Tonality is a
musical system that arranges
pitches or
chords to induce a
hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, and attractions. The pitch or triadic chord with the greatest stability is called the
tonic. The most common use of the term ..."is to designate the arrangement of musical phenomena around a referential tonic in
European music from about 1600 to about 1910" . Modern classical (academical) music may practice or avoid any sort of tonality—but
harmony in
popular music remains tonal in some sense, and harmony in
jazz music includes many, if not all, tonal characteristics, while having different properties from common-practice classical music.