CITATION — REFERENCE ENTRY
Everyday Tonality II: Towards a Tonal Theory of What Most People Hear — Mass Media Scholars Press
- Key
- tagg2014-everyday-tonality-ii
- Authors
- Tagg, Philip
- Issued
- 2014
- Type
- book
- Publisher
- Mass Media Scholars Press
- Publisher place
- New York & Liverpool
Raw CSL JSON
{
"URL": "http://tagg.org/mmmsp/EverydayTonalityInfo.htm",
"ISBN": "978-0-9908068-0-6",
"note": "Consulted via the author's published sample chapters (Preface, ch. 7 Chords, ch. 11 One-chord changes).",
"type": "book",
"title": "Everyday Tonality II: Towards a Tonal Theory of What Most People Hear",
"author": [
{
"given": "Philip",
"family": "Tagg"
}
],
"issued": {
"date-parts": [
[
2014
]
]
},
"publisher": "Mass Media Scholars Press",
"publisher-place": "New York & Liverpool"
}
Claims
-
Tagg describes ♭VI–♭VII–i (or I) as the highly popular aeolian cadence, the aeolian-mode equivalent of the ionian (major-key) cadence formula IV–V–I.
"That's worth knowing because $VI?$VII?i (or I) constitutes the highly popular aeolian cadence, no matter which key you're in ... It's the aeolian equivalent of the ionian cadence formula IV?V?I"
-
Tagg argues that conventional music theory textbooks deal only with tonal elements of European classical music, and that their concepts of tonality are often inadequate and ethnocentric for the many musics that do not fit categories developed for the euroclassical tradition (c.1730–c.1910) and classical jazz. He gives the example of the La Bamba chord loop (as in La Bamba, Guantanamera, Wild Thing and Twist & Shout), which he finds unproductive to explain in terms of tonic, subdominant and dominant.
"Skimming through its pages I realised that, like equivalents in other languages, it dealt only with certain tonal elements of EUROCLASSICAL music and that it paid particular attention to conventional notions of harmony within that tradition. ... Explaining something as common and as ostensibly simple as the La Bamba chord loop (as in La Bamba, Guantanamera, Wild Thing, Pata Pata, Twist & Shout etc.) in terms of tonic, subdominant and dominant had for some time struck me as about as productive as using theories of combustion to explain electricity. ... Most importantly, the concepts of tonality circulating in Western academies of music, whatever their canonic repertoire, are still all too often inadequate, illogical and ethnocentric. ... (the euroclassical tradition from c.1730 to c.1910;)"
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