Atonality
Atonality describes
music that does not conform to the system of
tonal hierarchies, which characterizes the sound of
classical European music between the
seventeenth and
nineteenth centuries. Atonality usually describes compositions written from about 1907 to the present day, where the hierarchy of tonal centers, in some cases, may not be used as the primary way to organize a work. Tonal centers gradually replaced modal organization starting in the 1500s and culminated with the establishment of the
major-minor key system in the late 1600s and early 1700s.
The most prominent school to compose in this manner was the
Second Viennese School of
Arnold Schoenberg,
Alban Berg, and
Anton Webern. However, composers such as
Josef Matthias Hauer,
Béla Bartók,
Aaron Copland,
George Antheil, and others wrote music that is described as atonal, and many traditional composers "flirted with atonality," in the words of
Leonard Bernstein.
While music without a tonal center had been written previously, for example
Franz Liszt's
Bagatelle sans tonalité of 1885, it is with the 20th century that the term
atonality began to be applied to pieces, particularly those written by Arnold Schoenberg and The Second Viennese School.
Their music arose from what was described as the crisis of tonality in the late 19th century and early 20th century in
classical music. It was described by composer
Ferruccio Busoni as the "exhaustion of the major-minor key system," and by Schoenberg as the "inability of one tonal chord to assert dominance over all of the others." The first phase is often described as "free atonality" or "free chromaticism" and involved the conscious attempt to avoid traditional diatonic harmony. Works of this period include the opera
Wozzeck (1917-1922) by Alban Berg and
Pierrot Lunaire (1912) by Schoenberg. The second period, begun after
World War I, was exemplified by attempts to create a systematic means of composing without tonality, most famously the method of composing with 12 tones or the
twelve-tone technique. This period included Berg's
Lulu and
Lyric Suite, Schoenberg's
Piano Concerto, his opera
Jacob's Ladder and numerous smaller pieces, as well as his final string quartets. Schoenberg was the major innovator of the system, but his student,
Anton Webern, then began linking dynamics and tone color to the primary row as well, making the row not only of notes but other aspects of music as well. This, combined with the parameterization of
Olivier Messiaen, would be taken as the inspiration for
serialism.
Atonality emerged as a pejorative term to condemn music in which
chords were organized seemingly with no apparent coherence. In
Nazi Germany, atonal music was attacked as "
Bolshevik" and labeled as
degenerate (
Entartete Musik) along with other music produced by enemies of the Nazi regime. Many composers had their works banned by the regime, not to be played until after its collapse after
World War II.
In the years that followed, atonality represented a challenge to many composers — even those who wrote more tonal music were influenced by it. The Second Viennese School, and particularly 12-tone composition, was taken by avant-garde composers in the 1950s to be the foundation of the New Music, and led to
serialism and other forms of musical experimentation. Prominent post-World War II composers in this tradition are
Pierre Boulez,
Karlheinz Stockhausen,
Luciano Berio,
Krzysztof Penderecki, and
Milton Babbitt. Many composers wrote atonal music after the war, even if before they had pursued other styles, including
Elliott Carter and
Witold Lutosławski. After Schoenberg's death,
Igor Stravinsky began to write music with a mixture of serial and tonal elements. During this time, the
chord progressions or
successions designed to avoid a tonal center were explored and named, creating a vocabulary described as
musical set theory focusing on pitch classes and pitch sets.
Iannis Xenakis generated pitch sets from mathematical formulae, and also saw the expansion of tonal possibilities as part a synthesis between sound and science which he saw also in the music of ancient Greece.
Atonal music continues to be composed, and many atonal composers of the late 20th century are still alive and active. However, serial atonal composition began to fade in the 1960s — where, on one hand,
aleatoric music,
spectral music, and electronic music demanded more and more attention and, on the other, musicians influenced by Eastern mysticism, modality, and
Minimalism began writing music based on
ostinato patterns.
The use of the term "atonality" has been
controversial.
Schoenberg, whose music is generally used to define the term, was vehemently opposed to it, arguing that "atonal" meant "without tone." For some, the term continues to carry negative connotations. A popular joke among musicians posits that "The two great errors of the 20th century were atonality and Marxism."
"Atonal" developed a certain vagueness in meaning as a result of its use to describe a wide variety of compositional approaches that deviated from traditional chords and chord progressions. Attempts to solve these problems by using terms such as "pan-tonal," "non-tonal," "free-tonal," and "without tonal center" instead of "atonal" have not gained broad acceptance.
Composer
Anton von Webern, musicologist
Robert Fink, and others have asserted that all music is perceived as having a tonal center. Others (for example, Schoenberg in his article on 12-tone composing) have argued that the avoidance of a tonal center produces more sophisticated music, which requires greater ability to appreciate.
Setting out to compose atonal music may seem complicated because of both the vagueness and generality of the term. Additionally
George Perle (1962) explains that, "the 'free' atonality that preceded dodecaphony precludes by definition the possibility of self-consistent, generally applicable compositional procedures." (p.9) However, he provides one example as a way to compose atonal pieces, a pre-
twelve tone technique piece by
Anton Webern, which rigorously avoids anything that suggests tonality, to choose pitches that do not imply tonality. In other words, reverse the rules of the
common practice period so that what was not allowed is required and what was required is not allowed. This is what was done by
Charles Seeger in his explanation of
dissonant counterpoint, which is a way to write atonal counterpoint.
Further, he agrees with Oster and Katz that, "the abandonment of the concept of a root-generator of the individual chord is a radical development that renders futile any attempt at a systematic formulation of chord structure and progression in atonal music along the lines of traditional harmonic theory." (p.31). Atonal compositional techniques and results "are not reducible to a set of foundational assumptions in terms of which the compositions that are collectively designated by the expression 'atonal music' can be said to represent 'a system' of composition." (p.1)
Perle also points out that structural coherence is most often achieved through operations on intervallic cells. A cell "may operate as a kind of microcosmic set of fixed intervallic content, statable either as a chord or as a melodic figure or as a combination of both. Its components may be fixed with regard to order, in which event it may be employed, like the twelve-tone set, in its literal transformations... Individual tones may function as pivotal elements, to permit overlapping statements of a basic cell or the linking of two or more basic cells." (pp.9-10)
Audio examples of the role of dissonance and tonality claimed as part of our own physiological make-up (the ear) may be heard in the following links (which also are examples of the interaction and effect of consonance and dissonance upon each other). Click here
The effect of context on dissonance, and here:
The role of harmony in music. An experiment easily done on any piano can be found here:
Experiment. Scroll down or search page for "experiment". In the content of those audios and critical arguments, a reader or composer may judge whether these perceptions are learned only by conditioning or are physically based.
Famous Swiss conductor, composer and musical philosopher
Ernest Ansermet a critic of atonal music wrote a massive book
Les fondemments de la musique dans la conscience humaine where he argued that
Beethoven was unique in presenting the eternal ideal of the hero, his struggling and victory (the
fifth symphony) and the typical Western universal ideal of a community of all social and loving humans (the
ninth symphony) so forcefully and clearly. The classical musical language was a precondition for that with its clear, harmonious structures. Tonality based on relatively simple interval relations is absolutely necessary in Ansermet's opinion. So by the incomprehensible modern atonal music choosing interval relations randomly, such an impact, ethos and catharsis could never be reached in the audience. Influential critic
Theodor Adorno argued, however, that one could express anything from tragedy to a smirk in atonality, provided one had compositional ability.
In the historical view, however, neither of the extremes of prediction have come about: atonality has neither replaced tonality, nor has it disappeared. There is, however, much agreement amongst many composers that atonal systems in the hands of less-talented composers will still sound weak expressively, and composers with a genuine tonal gift are capable of writing exquisite works using twelve-tone methods. Serialism itself has been taken up by tonal composers as a modest replacement for the common practice tendencies of certain traditional forms to conform to certain tonal expectations.
Proponents of the
minimalist movement in music were reacting against what they saw as the stilted academicism of university composition departments.. Examples of these composers would be
Steve Reich,
Philip Glass and
John Adams. The advent of
post-modern classicism has proven a return to tonal traditions.
Also:
serialism,
Klangfarbenmelodie.
*
Emancipation of Dissonance*
List of atonal pieces# Beach, David, ed. (1983). "Schenkerian Analysis and Post-Tonal Music",
Aspects of Schenkerian Theory. New Haven: Yale University Press.# Fink, Bob (2004).
"The false science of atonalist theories," Crosscurrents Journal... No. 196, Winter 2004.# Katz, Adele T. (1945/1972).
Challenge to Musical Traditions: A New Concept of Tonality. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc./New York: Da Capo.# Oster, Ernst (1960). "Re: A New Concept of Tonality (?)",
Journal of Music Theory 4, p.96.# Perle, George (1962).
Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. University of California Press. ISBN 0520074300.
*
An Introduction to Atonal Music Analysis*
"A-Natural" Atonality: The False "Science" of Modern Atonal Music, a critical view of atonality
