Tonality Since 1950

by Philip Rupprecht (Editor), Ullrich Scheideler (Editor), Felix Worner (Editor)

Tonality Since 1950 documents the debate surrounding one of the most basic technical and artistic resources of music in the later 20th century. The flourishing of tonality - a return to key, pitch center, and consonance - in recent decades has undermined received views of its disintegration or collapse ca. 1910, intensifying the discussion of music's acoustical-theoretical bases, and of its broader cultural and metaphysical meanings. While historians of 20th-century music have often marginalized tonal practices, the present volume offers a new emphasis on emergent historical continuities. Musicians as diverse as Hindemith, the Beatles, Reich, and Saariaho have approached tonality from many different as a figure of nostalgic longing, or as a universal law; as a quoted artefact of music's sedimented stylistic past, or as a timeless harmonic resource. Essays by 15 leading researchers cover a wide repertoire of concert and pop/rock music composed in Europe and America over the past half-century.

345 pages, Hardcover

Published March 16, 2017