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And it is, furthermore, a sociologically
interesting opinion, even if it is an aesthetically uninformed
opinion. That this student can be attending Columbia University,
a supposed elite university, and can be concentrating on music,
certainly says a lot about the lack of cultivation among even
the supposedly better educated in this society. I am sufficiently
postmodern not to want to impose my values on him, however.
What I would really like, but in this case could not achieve,
would be to help him form better opinions on his own. To become
not just informed but also cultivated--and to do that himself.
Tonality is not one system
but many. The tonality of, say, Dittersdorf is rather different
from the tonality of, say, the Beatles or of Poulenc. One reason
that tonality lacks a satisfactory cognitive explanation is
that there are very few universals of all tonal music. The so-called
"common practice period" is a myth. At no time, and in no way,
did tonal composers really employ common practices—although,
paradoxically, many atonal composers do.
There is a rather large gap between music theory and music cognition.
That gap is narrowest in the context of tonal music, but even
there we find theorists of tonality who know and understand
little about cognition beyond "I [think I!] know how that sounds
to me." And the cognitive psychologists who study music perception
are woefully naive about musical structure.
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