Tonal Implications of Harmonic and Melodic Tn-Types

Music composed of

tones

(in the psychoacoustical sense of

sounds that have pitch

) can never be completely atonal (

Reti 1958

). Consider any quasi-random selection of tones from the chromatic scale, played either simultaneously or successively. Most such sets generate associations with musically familiar pitch-time patterns and corresponding tonal stability relationships (

Auhagen 1994

). A pattern of pitch can imply a tonal centre simply because it reminds us of a tonal passage: it has

tonal implications

that depend on the intervals among the pitch classes (pcs) in the set.

1

The only clear exceptions to this rule are trivial: the null set (cardinality = 0)

2

and the entire chromatic aggregate (cardinality = 12). Since every interval, sonority and melodic fragment has tonal implications, even the so-called “atonal” music of composers such as Ferneyhough, Ligeti and Nono is full of fleeting tonal references: at any given moment during a performance, some pitches are more likely than other pitches to function as psychological points of reference. In the following, I will use the terms “tonal” and “atonal” in this broad, psychological sense.