FRANK MORANA
AmerOrganist 35/6

When people write diatonic music with conviction today, it has nothing to do with equal or unequal temperament, but a lot to do with the mindset of the institutions they serve. This is particularly so in data-oriented, computer-based music that is commercially designed and produced for popular consumption, and this method of design and production relies on equal temperament even more than serialism does. To say that “nowhere on the globe, save for Western Europe and its satellites, is the octave divided into twelve equal parts,” is to ignore the pop music scene and the homogeneous pentatonicism that already pervades modern culture.

In pentatonicism, there is no potential for either chromaticism or modulation, and the realization of these potentials in European diatonic music was a phenomenon without parallel. It is irresponsible, in the absence of any proof other than his own “coincidental” theoretical findings, for Walker to contend that diatonicism and pentatonicism stand historically in a parent-offspring relationship.

It is true that, in any random cluster of tones, the ear will always seek tonality, but the success of the ear depends upon acculturation: what makes tonal sense to one hearer may seem atonal to another. Keyboard music happens to be played with twelve tones, and only acculturation makes it seem otherwise. The keyboard is a natural vehicle for twelve-tone systems, and vocal and instrumental music continues to be influenced by keyboard models, just as keyboard music has always been influenced by vocal and instrumental models.

We should not identify so passively with that portion of the concertgoing public that thinks of music only as pleasurable or unpleasurable. We should recognize and celebrate the fact that, in all progressive quarters of music, from jazz clubs to cathedrals, atonalism is embraced and espoused as a welcome means of intensifying the musical experience.