Centricity
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What makes something tonal? To some theorists the essential bass motion from tonic to dominant and back to tonic, as well as the very specific placement of dissonances within a scale is all that it takes. For composers in the early 20th century some of these distinctions started to become blurred, but when you put music from composers such as Lili Boulanger, and compare it to music from composers like Ruth Crawford Seeger (Click here to visit a piece by Seeger) and asked someone which piece was tonal and which piece was not more than likely would a listener choose Lili Boulanger. Boulanger was a French composer in the early 20th century. She was the sister of Nadia Boulanger, a composer as well and famous pedagogue who trained composers such as Aaron Copland, Elliot Carter, Astor Piazzola and even Quincy Jones. Lili was the first woman to win the Prix de Rome and unfortunately her life was cut short due to an early death.
The thing that makes composers from this time period specifically sound tonal, despite using different types of scales often based off different modes, or even entirely new scales such as the Whole Tone or Octatonic scale, were that they often had a pull towards a center pitch. This is called centricity Lets listen to this excerpt from Lili Boulenger’s D’un matin de printemps (play excerpt)
A few ways you might decide if a pitch is the center are the following
1) Is there a certain pitch that happens on the strong beats (play just melody)
2) Does it linger on a certain pitch more than others (play just melody)
3) Does it appear more often than any other pitches (play just the melody)
4) Do phrases begin and/or end on this specific pitch (play just the melody)
5) Is there something in the harmony that supports this? (Play the full excerpt)
In this excerpt E or PC 4 passes the first 4 tests, and while there is certainly an E in the harmony, the lowest and highest pitch is a B or PC. 11. While there is a strong case to be made for a B due to the prevalence of B in the harmony, often times the melody of a piece creates a stronger gravitational pull towards a center. That said not all centric music is tonal, and not all tonal music is centric in this way. The best way to tell is to listen and ask yourself what is the center, and try to sing it. Your ear is your greatest tool here!
Sources
Boulanger, Lili. D’un matin de Printemps. https://musictheoryexamplesbywomen.com/examples/dun-matin-de-printemps-mm-1-7-lili-boulanger/
Potter, Caroline. “Nadia and Lili Boulanger: Sister Composers”. Musical Quarterly, Vol.83 No.4, 1999, pp. 536–56.