During the 20th century the tonal music use the tonality without using the function. It means that we have a free tonal style, that style don’t follow a cadential structure, but it is not random, it’s based on the voice leading. During this text we will show examples of this free tonal style with choral pieces by Bartok and Hindemith.
Four of the most commons characteristics of this style are:
Use of modes: Lydian –> Bartok –#4, popular in the 20th Century, but it was a problem before.
Phrygian –> Hindemith
Free use of dissonances –>every chord built up becomes possible, like tertian chords, quartile, quintal, scandal…
–> it’s difficult to talk about chords-non chord tones
–> the chords do not necessary follow in a functional way (I-IV-V-I)
Parallel movement, we can see parallel 5th in Hindemith La Biche, by Hindemith.
Not pivot chord, it changes and that’s all.
We are going to start analyzing two pieces by Paul Hindemith, La Biche and Puisque tout passe.
La biche: in this short piece we can see lot of chords with add/sus 4, 2, 9; clusters, Quintal, Quartal, Secundal… we also have a part where the Phrygian mode is used. We can see a typical Rock chord or power chord C#5, it’s a chord without the 3rd. The pitch center shift in this kind of music and the last chord is not stable.
Puisque tout passe: in this piece we also have the same type of chords with add or sum 4, 2, 9… One thing that is clear is the use of parallelism, in bar 6 we can see 5th’s, and in bar 7 and 16 lots of parallel 6th’s. In bar 8 we have a Plagal cadence.
Tranzlied aus Medzibrod: this piece by Béla Bartók starts in Bb Lydian, and we worked a lot on singing each part and try to find and listen the changes of color and the special chords, like sus 4, 7th, 9th… We also can see two chromatic progression from bar 13 to 17, and 29 to 32.
Ovidi Martí Garasa 