Returning to the notion that in the culture of our time a single tone has the power to evoke musical response: Why else would there be so many contemporary compositions so fixated on single tones? The one that comes most readily to mind is Terry Riley's C, a piece I do not, frankly, enjoy, but the sense of which has become clearer to me now that I think about how sorely we need to be made aware of how much we lose by distancing ourselves from the living tone of which music is made.
My favorite example of music contained within a single tone is by Henry Purcell. Setting the lyric"Music for a while shall all our cares beguile" he repeats the word "music" first on the single tone G, then immediately again on another single tone D. When first I encountered this I found it shocking.
