New MusiBlog - The question of polytonality

Location: Blogs New MusiBlog Music Theory
Posted by: brian	11/7/2006 12:56 PM
Through my reading of Anthony Pople's article "Messiaen's Musical Language: An Introduction," I was lead to another article by Ann McNamee entitled "Bitonality, Mode and Interval in the Music of Karol Szymanowski." This article describes the idea of polytonality setting up her main discussion about Szymanowski's Mazurka Op. 50, no. 3. In the introduction McNamee describes two viewpoint regarding polytonality. I wanted to present these viewpoints here. The discussion of Szymanowski's music will be presented in a future post. Darius Milhaud asserts that the origin of polytonality is essentially diatonic, that is, juxtaposed melodic lines must act as tonally independent counterpoint. This is a straight-forward description of how polytonality acts. Diatonicism is important so that the multiple tonalities can be easily identified, both in written form and aurally. Paul Hindemith is well-know for polytonality in his music. He expresses a contradictory point of view regarding polytonality. "The game of letting two or more tonalities run along side-by-side and so achieving new harmonic effects, is to be sure, very entertaining for the composer, but the listener cannot follow the separate tonalities for he relates every simultaneous combination of sounds to a root -- and thus we see the futility of the game...polytonality is not a practical principle of composition." To me the striking part of this quotation is not the contradictory point of view. Rather it is the claim that listeners cannot follow separate tonalities and that they relate simultaneous sounds to a root. To an small extent this is true; however, many people do not listen contemporary music in such a way. Listeners tend to step back and expericence the sound worlds created by the composer, whether it is polytonal or monotonal. If someone were to approach listening to Xenakis' music by trying to hear roots, he/she would miss the point. For me Hindemith's music is much the same way. the overall effect is more important than listening for the tonal center of the "simultaneous comination of sounds."

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