Harmony
Functional Harmony: Tonic, Predominant, Dominant
Tonic, predominant and dominant describe what a chord does to a phrase rather than what it is. This is how the three harmonic jobs divide the work.
Tonality
A system in which pitches are organised around a tonic and a key, so that some notes and chords sound more stable than others.
Also called: tonal system, tonal music
Tonality is the organisation of pitches around a tonic, with a hierarchy of stability in which some notes and chords feel at rest and others feel as if they need to move. Common-practice tonal music, roughly from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, is built on major and minor keys, with cadences that establish the tonic. Tonality can describe a single piece or a whole style. A key is a specific choice of tonic and scale within this system, and the two terms are close. Atonal music, by contrast, does not organise pitches around a single tonic.
Related terms
- AtonalityMusic that does not organise its pitches around a tonic or key, so no note or chord has a home or a pull toward one.
- KeyThe tonic and scale that a passage centres on, against which its notes and chords are heard.
- TonicThe first degree of a scale, the note that a key is named for and that tonal music treats as its home and point of rest.
- DominantThe fifth degree of the scale, a perfect fifth above the tonic, which pulls strongly back toward the tonic.
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Music History
The Rise of Functional Tonality: From Modes to Keys
Around 1600 the bass became the foundation of harmony and the modal system narrowed to two keys. What changed in the documents, and what the change cost.