Polytonality

"[7] Another early use of polytonality occurs in the classical period in the finale of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's composition A Musical Joke, which he deliberately ends with the violins, violas and horns playing in four discordant keys simultaneously.

However, it was not featured prominently in non-programmatic contexts until the twentieth century, particularly in the work of Charles Ives (Psalm 67, c. 1898–1902), Béla Bartók (Fourteen Bagatelles, Op.

[9] Although it is only used in one section and intended to represent drunken soldiers, there is an early example of polytonality in Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber's short composition Battalia, written in 1673.

Other polytonal composers influenced by Stravinsky include those in the French group, Les Six, particularly Darius Milhaud, as well as Americans such as Aaron Copland.

Van den Toorn, in an attempt to dismiss polytonal analysis used a monoscalar approach to analyze the music with the octatonic scale.

Some music theorists, including Milton Babbitt and Paul Hindemith have questioned whether polytonality is a useful or meaningful notion or "viable auditory possibility".

[23] Babbitt called polytonality a "self-contradictory expression which, if it is to possess any meaning at all, can only be used as a label to designate a certain degree of expansion of the individual elements of a well-defined harmonic or voice-leading unit".

[24] Other theorists to question or reject polytonality include Allen Forte and Benjamin Boretz, who hold that the notion involves logical incoherence.

[25] Furthermore, Tymoczko argues that two separate key-areas can, at least at a rudimentary level, be heard at the same time: for example, when listening to two different pieces played by two different instruments in two areas of a room.