tonality
/tə(ʊ)ˈnalɪti
/noun (plural tonalities) [mass noun]
1The character of a piece of music as determined by the key in which it is played or the relations between the notes of a scale or key: the sonata is noteworthy for its extensive variations of mood and tonality...
- In music, melody and tonality became old-fashioned, and the twelve tone row and atonality reigned supreme in ‘serious’ composition.
- After all, you have tonality in modal music; you have tonality in folk music that has nothing to do with the triadic system.
- A similar sensitivity to tonality permeates his music today.
1.1 [count noun] The harmonic effect of being in a particular key: the first bar would seem set to create a tonality of C major...
- The Adagio section has some lush, fluorescent sounds, in which Schoenberg flirts with major tonalities and then destroys them.
- While some tonalities require the use of black keys, no key signatures are employed.
- At the very end of the piece, in a very contemporary strategy, the perfect fourth yields to a tritone, C-#, thereby obscuring an unambiguous closure in an enriched tonality of D major.
1.2The use of conventional keys and harmony as the basis of musical composition: these pieces are more dissonant than my earlier works, yet I did not give up tonality...
- Bartok was a radical, even in the early piano music he was experimenting with conventional harmonies and tonality.
- This 35-minute symphony in one movement could hardly be more serious, and it finds the composer embracing tonality and convention in a manner that would have been unthinkable to him twenty years earlier.
- This is one of those few works in which Rodrigo chose to set aside conventional tonality; the results are not difficult for the average listener to enjoy, however.
2The colour scheme or range of tones used in a picture: the five canvases are predominantly blue in tonality [count noun]: she incorporates brilliant colours with enormously varied tonalities...
- Its semi-finished state and near monochrome, cold blue tonality indicate that it is a surviving design for the relief.
- On the other hand, if large amounts of well-preserved authentic paint are obscured, it is usually worthwhile revealing them and regaining the tonality of the original colours.
- The larger canvases in the series ‘The Sky is Crying’ are predominantly dark in tonality.
