Tonality Since 1950

This volume documents the debate surrounding one of the most basic technical and artistic resources of music in the later 20th century. The flourishing of tonality―a return to key, pitch center, and consonance―in recent decades has undermined received views of its disintegration or collapse ca. 1910, intensifying the discussion of music's acoustical-theoretical bases, and of its broader cultural and metaphysical meanings.

While historians of 20th century music have often marginalized tonal practices, the present volume offers a new emphasis on emergent historical continuities. Musicians as diverse as Hindemith, the Beatles, Reich, and Saariaho have approached tonality from many different angles: as a figure of nostalgic longing, or as a universal law; as a quoted artefact of music's sedimented stylistic past, or as a timeless harmonic resource.