Tonality

Tonality, my friends, is like the circus.

Or, perhaps, I should say that "the evolution of musical language is like the circus."

Musically speaking, there are circus clowns, contortionists, and lion-tamers.

There are the circus-freaks, the ones we oogle at in wonder and pity.

There is the sword-eater, who wonders why we cannot eat swords as well.

There are, of course, the bystanders: they merely sit to the side and clap. After all, the show is for them. (Unfortunately, some composers get lost in this crowd.)

Then there is the trapeze artist. Somewhere along the way, men and women began to defy gravity and hurtle themselves brilliantly through the air, risking it all to create a higher poetry of motion.

The trapeze is probably the highlight of the classic circus: it pushes things to the limit.

Then, somwhere along the line, some trapeze-artists decided to remove the safety net beneath them. We watched in mixed wonder and horror as they tried to defy gravity, oblivious to the ground below.

We clap, relieved when the show is over. When one falls, however, our pity is limited. It's a shame, really, but it was their own pride which removed the net.