On The Argument for Tonality
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been preparing for an upcoming concert I’m performing in on the 16th. The work I’m premiering with pianist Scott Brazieal is a new duo for guitar and piano titled Roundabout and is of the post-minimalist idiom. One thing I noticed about this piece (and several other recent works of mine) is that my language has been gravitating towards certain pitch centers. While I love consonance, I also love dissonance. I feel that both are equally beautiful and have immense value in a composer’s tool box. Some would say that this would be a natural move for me to make, and that it’s only natural for someone to gravitate towards consonance since it is pleasant, and aesthetically pleasing whereas dissonance is unappealing, inaccessible, noisy and not what audiences want to hear.
Hmm..
I strive to make my work as access able as possible, and I strongly feel that any sound you can imagine can be incorporated provided you have the right context. This includes the most jarring and piercing dissonances in juxtaposition with simple triads and major or minor scales. One common argument I’ve heard for the reinstatement of tonality as a common practice is that the major triad is a reoccurring part of nature. The 2nd through 5th partials of the harmonic series spells out a major triad, and thus is the grounding for this argument. The problem with this argument is that it disregards the rest of the harmonic series and their amazingly beautiful dissonances that define the timbre of the pitch.
Dissonance and consonance are of equal merit and equal beauty.
The amount of dissonant intervals in the harmonic series in proportion to consonant ones are staggeringly high. In fact, I would go so far as to argue that the very dissonances that some are so opposed to are the very things that color their beloved triads. Beauty is born out of “ugly sounds”. A trumpet sounds like a trumpet because certain overtones in the harmonic series are more prevalent than others. The same can be said of any sound conceivable.
Consonance is born out of dissonance, and dissonance complements consonance.
