Tonality beyond frequencies

This project challenges the foundation for the Scandinavian traditional music tonality discussion, since it assumes that timbre and intonation are mutually intertwined, that song and speech are inseparable, and that singers across time and culture are united by their dynamic musical instrument: the human body, which ‘is played’ in social contexts. Specifically, the project asks how we can interpret the kind of singer’s intonation which cannot be described as modal or functional harmonic tonality, without labelling it simply a ‘mistake’. The research relies on a theory of tonality as a multidimensional dynamic continuum, which is manifested in intonation patterns which lack a priori rules (Jonzon 2023), and in which successive intervals, created by the human body in a communicative context, are more prominent than scale degrees. The project uses the Multi-modal Model for intonation analysis (Jonzon 2023), which does not presuppose any stipulated intonation pattern. Instead, it employs a theory in which measured pitch is completely unrelated to experienced pitch, which works descriptively regardless of socio-cultural frame. The project’s analysis of tonal structures in a sample of carefully selected Swedish, Norwegian and Polish archival recordings fulfil two criteria: they are role models for contemporary traditional music students within higher formal music education, and contain both song and speech.