“Our peasant music, naturally, is invariably tonal, if not always in the sense that the inflexible major and minor system is tonal.”

—  Béla Bartók

"The Folk Songs of Hungary" in Pro Musica VII (October 1928)
Context: Our peasant music, naturally, is invariably tonal, if not always in the sense that the inflexible major and minor system is tonal. (An "atonal" folk-music, in my opinion, is unthinkable.) Since we depend upon a tonal basis of this kind in our creative work, it is quite self-evident that our works are quite pronouncedly tonal in type. I must admit, however, that there was a time when I thought I was approaching a species of twelve-tone music. Yet even in works of that period the absolute tonal foundation is unmistakable.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update March 31, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Our peasant music, naturally, is invariably tonal, if not always in the sense that the inflexible major and minor syste…" by Béla Bartók?
Béla Bartók photo
Béla Bartók 3
Hungarian composer and pianist 1881–1945

Related quotes

“Prokofiev’s music is usually based on a firm sense of tonality. Whatever tonal uncertainty and ambiguity one experiences, mainly in developmental passages, they are mostly short-lived.”

Boris Berman (1948) Russian/American musician

Prokofiev’s piano sonatas : a guide for the listener and the performer (2008), Prokofiev: His Life and the Evolution of His Musical Language

“Music is the tonal analogue of emotive life.”

Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985) American philosopher

Feeling and Form, ch. 1, p. 27, Scribner (1953)

“The relation of tonic to dominant is the foundation of Western triadic tonality. The attempt of the early nineteenth century to substitute third or mediant relationships for the classical dominant amounted to a frontal attack on the principles of tonality, and it eventually contributed to the ruin of triadic tonality. This ruin was accomplished from within the system, however, as mediant relationships were essential to tonality as conceived in the eighteenth century.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 4 : Formal Interlude

Akira Ifukube photo

“I don't think that American audiences would accept the tonal character of my music.”

Akira Ifukube (1914–2006) Japanese composer

As quoted by David Milner, "Akira Ifukube Interview I" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/ifukub.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1992)

Alban Berg photo

“I think the origin of all this clamour for tonality is not so much the need to sense a relationship to the tonic, as a need for familiar chords: let us be frank and say "for the triad"; and I believe I have good reason to say that just so long as a certain kind of music contains enough such triads, it causes no offence, even if in other ways it most violently clashes with the sacred laws of tonality.”

Alban Berg (1885–1935) Austrian composer

Quoted in Reich, Willi (1971). Schoenberg: A Critical Biography, p. 34. Translated by Leo Black.

“The concept of 'tonality' signifies the unified relationship of chords to a central tonic and hence comprises two different assumptions: first, the existence of unifying factors, and second, the existence of, or at least the hypothetical ability to reconstruct, a tonal center.”

Ernst Kurth

Romantische Harmonik und ihre Krise in Wagners Tristan (1920), p. 273.

“The musical language which made the classical style possible is that of tonality, which was not a massive, immobile system but a living, gradually changing language from its beginning. It had reached a new and important turning point just before the style of Haydn and Mozart took shape.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Part I. Introduction. 1. The Musical Language of the Late Eighteenth Century
Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (Expanded edition, 1997)

M.J. Akbar photo

“The true test of a democracy is the justice that the minority gets in the system. The majority will always get its share whatever the system.”

M.J. Akbar (1951) journalist, author

Illustrated Weekly of India, 22/12/1990. Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (1991). Ayodhya and after: Issues before Hindu society.

“Tonality itself - with its process of instilling expectations and subsequently withholding promised fulfillment until climax - is the principal musical means during the period from 1600 to 1900 for arousing and channeling desire.”

Susan McClary (1946) American musicologist

McClary, Susan (1991). Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0816618984.

Albert Marquet photo

“It has happened that I have begun a canvas in a brilliant tonality, going on to finish it in a grey notation. (1898)”

Albert Marquet (1875–1947) French artist

As quoted by J. E. Müller, Le Fauvisme, Paris, Hazan, 1956, p. 92

Related topics