dominant> to <tonic>.[citation needed]

Consonance and dissonance[edit]

In the context of tonal organization, a chord or a note is said to be consonant when it implies stability, and dissonant when it implies instability. This is not the same as the ordinary use of the words consonant and dissonant.[clarification needed] A dissonant chord is in tension against the tonic, and implies that the music is distant from that tonic chord. Resolution is the process by which the harmonic progression moves from dissonant chords to consonant chords and follows counterpoint or voice leading. Voice leading is a description of the horizontal movement of the music, as opposed to chords which are considered the vertical.[citation needed]

Traditional tonal music is described in terms of a scale degrees, upon which are built chords. Chords in order form progressions, which establish or deny a particular chord as being the tonic chord. The cadence is held to be the sequence of chords which establishes one chord as being the tonic chord; more powerful cadences create a greater sense of closure and a stronger sense of key. Chords function by leading the music towards or away from a particular tonic chord. When the sense of which chord is the tonic is changed, the music is said to have "changed key" or "modulated". Roman numerals and numbers are used to describe the relationship of a particular chord to the tonic chord.[citation needed]

The techniques of accomplishing this process are the subject of tonal music theory and compositional practice.

History and theory[edit]

18th century[edit]


18th-century musical repertoire is commonly studied for the characteristic harmonic progressions, voice-leading, and forms associated with 'early' tonal music. In 21st-century American[clarification needed] music theory pedagogy, Bach's four-part harmonizations of preexisting chorale tunes are canonical examples of Baroque harmonic practice. Students of music theory may be called upon to harmonize these same chorale tunes in the language of J. S. Bach, demonstrating their understanding of his harmonic language by replicating it themselves.[citation needed]

19th century[edit]







By the 1840s, the practice of harmony had expanded to include more chromatic notes and a wider chord vocabulary, particularly the more frequent use of the diminished-seventh chord—a four-note chord of all minor thirds.[citation needed] It is in this era that the word tonality was popularized by Fétis (Wangermée and Ellis 2001). At the same time, the elaboration of both the fugue and the sonata form, in terms of key relationships, became more rigorous, and the study of harmonic progressions, voice leading, and ambiguity of key, more precise.[citation needed]

Theorists such as Hugo Riemann, and later Edward Lowinsky and others, pushed back the date at which modern tonality began, and the cadence began to be seen as the definitive way that a tonality is established in a work of music (Judd, 1998).


20th century[edit]



Alfred Einstein wrote that in ancient China, "the development from the non-semitonal pentatonic to the seven-note scale is certainly traceable, even though the old pentatonic always remained the foundation of its music" (Einstein 1954, 7). He notes a similar development in ancient Japan and Java.

Theoretical underpinnings[edit]

Tonality allows for a great range of musical materials, structures, meanings, and understandings. It does this through establishing a tonic, or central chord, based on the lowest pitch, or degree, of a scale, and using a somewhat flexible network of relations between any pitch or chord and the tonic, similar to perspective in painting.

As within a musical phrase, interest and tension may be created through the move from consonance to dissonance and back. A larger piece will also create interest by moving away from and back to the tonic, and tension by destabilizing and re-establishing the key. Temporary secondary tonal centers may be established by cadences, or simply passed through in a process called modulation, while simultaneous tonal centers may be established through polytonality. Additionally, the structure of these features and processes may be linear, cyclical, or both. This allows for a huge variety of relations to be expressed through consonance and dissonance, distance or proximity to the tonic, the establishment of temporary or secondary tonal centers, and ambiguity as to tonal center.[citation needed]

Tonal music presupposes that notes spaced over several octaves function the same way as if they were played in one octave, or octave equivalency. Tonal music also assumes that chords within the scale have harmonic implication / functionality. Since tonality is based on the relationship of scale degrees, there is not enharmonic equivalency. For example, in C major, the notes C and D are not equivalent. C is the raised tonic, scale degree 1, and D is the lowered supertonic scale degree 2. This is because, as stated in the introduction, the hierarchy of tonality is based on the relationship[s] between scale degrees, scale degree 1 not being scale degree 2.[citation needed]

Though modulation may occur instantaneously without indication or preparation, the least ambiguous way to establish a new tonal center is through a cadence, a succession of two or more chords which ends a section, gives a feeling of [temporary] closure or finality, or both. Traditionally, cadences act both harmonically, to establish tonal centers, and formally, to articulate the end of sections. Just as the tonic triad is harmonically central, a dominant-tonic cadence is structurally central. The strongest cadential structure is the perfect authentic cadence, progressing from the dominant chord to the tonic chord. Historically, from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, the common practice period, this has been the basis of the dominant-tonic relationship.[citation needed]

Common practice placed a great deal of emphasis on the correct use of cadences to structure music, and cadences were placed precisely to define the sections of a work. However, such strict use of cadences gradually gave way to more complex procedures where whole families of chords were used to imply particular distance from the tonal center. Composers, beginning in the mid 18th century, began using chords such as the Neapolitan, French or Italian Sixth. These temporarily suspended a sense of mode, and by freely changing between the major and minor voicing for the tonic chord, they made the listener unsure of whether the music was major or minor. There was also a gradual increase in the use of notes which were not part of the basic seven notes, called chromaticism, culminating in post-Wagnerian music such as that by Mahler and Strauss.[citation needed]

One area of disagreement going back to the origin of the term tonality is whether tonality is natural or inherent in acoustical phenomena, whether it is inherent in the human nervous system or a psychological construct, whether it is inborn or learned, and to what degree it is all these things (Meyer 1967, 236). A viewpoint held by many theorists since the third quarter of the 19th century, following the publication in 1862 of the first edition of Helmholtz's On the Sensation of Tone (Helmholtz 1877), holds that diatonic scales and tonality arise from natural overtones (Riemann 1872, 1875, 1882, 1893, 1905, 1914–15; Schenker 1906–35; Hindemith 1937–70). The disagreement arises because if tonality were "natural", it would have appeared in other cultures [eg China, South Asia, Persia etc], and in western music before 1590.[citation needed]



x = return to tonic near inevitable
ⓧ (circled x) = possible but not inevitable
circle = impossible
(Reti 1958,[page needed])


Tonality outside common-practice period[edit]



See also[edit]


  • Brown, Matthew. 2005. Explaining Tonality: Schenkerian Theory and Beyond. Eastman Studies in Music 27. Rochester: [n.p.]: University of Rochester Press. ISBN 158-0461-60-3.
  • Gustin, Molly. 1969. Tonality. Philosophical Library.[full citation needed] LCCN 68-18735.
  • Hermelink, Siegfried. 1960. Dispositiones modorum: die Tonarten in der Musik Palestrinas und seiner Zeitgenossen. Tutzing.
  • Kepler, Johannes. 1619. Harmonices mundi [(Latin: The Harmony of the World). Linz: Godofredo Tampechi.
  • Perle, George. 1978. Twelve-Tone Tonality. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-20142-6. (reprinted 1992)
  • Rameau, Jean-Phillipe. 1737. Génération harmonique, ou Traité de musique théorique et pratique. Paris: Prault fils.
  • Rameau, Jean-Phillipe. 1750. Démonstration du Principe de L'Harmonie, Servant de base à tout l'Art Musical théorique et pratique. Paris: Durand et Pissot.
  • Schoenberg, Arnold. 1922. Harmonielehre, third edition. Vienna: Universal-Edition, 1922.

Further reading[edit]


External links[edit]

Original courtesy of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonality — Please support Wikipedia.
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