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Tonal, Atonal, and Modal Music

31 December, 2014 - 11:41
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  • To hear tonal music, turn on the radio and listen to just about any station, unless your Classical station is playing twentieth century music.
  • In the modal music category, medieval chant and the classical music of India are easiest to find.
  • Even in the category of twentieth century music, the shelves tend to be stocked with the work of composers who stayed with some sort of tonality (Ralph Vaughan Williams, George Gershwin, and Aaron Copland, for example). For atonality look for John Cage, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, or Edgard Varese.