The Rational and Social Foundations of Music

Abstract

Our musical sensitivity also is dominated by the interpretation of the tones according to their harmonic provenience. We feel, even “hear,” in a different fashion the tones which can be identified enharmonically on the instruments according to their chordal significance. Even the most modern developments of music, which are practically moving in many ways toward a destruction of tonality, show this influence. These modern movements which are at least in part the products of the characteristic, intellectualized romantic turn of our search for the effects of the “interesting,” cannot get rid of some residual relations to these fundaments, even if in the form of developing contrasts to them.