Show Summary Details

Page of

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 16 January 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This article proposes a general definition of tonic and explores its ramifications across repertories and intellectual traditions (cognitive, historical, ethnomusicological, music analytical, and phenomenological). The proposed definition admits of both wide and narrow applications: from broad conceptions that detect tonics in a wide range of world musics to a more narrow definition that limits the term (and its theoretical entailments) to bourgeois musical cultures in the West. These ideas are illustrated through discussions of diverse musical examples, from the “common practice” (Bach, Schubert) to the postwar avant-garde (Lutosławski), French house (Daft Punk), and rust-belt hard rock (Akron-based band Dia Pason).

Keywords: tonic, tonality, music cognition, ethnography, Lutosławski, Bach, Schubert, Daft Punk, Dia Pason

Steven Rings

Steven Rings teaches music theory at the University of Chicago. His research ranges from transformational theory to studies of the popular singing voice. His book Tonality and Transformation received the Emerging Scholar Award from the Society for Music Theory, and his article "A Foreign Sound to Your Ear: Bob Dylan Performs 'It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding),' 1964-2009" received the Outstanding Publication Award from the SMT's Popular Music Interest Group. He is Series Editor of Oxford Studies in Music Theory.

Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.

Please subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.

For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.