1963/01/01 by Arthur Berger · 122 citations
Computer Science · Arts and Humanities · Neuroscience · #Music Technology and Sound Studies #Musicology and Musical Analysis #Neuroscience and Music Perception #Art
paper · doi:10.2307/832252
published in Perspectives of New Music 2(1), 11 (Perspectives of New Music)
openalex publication_date 1963/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
ANYONE WHO undertakes an investigation of the essential relationships of tones in the works of Stravinsky may find himself somewhat at a disadvantage as a result of the fact that no significant body of theoretical writing has emerged to deal with the nature of twentieth-century music that is centric (i.e. organized in terms of tone center) but not tonally functional.1 There are, to be sure, a number of labels in circulation for referring to this music: pantonality, pandiatonicism, antitonality, modality, tonicality-even atonality has been stretched to embrace it. But their function is largely identification, and where any one of them presumes to represent a theory, this is more likely to be descriptive of surface detail than in the nature of an interpretation of internal relations or structural significance. Moreover, instead of searching for the differentia of the music they designate by ascertaining, for example, its own unifying principles, the tendency has been to rely rather too heavily on the established rules of formation.