3 ms·
> There wasn't much left to discover. I'll bite. Let's take the most banal and fundamental structuring element of common practice harmony-- the root position
by jancsika 6y ago
> There wasn't much left to discover.
I'll bite.
Let's take the most banal and fundamental structuring element of common practice harmony-- the root position triad.
Are you absolutely certain I cannot find a 20th century composer doing something so innovative with root position triads that no composer before 1900 could even conceive of using them in such a way?
There are probably more examples than the one I'm thinking of, which is Nancarrow's Study No. 37 for player piano. The thing I love about that example is that it completely undercuts the serialist argument that tonal tropes create an inescapable harmonic push-and-pull that ends up structuring the music, regardless of the composer's will. The rigors of early twelve-tone music were designed to "liberate" the composer from this seeming inevitability.
And in Study No. 37 we almost have a kind of Alice in Wonderland response to that mentality. There are many root position triads. There is a tonal ending to the piece. There are little tonal segments of melody. We have all the ingredients necessary for a piece that ought to be chock full of evidence that the tonal building blocks of the common practice period put the composer in a kind of structural straight-jacket. Well, just listen to it. It ain't that.
So author-- don't be "that type" who repeats high-fallutin' historical myths because they happen to fit the pattern you're going for. Besides, even if that mentality were based in fact it is leads to absolutely insufferable behavior. Ghost of your futures past: "Ooh, I love that song by [The Beatles, Radiohead, Otis Redding, etc.]. Too bad it uses a system already completely exhausted a century earlier. Imagine what it would have sounded like if it hadn't been so harmonically regressive! Oh, I'm hearing it in my head right now and truly it is wonderful. Quick, give me your address so I can send you a million slips to donate to my concert series..."