Tone (music)

“ The striking fact of modern music is the principle of tonality. Tonality is said to be present in a piece of music when every element in it is referred to, gets its significance from its relation to, a fundamental tone, the tonic. The tonic is the beginning and lowest note in the scale in question, and all notes and chords are understood according to their place in that scale. But the conception of the scale of course does not cover the ground, it merely furnishes the point of departure,— the essential is in the reference of every element to the fundamental tone. ”

“ As an impurity of intonation is almost always an indication of throat tension, vocal teachers should be keenly sensitive to this type of faulty tone.
Tone quality is a subject of surpassing interest to the musician. Whatever may be thought the true purpose of music, there can be no question as to one demand made on each individual instrument,—it must produce tones of sensuous beauty. ”

“ CONTENTS OF THE PHRASE.—The question may arise, what is it that makes a phrase,—the rhythm, harmony, or melody? Strictly speaking, all three; for music subsists in the ceaseless co-operation of these three primary elements of composition, and no phrase is wholly complete without the evidence of each and all. Generalizing the definitions already given, the function of each of these primary elements may be thus described: The element of harmony regulates the choice of the tones that are to sound together; the upright shafts of tone (chords) which determine the body, or framework, of the music. ”

“ Contrasts of timbre and tone are at least as various as contrasts of colour: the complexity of musical rhythm is far beyond anything that language can achieve; while, in the devices of harmony, and still more of polyphony and counterpoint, the composer occupies a position which is virtually unique in human experience. ”

“ In other words, when tone, as it does in the art of music, or for that matter, colour as in that of painting, no longer essentially recovers and expresses the entire content, in that case the musical treatment of the composition under its aspects of time, no less than those of harmony and melody, drops away; we have left us merely the generalized configuration of the time-measure of syllables and words, to which we may add rhythm, euphony, and the like. ”

“ The second cause for the concreteness of the musical experience I take to be certain emotions and feelings which are aroused by association, not with the rhythmic elements of music alone, but with the tone-color, intensity, and melody also. There is a human quality, a poignancy and intimacy, about much music, which can be understood only through its analogy with the sounds of the human voice. ”

“ This work stuns by its glorious magnificence of tonal texture; the suggestion, in the opening measures, of the rising sun is a mighty example of the overwhelming power of tone colour. The upward sweep of the music to the highest regions of light has much of splendour about it; and yet I remember once hearing in London, sung in the street at night, a song that seemed to me to contain a truer germ of music.
For want of a better word I will call it ideal suggestion. It has to do with actual musical speech, and is difficult to define. The possession of it makes a man a poet. ”

“ What flexibility of tone Coloured in turn with pathos and cheerfulness but animated from beginning to end with a movement and rhythm that are unique, smooth, facile, lively and “tuney,” the music reflects every aspect of the subject by which it is inspired, the passion of an old man in love—the pathetic and touching aspect, the laughter-provoking and extravagant aspect. ”

“ It is as impossible to produce the best effect from one tone or colour, as to make a melody upon one note of the harmonic scale; it is skilful variation of tone, the gradation or even judicious opposition of tint which gives exquisite satisfaction to the eye. In music, sequence produces this effect upon the ear, and in colour, juxtaposition and gradation upon the eye. Notes follow notes in melody as shade follows shade in colour. ”

“ Their individual characteristics afforded him continually new suggestions in regard to tone-coloring, and he rose often to audacity, for his time, in his harmonic devices. Grace and spirit, originality of invention, joyous abandon, a fancy controlled by a studious mind, a profusion of quaint humor and a proper division of light and shade, combine to give the dominant note to his music. ”

“ It is essentially a modern element in music, and in our delight in this marvellous and potent aid to expression we have carried it to a point of development at which it threatens to dethrone what has hitherto been our musical speech, melody, in favour of what corresponds to the shadow languages of speech, namely, gesture and facial expression. Just as these shadow languages of speech may distort or even absolutely reverse the meaning of the spoken word, so can tone colour and harmony change the meaning of a musical phrase. ”

“ Like colors, sounds may be beautiful in themselves, quite apart from music. A single sound in nature or art is capable of appearing in endless variety in terms of pitch, dynamic value, duration, tone quality, and noise. It may be an object of beauty in itself in thousands of ways quite apart from its utility in music or musical perception. We find the tonal world in which we live full of beautiful and useful sounds which we love because we are capable of intellectual and emotional response to their beneficent influence. They play a large role in our feelings of attraction and adjustment. ”

“ In speech this intensity is called accent or stress.
The third characteristic, variously called quality, timbre, tone-quality, tone-color, is that which distinguishes sounds of the same loudness and pitch produced by different instruments or voices. It is the result of the combination of the partial tones of a sound, that is, of the fundamental and its overtones. In music, tone-quality is of the utmost importance, but as an element of speech rhythm it is practically non-existent, and may be wholly neglected, though it plays, of course, a prominent part in the oral reading of different persons. ”

“ Every experienced music lover has his own mental standard of tonal perfection. The trained ear knows how a perfect musical tone should sound, independent of the precise quality of the tone. The tone quality is determined, of course, by the instrument on which it is sounded. ”

“ To hear and enjoy music seems sufficient to many persons, and an investigation as to the causes of this enjoyment seems to them superfluous. And yet, unless the public comes into closer touch with the tone poet than the objective state which accepts with the ears what is intended for the spirit, which hears the sounds and is deaf to their import, unless the public can separate the physical pleasure of music from its ideal significance, our art, in my opinion, cannot stand on a sound basis. ”

“ All the lovely tone arrangements that nature presents in these more unusual aspects are a new study, and offer 202unlimited new material to the artist. Many artists are content to use this simply for itself, the beauty of a rare tone effect being sufficient with the simplest accessories to make a picture. But in figure composition, what new and wonderful things can be imagined in which some rare aspect of nature's tone-music is combined with a fine figure design. ”

“ The second material which enlists our attention is no longer the physical quality asserted in the sound, but the essential definition of the tone itself, and its relation to other tones. This objective relation, whereby musical tone in the first instance, not merely in its essential and emphatically defined singularity, but also in its fundamental relation to simultaneously persistent tones, expatiates, constitutes the actual harmonious element of music, and is based, regarded under its own original physical conditions, upon quantitative differences and numerical proportions. ”

“ And on account of this the realm of tone, inasmuch as it cannot serve merely as a symbol, is by virtue of this emancipated function of its life [406] able to attain to a mode of configuration, which makes the form that is its peculiar possession, that is to say, the modes of tone as artistically developed, its fundamental aim and object. In recent times especially, the art of music, by its wresting itself from all content that is independently lucid, has withdrawn into the depths of its own medium. ”

“ For music, however, the configuration of musical tone as such is the essential end. For although the soul in the course and movement of melody and its harmonic relations presents what is ideal in objects, or its own ideal content, to the emotional life; yet the ideality thus presented is not pure ideality, but the human soul interwoven in the closest way with the musical tone as its expression, and the configuration of such musical expression which confers on music its true character. ”

“ There seems little reason to doubt that the old Italian masters sacrificed many things, clarity of diction included, to beauty of tone. This they placed above everything. True, beauty of tone is the first essential of artistic singing, but it is not the only essential. If song is speech vitalized by music, then speech, the words to which music is set, has some claim to consideration. In fact, the singer's diction should convey the import of the spoken word with the added emotional eloquence of music. ”

“ A piece of music must express a human desire, a belief, or an emotion, otherwise it is but empty sound.
These three attributes—symmetry, [197] color, and sentiment—are at the command of all talented musicians, but the all-pervading individuality that so adjusts form, so arranges color, and gives such adequate expression to each shade of feeling as to create natural but unique tone pictures, is possessed by few composers of any given generation. ”

“ Tone-color, which is to ordinary speech what melody is to music—those varied effects of intonation, inflection, and modulation—is to be sought, not as a result from an isolated study of technique, but from attention to those elements in association with the complete realization of the life of the story. ”

“ The number of qualities in use in music—twelve in our scale of equal temperament—is, of course, not all there are in the world of tones; they are a human and arbitrary selection, governed by technical and historical motives, into which we shall not enter. Peoples with a different culture have made a different selection. But we are not concerned with the music of angels or of orientals, but with our own. With these twelve, with their possible variations in pitch, loudness, and tone-color, the musician has a rich and adequate material. ”

“ We know that primitive man, like the animal, [52] is susceptible to tone, sequences of tone, colour of tone, and rhythm; and that, from purely physiological causes, a number of his feelings tend to express themselves in vocal sounds. Now these are all the elements we require in order to construct modern music. The composer feels strongly, and is impelled to find an outlet for his emotions in tone. ”

“ A perfect vocal tone sounds as though it floats on the breath. The correct singer’s throat seems to the hearer to be loose and open and the tone seems to be lodged in the front of the mouth. When the attention of vocal teachers began to be turned to the mechanical operations of tone production they might naturally have been led to observe first those salient features of tone which seem to point to a definite vocal action. ”

“ We speak of a fine, musical, or pleasing sound, but never thus of a noise. In music, tone may denote either a musical sound or the interval between two such sounds, but in the most careful usage the latter is now distinguished as the "interval," leaving tone to stand only for the sound. Note in music strictly denotes the character representing a sound, but in loose popular usage it denotes the sound also, and becomes practically equivalent to tone. Aside from its musical use, tone is chiefly applied to that quality of the human voice by which feeling is expressed ”

“ Critics have generally ascribed to this composition the honor of inaugurating a new and important department in the realm of tonal creation—namely, that of descriptive or program music; that is to say, music which attempts to embody in tone something more than mere ideal beauty of metrical form and rhythmic symmetry, and to express something more than vague emotional states, too intangible for utterance in words; music which conveys not only sensuous pleasure and indefinite moods, but a distinct, realistic suggestion ”

“ Tonality scales give rise to a feeling of alternate periods of contraction and relaxation—an active tone (or chord) followed by a passive one, but no such effect is possible in the whole-step scale, and it seems suitable therefore only for that class of music whose outlines are purposely intended to be vague and indefinite—the impressionistic style of music writing. ”

“ It is a difficult matter to define tone quality in words; we must encroach upon the domain of sight, feeling, and even taste. Though borrowed from these senses, I have no doubt as to the appropriateness of my comparisons, but, as a general rule definitions drawn from other sources are too elementary to be applied to music. ”