A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Tonality

TONALITY is the element of key, which in modern music is of the very greatest importance. Upon the clearness of its definition the existence of instrumental music in harmonic forms of the Sonata order depends. It is defined by the consistent maintenance for appreciable periods of harmonies, or passages of melody, which are characteristic of individual keys. Unless the tonality is made intelligible, a work which has no words becomes obscure. Thus in the binary or duplex form of movement the earlier portion must have the tonality of the principal key well defined; in the portion which follows and supplies the contrast of a new and complementary key, the tonality of that key, whether dominant or mediant or other relative, must be equally clear. In the development portion of the movement various keys succeed each other more freely, but it is still important that each change shall be tonally comprehensible, and that chords belonging to distinct keys shall not be so recklessly mixed up together as to be undecipherable by any process of analysis—while in the latter portion of the movement the principal key again requires to be clearly insisted on, especially at the conclusion, in such a way as to give the clearest and most unmistakeable impression of the tonality; and this is commonly done at most important points by the use of the simplest and clearest successions of harmony. Chords which are derived from such roots as dominant, subdominant, and tonic, define the tonality most obviously and certainly; and popular dance-tunes, of all times, have been generally based upon successions of such harmonies. In works which are developed upon a larger scale a much greater variety of chords is used, and even chords belonging to closely related keys are commonly interlaced without producing obscurity, or weakening the structural outlines of the work; but if chords are closely mixed up together without system, whose roots are only referable to keys which are remote from one another, the result is to make the abstract form of the passage unintelligible. In dramatic music, or such music as depends for its coherence upon words, the laws which apply to pure instrumental music are frequently violated without ill effects, inasmuch as the form of art then depends upon different conditions, and the text may often successfully supply the solution for a passage which in pure instrumental music would be unintelligible.

[ C. H. H. P. ]