TONAL VS MODAL Harmonic Concepts for Composing

In is episode I talk about how postmodernism expresses itself in music and why it is bad.

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[michaelru]

This is an argument for tonality, not against postmodernism. 20th century atonal/modal music predate postmodernism by decades.

[siskokidd]

Perfect timing for me to hear this video. Not just the music, but the words. I don't understand half of it, but what I do understand, I get, which opens my brain for understanding more. Your speaking style is clear and direct. My brain zero's in when you talk. That's a gift!

[Lorca]

You should give more examples of what post modern music is. Post- modern music would be more than just the absence of tonality. I often see the avant garde described as post-modern. Is Stockhausen post modern? La Monte Young? Pierre Boulez ? Glenn Branca and John Cage?

Because if this is the case then I disagree. The rejection of some conventions is what has led to some of the most innovative composers of our times.

[ConvincingPeople]

What you're talking about isn't postmodernism, though, it's high modernism's long hangover. A number of the most philosophically "postmodern" composers I can think of are highly tonal—John Adams comes to mind as a perfect example—it's just that their approach to tonality tends to be very... unsentimental? It's a bit like Stravinsky's "objective" compositional period, where there's a lot of elegant tonal grammar but it's divorced from making any overt emotional statements, which is the sort of thing that gets your music called "chilly" and "weird" but not "atonal." Serialism and other non-tonal techniques, while at times incorporating postmodern musical ideas (interpolations of fragments of pop tunes, the use of non-instruments like radios and turntables), are a reflection of early twentieth century high modernist ideas about how art ought to reflect or divorce itself from the perceived ugliness of the real world in different ways, not the deconstructive manoeuvres of postmodern philosophy. There are certainly postmodern-minded atonal composers like, say, Brian Ferneyhough, but for as respected a teacher and composer as he is, it's not like he has legions of imitators. His music is too difficult for that. And certainly the roots of what we might call postmodernism in music can be found in atonal-leaning composers like John Cage, but people know him more for his esoteric "statement" pieces than for his serial compositions; to whit, as much credit can be given to the likes of György Ligeti and Morton Feldman, who aren't exactly your typical twelve-tone diehards either. Which circles back to the minimalists, and... you get my point. I think you're conflating two pretty different things to complain about a third, somewhat unrelated thing, which is the relative lack of harmonically sophisticated tonal composers in the modern academy.

[TyphonBaalHammon]

« There's still plenty of good music to be written in C major » - Arnold Schönberg

Yeah, you read that right, Schönberg, the inventor the 12-tone series, said that, and he lived by it too. He wrote tonal music until the end of his life, as well as atonal.
One thing that I believe is true is that the tonal system in the strict sense of functional harmony is no longer seen as the be-all end-all it once was in western Europe (and by extension in America). In this narrow sense "tonal music" is dead, not because it's no longer possible to write tonal music, but because the expectations of the listeners are no longer shaped only by it. We do not anymore feel strongly when we listen to music that there must always be a tension-resolution cycle following all the rules and leading us back to the tone where we started.

I'm not sure what the relationship to post-modernism is. Schönberg lived and died before the hey-days of post-modernism. Post-modernism is a term that never had a very clear meaning but it's associated with people who were prominent in the late 60s and the 70s, twenty years after Schönberg had died. And for that matter, Schönberg's heirs direct (Webern) or indirect (Boulez), do not belong to post-modernism. They pretty obviously belong to modernism, the artistic movement that was prominent in the 1930s and still in the 1950s...

I'm honestly not sure what music could qualify as "post-modern", maybe spectral stuff ? Stockhausen, perhaps ? In any case, rants about how "Why X music sucks" are never very convincing.

[leoamarino]

sorry but in terms of art movements atonality is a modernist trend, not a postmodernist one.

[fueradeljuego]

I absolutely adored your piece but I have no idea what you or any of the commenters here mean by "postmodernism." I've studied postmodernism at length in graduate school and in my scholarly career and what you people are referring to as "postmodern" is not that. "Atonal" music was a by-product of modernism----postmodernism would be something like a parodic or kitschy return to tonal music.

[TMTLive]

I don't understand how the title or comments relate to the video

[BillyMcBride]

Harold Bloom, the American literary critic and teacher at Yale, when talking about literature has said that there is no such thing as postmodernism, and that is the mistaken name for just a later modernism. But call it what you will, it still seems weird to go after newer music. Nietzsche said that a characteristic of new music is that it generally sounds so foriegn to our ears, that many of us reject the music before giving it a while to be appreciated.

[kcrich]

I'm no music professor. All I know is that the visuals were stunning and the music fit it

[carnivorousjazz]

Gorgeous piano piece, but what does it have anything to do with postmodernism? The video was more "atonality is bad" (which I don't agree with, ) and even then you spent very little on why it's bad and more just focused on the structure and composition of your own piece.
If you wanted to write a breakdown of a piece you're writing because you really like it, just make a video titled "How I use harmony in composition" or something like that and do the breakdown without the weird ranting about postmodernism. It makes someone who very clearly knows your shit look like you don't and you just want to show off. Instead of an informative video it leaves more the impression of "This thing is bad because I say so! Look, I'm good!"

[EricHarlandFan]

Two composers that explored modes, right off the top of my head, were Satie and Debussy. I think that your piano piece that you played was fine, but I can listen to Debussy over and over for the rest of my life and never get sick of it.

[lazpete]

Amazing piece of music, Rick. Thx for keeping up!

[johnponder]

Without having much of a clue about what is happening on a music theory level, I can say that I really like this. It sounds good to me.

[zobazoba]

That is some beautiful music! Very impressed

[casparhawksley]

When you talk about music that lacks tonality, I would argue it's more in reference to modernism that postmodernism. In a musical sense, postmodernism was partly a response to modernism (i.e serialsm). As part of this response, a lot of postmodern music made use of harmony and tonality, trying to re-establish a connection to the musical lineage that came before modernism. In this sense, many film composers, such as the ones you discussed, can be seen as postmodern, as they often reference back to older styles, why also incorporating new concepts. This fusion of various facets of musical history is really what is at the heart of postmodernism. (All of this is according to the uni course I took on the subject)
Edit: tl;dr: you are talking about modernism, not postmodernism.

[stephenbedford]

I'm blown away by the piano piece... had no idea you could play. Amazing.

[beyondz]

The piano piece is a beautiful composition

[teelurizzo]

A really great piano piece, Rick! Thanks for sharing!

[lolroflmaoization]

This is wrong, atonal music predates postmodernism by many decades, atonal music is simply an exploration of the outer limits of music beyond tonality, I don't see the problem with people both exploring tonality and atonality and some composers have benefitted from learning and experimenting in atlonal music in a way that informed their tonal compositions greatly and expanded their horizons.