Editing Tonality (section)

{{Short description|Harmonic structure with a central pitch}}
{{About|the musical system|linguistic feature|tone (linguistics)|tone colour|timbre|use of this term in photography|tonal range}}
{{Use shortened footnotes|date=March 2021}}
{{Image frame|content=<score sound="1">
\new PianoStaff <<
  { \omit Score.TimeSignature }
  \new Staff \fixed c' { << { c'2 b c'1 } \\ { f2 d e1 } >> \bar "|." }
  \new Staff { \clef bass << { a2 g g1 } \\ { f,2 g, c1 } >> }
>>
</score>|width=300|align=right|caption=[[Perfect authentic cadence]] (IV–V–I [[chord progression]], in which we see the chords [[F major]], [[G major]], and then [[C major]], in four-part harmony) in C major.<br />"Tonal music is built around these tonic and dominant arrival points [cadences], and they form one of the fundamental building blocks of musical structure".{{sfnp|Benjamin|Horvit|Nelson|2008|p=63}}}}

'''Tonality''' is the arrangement of [[pitch (music)|pitches]] and / or [[chord (music)|chords]] of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived ''relations'', ''stabilities'', ''attractions'', and ''directionality''. 

In this hierarchy, the single pitch or the [[root (music)|root]] of a [[triad (music)|triad]] with the greatest ''stability'' in a melody or in its harmony is called the [[tonic (music)|''tonic'']]. In this context "stability" approximately means that a pitch occurs frequently in a melody – and usually is the final note – or that the pitch often appears in the harmony, even when it is not the pitch used in the melody.

The ''root'' of the tonic triad forms the name given to the [[key (music)|key]], so in the key of [[C major|C&nbsp;major]] the note&nbsp;C can be both the tonic of the [[scale (music)|scale]] and the root of the tonic triad. However, the tonic can be a different [[Musical tone|tone]] in the same scale, and then the work is said to be in one of the [[mode (music)|''modes'']] of that scale.{{sfnp|Kosta|2013|pp=454–455}} 

Simple [[folk music]] songs, as well as orchestral pieces, often start and end with the tonic note. The most common use of the term "tonality"
: "is to designate the arrangement of musical phenomena around a referential tonic in [[Classical music|European music]] from about 1600 to about 1910".{{sfnp|Hyer|2001a}}

[[Contemporary classical music]] from 1910 to the 2000s may seek to avoid any sort of tonality — but [[harmony]] in almost all Western [[popular music]] remains tonal.{{Vague|date=April 2016|reason=There are several; different senses of 'tonality' defined in this article (see the 'vague' flag on the Tagg quotation in the next paragraph, and the article's caution about context where the quotation is repeated in the body.}} Harmony in [[jazz music|jazz]] includes many but not all tonal characteristics of the European [[common practice period]], usually known as "[[classical music]]".

: "All harmonic idioms in popular music are tonal, and none is without [[diatonic function|function]]."{{sfnp|Tagg|2003|p=534}}{{Vague|date=March 2015|reason=There are eight senses of 'tonality' specified in the body of the article, all of which (including the modal practice of pre-modern church music and twelve-tone technique) could potentially fulfill this description. To which of these does Tagg refer?}}

Tonality is an organized system of tones (e.g., the tones of a [[Major scale|major]] or [[minor scale]]) in which one tone (the tonic) becomes the central point for the remaining tones. The other tones in a tonal piece are all defined in terms of their relationship to the tonic. In tonality, the tonic (tonal center) is the tone of complete relaxation and stability, the target toward which other tones lead.{{sfnp|Benward & Saker|2003|p=36}} The [[cadence (music)|cadence]] (a rest point) in which the [[dominant chord]] or [[dominant seventh]] chord resolves to the tonic chord plays an important role in establishing the tonality of a piece.
: "Tonal music is music that is ''unified'' and ''dimensional''. Music is 'unified' if it is exhaustively referable to a pre-compositional system generated by a single constructive principle derived from a basic scale-type; it is 'dimensional' if it can nonetheless be distinguished from that pre-compositional ordering".{{sfnp|Pitt|1995|p=299}}

The term ''tonalité'' originated with [[Alexandre-Étienne Choron]]{{sfnp|Choron|1810}} and was borrowed by [[François-Joseph Fétis]] in 1840.<ref>{{harvp|Simms|1975|p=119}}; {{harvp|Judd|1998a|p=5}}; {{harvp|Hyer|2001a}}; {{harvp|Brown|2005|p={{mvar|xiii}} }}.</ref> According to [[Carl Dahlhaus]], however, the term ''tonalité'' was only coined by [[Castil-Blaze]] in 1821.<ref>{{harvp|Dahlhaus|1967|p=960}}; {{harvp|Dahlhaus|1980|p=51}}.</ref> Although Fétis used it as a general term for a system of musical organization and spoke of ''types de tonalités'' rather than a single system, today the term is most often used to refer to [[Major and minor|major–minor]] tonality, the system of musical organization of the common practice period. Major-minor tonality is also called ''harmonic tonality'' (in the title of Carl Dahlhaus,{{sfnp|Dahlhaus|1990}} translating the German ''harmonische Tonalität''), ''diatonic tonality'', ''common practice tonality'', ''functional tonality'', or just ''tonality''.