a. and sb. [ad. med.L. tonāl-is (St. Bernard of Cluny), f. ton-us TONE: see -AL; cf. mod.F. tonal (Littré).]
A. adj. Of or pertaining to tone or tones.
1. Mus. † a. Pertaining to the ecclesiastical modes.
1776. Hawkins, Hist. Mus., III. ix. I. 354. The first [discourse] … is on … Guidonian music…, the one [part] treating of Manual, i. e. elementary music … and the other of Tonal music, containing the doctrine of the ecclesiastical tones.
b. Applied to a fugue, or a sequence, in which the repetitions of the subject in different positions are all in the same key, and therefore vary in their intervals: opp. to REAL a. 3 c.
1869. Ouseley, Counterp. Canon & Fugue, xix. 160, note. In the early days of counterpoint a tonal fugue was one in which the relations of the subject and answer were governed by the old Church modes. Ibid. (1879), in Grove, Dict. Mus., I. 567. In most cases the answer [to the subject of a fugue] has to be modified according to certain rules to avoid modulating out of the key…. An answer so treated is called a ‘tonal answer,’ and the fugue is called a ‘Tonal fugue.’
1889. Prout, Harmony, v. § 138. The intervals … differ in quality according to their position in the scale…. Such a sequence is termed a tonal sequence.
2. Of, pertaining, or relating to the tone or tones. Of speech or a language: expressing difference of meaning by variation of tone.
1866. Athenæum, 24 March, 404/1. The multiplicity of tonal divagations.
1867. Macfarren, Harmony, i. 11. Ambrose … called the modes he adopted according to their tonal ascent, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th.
1886. C. Trotter, in Encycl. Brit., XXI. 774/1. But [Shan] is a tonal language, and the vowel sounds are few, so that some have two or three values assigned them.
1896. F. Niecks, Paper bef. Congr. Incorp. Soc. Mus. The Association of Tonal and Verbal Speech.
† B. sb. (med.L. tonāle). A book containing a summary of the rules governing ecclesiastical music, with examples. Cf. the tonārius ‘liber de tonis seu cantu’ (Du Cange). Obs. rare–0.
c. 1475. Pict. Voc., in Wr.-Wülcker, 755/20. (Nomina ecclesie necessaria) Hoc tonale, a tonal.
Hence Tonally adv., in respect of tone.
1883. Gurney, Tertium Quid (1887), II. 22. Bits that are rhythmically and tonally coherent.
