Tonal vs. Atonal Music

The first important distinction to make when analyzing the harmony of a piece of music is to determine what key it is in—and if it is in a key at all. Most contemporary choral music does have some relationship to key: after all, singers must have some way of hearing the relationships between the notes that they sing. However, the “key” may simply be a form of “pitch centricity,” where one pitch is most important but there’s no consistent specific scale (for example, Eric Whitacre’s “A Boy and a Girl”), and the diatonic modes are common (for example, in Zanaida Robles’s “She Lingers On”). While it’s hard to clearly define a process for all music, here are some principles to keep in mind:

• A key signature usually indicates that the composer thinks a certain scale, and often a certain tonic note, is most important.
• Determining the tonic note can be more difficult than in older “classical” music, since each key signature is associated not just with the traditional major and minor keys but also with diatonic modes (especially Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixolydian). To determine the tonic, it may be helpful to look for chord roots and prominent fourths or fifths, which are often heard as scale degrees 1 and 5.
• While some contemporary choral music doesn’t modulate/change keys (especially if it is influenced by contemporary popular music), key changes are not unusual, and for certain pieces they are crucial in defining form and the piece’s “emotional journey.”

The remaining process will focus primarily on tonal music—that is, for our purposes, music with chords that seem to have a meaningful relationship to a key. We end this page with some limited advice on working with atonal music.

When beginning to analyze any piece of choral music (or any music in general), it is important to recognize that there are benefits in both analyzing visually and aurally. Each analyst should follow their own preferences in determining whether to start with a score or a recording if both are available.

In beginning music theory classes, students often analyze chords one at a time in order as they look through a score. Unfortunately, this approach can get bogged down and keep you from seeing the “bigger picture” of a piece of music. Starting with some form of context is vital: this is why we focus first on key and, when there are modulations, mapping out key changes. A good place to look/listen next is for cadences, if they exist.

When finally focusing on individual chords, it is useful to compare what you’re seeing or hearing to what you normally expect for each chord. When a chord goes someplace surprising, it is worth digging in to do a more detailed analysis and consider the relationship between the chords: is it merely a less common progression (e.g., V moving “deceptively” to vi) or something more shocking (e.g., the final chord of Frank Ticheli’s “Earth Song,” which is distantly related to what came before).

Advice for Atonal Music