Letters
Editors: Barry Gewen's review of Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise (Winter 2008) contains a factual error that illustrates the flaw in his argument. He describes the Beatles song "Norwegian Wood" as...
...And when Hardesty says I equate tonality with simplicity, I confess I don't recognize either myself or my argument...
...The mixolydian scale is exactly like the major scale— the do-re-mi scale from The Sound of Music—except that the seventh note—ti—is lowered by a half-step...
...The B-minor Mass simple...
...LARRY HARDESTY Somerville, Mass...
...But I believe my general argument still holds...
...But the song's uncanniness comes from its use of an eccentric scale called the mixolydian...
...The twentieth-century's classical music was not all one atonal shriek...
...Portraying Ross as a champion of atonality is as gross a distortion as portraying the Beatles as naïve rubes...
...DISSENT / Spring 2008 n 127...
...Don Giovanni...
...Hardesty's analysis either parallels or is derived from Wilfrid Mellers's analysis of "Norwegian Wood" in his 1973 book, The Music of the Beatles: Twilight of the Gods...
...As for Hardesty's other points, I wasn't aware that I portrayed Ross as a "champion of atonality" but of modern music that grows out of the crisis of the European classical tradition...
...Alex Ross knows this, which is why he devotes whole chapters of his book to tonal composers like Sibelius, Copland, and Britten...
...Lennon and McCartney, like Shostakovich and Britten, were tonal composers constantly testing themselves against the limits of their inherited forms...
...Larry Hardesty is correct about "Norwegian Wood," and I apologize for the error...
...CORRECTION: On page 73 in Thomas Pogge's "Growth and Inequality" (Winter 2008), line 10 of the first column should refer to 543.9 million poor...
...My point, rather, was that tonality, both diatonic and pentatonic, grounds us in a universal humanity in a way that music written from within the modern classical tradition does not...
...The melodies tend to be pentatonic, or at most modally heptatonic...
...As Mellers observes, "the nature of the tunes (both of folk soloists and of rock groups) is conditioned by their origins...
...But he also offered many examples of Beatles songs that are Pentatonic either in whole or in part—"She Loves You," "I Saw Her Standing There," "I Wanna Be Your Man," "I'm Happy to Dance with You," "Things We Said Today," "Help," "Michelle," "When I'm Sixty-Four," "A Day in the Life," and . . . but why go on...
...He describes the Beatles song "Norwegian Wood" as having a "pentatonic melody"—a melody restricted to five notes—which he says gives it a "skeletal quality...
...But as the surprising sophistication of "Norwegian Wood" demonstrates, that's a dangerous mistake to make...
...If anything, I find Ross too eclectic...
...Gewen emphasizes the pentatonic scale because he equates tonality with simplicity...
...Its best composers and its best songwriters were largely mining the same vein...
...And while Gewen is right that African music frequently uses the pentatonic scale, it just as frequently has a rhythmic complexity that's daunting to even the best-trained Western musicians...
...Mellers too noted that the song is in the mixolydian mode (hardly an "eccentric scale...
...After its E mixolydian opening, "Norwegian Wood" modulates abruptly into the key of E minor, adding yet an eighth note to its melodic palette...
Vol. 55 • April 2008 • No. 2
