The Establishment of Tonality

Bass lines and dominant-to-tonic cadences turned modal webs into major-minor keys centred on a tonic.

Related

RenaissanceBaroqueTonalityKey

Time and place

From the late sixteenth century to the early eighteenth, in Florence, Mantua, Rome and Paris. Monteverdi wrote opera in Mantua, Corelli wrote concertos in Rome, and Rameau turned harmonic practice into theory in Paris.

What happened

Basso continuo placed chord progressions on a bass line, and composers began to organise harmony by the motion of that bass; triads, dominant-to-tonic cadences and key signatures gradually settled. Around 1700, major and minor keys and the cycle of twelve keys became everyday language. In 1722 Rameau's Traité de l'harmonie wrote the practice into a system. Tonality was no longer a by-product of voice-leading but a frame that could be planned in advance.

What changed

Harmony became an architecture rather than a residue of horizontal voices. Modulation, sonata form and the returns of a concerto all depend on the pull between tonic and dominant; composers began to shape whole works through key plans, and notation used key signatures instead of writing every sharp. For the next two centuries, tonality was the basic grammar of Western music.

Listen to the turn

Begin with Monteverdi's Lamento d'Arianna, where a falling bass turns grief into harmony. Then hear Corelli's Op. 6 concerto, whose sequences push the key away and pull it back. Finally Bach's A-flat major fugue from Book II of the Well-Tempered Clavier, its subject unfolding inside the key with clear points of departure. The three pieces let you hear bass, cadence and key plan in turn.

Related

This turn runs from Renaissance into Baroque; see Tonality and Key.

Sources

• Grove Music Online, entry "Tonality" — history and terminology checked, not quoted
• Thomas Christensen, Rameau and Musical Thought in the Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press) — theory context checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.