TONAL • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Tonal

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/tˈoʊnəl/ Listen

Tonal

adjective

Employing variations in pitch to distinguish meanings of otherwise similar words. Synonym: tonic.

Having tonality; i.e. tones and chords organized in relation to one tone such as a keynote or tonic.

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"Tonal" Quotes from Famous Books

... mellow and well modulated that I visualize her as another Venus. I suspect that, when she began her work, some one told her that her tenure of position depended upon the quality of her voice. So, I imagine, she assumed a tonal quality of voice that was really a sublimated hypocrisy, and persisted in this until now that quality of voice is entirely natural. I can't think that Shakespeare had her specially in mind, but, if I ever have the good fortune ...

— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... tempted to play an ascending passage with an increase of tone, and a descending one with a decrease. With the fourth bar of the above passage we invariably got into a crescendo so that the sustained G flat of the fifth bar was given with an involuntary yet vehement accent, enough to spoil the peculiar tonal significance of that note. The composer's intention is clearly indicated; but it remains difficult to prove to a person whose musical feelings are not of a refined sort, that there is a great gap between ...

— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)

... avail the seed-bearing Bach and his fugues—emotional mathematics, all of them! Of what avail the decorative efforts of tonal fresco painters, breeders of an hour's pleasure, soon forgotten in the grave's muddy disdain! Had not the stage lowered music to the position of a lascivious handmaiden? To the sound of cymbals, it postured for the weary debauchee. No; ...

— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... its diversion from the curtain are, its curtailing of wall space, and, by its close placement to the curtain, its union therewith as a balance for head and body—in bulk of light and dark almost identical with them, though less forcible in tonal value. ...

— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... his lips again. The tonal stairway which leads up to the chorus of Egypt rose in rasping wailfulness. It culminated in an excessive, unendurable, brazen shriek—and the Honorable William Linder experienced upon the undefended rear of his person the most violent kick of a lifetime not always devoted ...

— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams