Polytonality

Polytonality (also polyharmony (Cole and Schwartz 2012)) is the musical use of more than one key simultaneously. Bitonality is the use of only two different keys at the same time. Polyvalence is the use of more than one harmonic function, from the same key, at the same time (Leeuw 2005, 87).

Some examples of bitonality superimpose fully harmonized sections of music in different keys.

Lithuanian traditional singing style sutartines is based on polytonality. A typical sutartines song is based on a six-bar melody, where the first three bars contains melody based on the notes of the triad of a major key (for example, in G major), and the next three bars is based on another key, always a major second higher or lower (for example, in A major). This six-bar melody is performed as a canon, and repetition starts from the fourth bar. As a result, parts are constantly singing in different tonality (key) simultaneously (in G and in A) (Jordania 2006, 119–20; Račiūnaitė-Vyčinienė 2006). As a traditional style, sutartines disappeared in Lithuanian villages by the first decades of the 20th century, but later became a national musical symbol of Lithuanian music (Anon. 2010).

Tribes throughout India—including the Kuravan of Kerala, the Jaunsari of Uttar Pradesh, the Gond, the Santal, and the Munda—also use bitonality, in responsorial song (Babiracki 1991, 76).

In J.S.Bach's Clavier-Übung III, there is a two-part passage where, according to Scholes (1970, 448–49): "It will be seen that this is a canon at the fourth below; as it is a strict canon, all the intervals of the leading 'voice' are exactly imitated by the following 'voice', and since the key of the leading part is D minor modulating to G minor, that of the following part is necessarily A minor modulating to D minor. Here, then, we have a case of polytonality, but Bach has so adjusted his progressions (by the choice at the critical moment of notes common to two keys) that while the right hand is doubtless quite under the impression that the piece is in D minor, etc., and the left hand that it is in A minor, etc., the listener feels that the whole thing is homogeneous in key, though rather fluctuating from moment to moment. In other words, Bach is trying to make the best of both worlds—the homotonal one of his own day and (prophetically) the polytonal one of a couple of centuries later." 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. 6, 1908), and Stravinsky (Petrushka, 1911) (Whittall 2001). Ives claimed that he learned the technique of polytonality from his father, who taught him to sing popular songs in one key while harmonizing them in another (Crawford 2001, 503).

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