Submitted by Cüneyt Budak

Tonality And Totality

Architecture News - Dec 09, 2007 - 19:08   8869 views

Atonality proved to be the most extreme manifestation of the general anti-authoritarian upheaval in society of the five or so years preceding World War 1. Schoenberg´s abandonment of tonality coincides with the abandonment of perspective in painting by Picasso and Kandinsky (in 1908). But with these "two great negative gestures" in culture, as they have been termed, it was the composer who found himself propelled into a public void. Like language, tonality is historically characterized by its unfreedom. We are made tonal by society: only in the elimination of that society will occur the superseding of all grammars of domination.
www.t0.or.at/zerzan/politon.htm