The theory of the state of tonality by Mdivani – Kholopov and the problems of musical analysis

Abstract

In modern musical analysis, one of the important aspects concerns the description of the type of harmonic organization. Comparing music of different eras and styles, we operate with a series of concepts that are difficult to reduce into one system. We distinguish between tonal and atonal harmony, tonality and modality, harmony of various eras, some of which are united by the term “common practice harmony” and, finally, unitonic (unitonique), transitonic (transitonique), pluritonic (pluritonique), omnitonic (omnitonique) tonalities, according to F.-J. Fétis [Fétis 1844]. But it’s easy to see that these concepts raise many questions. In the 1980s, to solve these problems, Soviet researchers Tatyana Mdivani and her teacher Yuri Kholopov developed a new understanding of tonality and introduced their own series of concepts to characterize harmonic systems.