tonality and ambiguity

Tonality is an interesting thing. How do you tell whether something is in a certain key? In most common pop and folk songs, and quite a few classical songs, it's easy. There's usually a giveaway. The melody hammers down on the tonic note ("She'll be COMIN' ROUND THE mountain when she COMES"), or the chords give you a clue.

Two big clues are the leading tone and the dominant seventh. The seventh of the dominant chord (the V chord) is on the fourth degree of the tonic scale (do the math) and it wants to go down to the third. In "Somewhere" from West Side Story, when we hear "theeeere's A PLACE for us," the word "A" strains down toward the word "PLACE," the fourth straining toward the third.

Take a look at this phrase. In the left hand, the E goes up to an F from the first to the second measure, and then down to an E from the third to the fourth. Meanwhile, the C goes to a leading-tone B and back in those same measures.

Really, a C-major chord and a G-major chord can easily fit into either of two keys: G-major and C-major. But that F and that B fix us unambiguously in the key of C-major. The F in the melody in measures 1 and 2 also help.

Take a look at this new phrase, just slightly tweaked. Now the Fs are F-sharps, and go up to Gs, and the Cs resolve to Bs. Now we're fixed unambiguously in G-major, with just a few notes changed. Those few clues change everything.

What if we erased those clues? Try taking away the fourth-resolving-to-third, and hold back on any leading-tone until the very very very end, and you have a fairly confusing phrase.

Just play the first measure. Or just the first and second: what on earth key are you in? Either the melody or the accompaniment should give you some clue.

The reason I got into this was that I heard a toy of Greta's playing the third phrase there. Even the rhythm was confusing: because of the way it was stressed, it sounded like the pickup note (that first G in the melody going into the first measure) was the downbeat, like "The Army Goes Rolling Along." The whole thing was and is disorienting. Come on, folks!

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