The development of art music throughout the 20th century was marked by a gradual decadence and rejections of tonal values, sometimes even the tone itself. This approach to music was essentially shaped by the cultural and political struggles that marked the 20th century, after which the view that the possibilities of tonality are exhausted has dominated to this day. This article deals with the unexplored parts of tonality and for the first time will propose a direct definition of the origin of tonality. The new tonal system proposed in this article is called contratonality, and its existence is based on the opposite values from which tonality developed, thus complementing the theory of classical harmony. This system of dissonance, as opposed to tonality, the system of consonance, was indirectly initiated in the 20th century by the work of Béla Bartók, although Bartók did not shape it into a harmonic system itself. With this theory comes the possibility of existence of multiple tonal systems, which will be discussed.
Marin Bilić (Wed,) studied this question.