Word: tonal
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...evening's novelty was Tucker's own Suite for Violin and Piano (1956). This four-movement work is a good deal more serious in character than most suites; it even dares to end with a slow movement. Though modern in style, it is still quite tonal, and its varied timbres are always fascinating...
...musical teachings of the past." Thompson is no conservative, however. He says quite firmly that, "Modern music and, specifically, atonal composition seems to me to be a logical development from the experimentation of Wagner and Strauss. After all there are many passages in Wagner where there is extended tonal ambiguity. From this, it is just a small step before one asks, as Schoenberg did, 'Why not do away with the concept of a key altogether...
Despite the advance beyond tonality in the early years of this century, the power of this great organizing force has been strong enough to dominate most of the production of Bartok, Stravinsky, and Hindemith. It dominates a good deal of the music being written today. The atonalists have not found it easy to resist. How can a piece of music be held together without the familiar tonal relationships? Some composers (Elliott Carter, for example) have attempted highly individual and cerebral ways of unifying a large work. Others have seen a revivifying solution in the twelve-tone system, from which...
...basis of this system is the row--the twelve tones of the tempered scale set in a particular order by the composer. Once he picks a row, he can manipulate it in countless ways and at the same time avoid any suggestion of tonality, since each note is equal, i.e. none of them is emphasized as tonality emphasizes its main tone, its resting point. A substantial part of the system's appeal to composers lies in its highly organized nature: the destruction of the complex system of tonal relations seems to demand another complicated set of rules. Schoenberg, the twelvetone...
Last May. after two years of practice and water boiling, Harpsichordist Pleasants made her debut in Essen. Response was staggering. "She opened the door to the world of Johann Sebastian Bach," said one critic. Others acclaimed her "sovereign manipulation of tonal line," the subtle clarity of her rock-solid rhythm, taste and imagination. Wrote one fan: "It seems that the dry, tinkling sounds emanating from this delicate box satisfy an inherent longing for an orderly perfection which has long been lost in our vulgar present day." Last week, as Germany's "Hausfrau at the Harpsichord" continued her triumphant tour...