Tonality

Tonality is the principle of key in music; the character that a composition has by virtue of the key in which it is written, or through the family relationship of all its tones and chordss to the keynote, or tonic, of the whole. Tonal music (music in a particular key) can be contrasted with atonal music (music not in any particular key).

Hermann von Helmholtz wrote, "The predominance of the tonic as the link which connects all the tones of a piece, we may, with F['e]tis, term the principle of tonality."

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