"Writing tonal music now, you are not writing into the 19th Century"
About this Quote
Tonal music still has a pulse, but it no longer has the alibi of inevitability. When Gavin Bryars says that writing tonal music now isn’t “writing into the 19th Century,” he’s swatting away a lazy insult: the idea that tonality automatically equals nostalgia, conservatism, or aesthetic denial. Bryars came up amid postwar modernism, when serialism and anti-tonal rhetoric could function like border control. His point is that the border has moved. Tonality today isn’t the default language of the culture; it’s a choice made under different historical weather.
The subtext is about agency and accountability. A 19th-century composer could treat tonal grammar as the air everyone breathed. A contemporary composer who uses it is knowingly invoking a system that has been problematized, dismantled, and repurposed across minimalism, film scores, ambient, post-rock, and neo-classical revivalism. That changes the meaning of the same chord. It can read as intimacy, irony, quotation, even critique. The ear hears context before it hears “tradition.”
Bryars also quietly rejects the false binary that modern equals dissonant and tonal equals reactionary. His own work lives in that middle zone where harmony can be spare, drifting, or ritualistic rather than triumphantly Romantic. The line is a reminder that history doesn’t work like a genre playlist you can time-travel into. When you write tonal music in the 21st century, you’re writing after modernism, after pop, after mass mediation. The past is present, but it’s no longer in charge.
The subtext is about agency and accountability. A 19th-century composer could treat tonal grammar as the air everyone breathed. A contemporary composer who uses it is knowingly invoking a system that has been problematized, dismantled, and repurposed across minimalism, film scores, ambient, post-rock, and neo-classical revivalism. That changes the meaning of the same chord. It can read as intimacy, irony, quotation, even critique. The ear hears context before it hears “tradition.”
Bryars also quietly rejects the false binary that modern equals dissonant and tonal equals reactionary. His own work lives in that middle zone where harmony can be spare, drifting, or ritualistic rather than triumphantly Romantic. The line is a reminder that history doesn’t work like a genre playlist you can time-travel into. When you write tonal music in the 21st century, you’re writing after modernism, after pop, after mass mediation. The past is present, but it’s no longer in charge.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
|---|
More Quotes by Gavin
Add to List
