Atonality

Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key.[1] Atonality, in this sense,
usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th century to the present day,
where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a single, central triad is not used, and the notes of
the chromatic scale function independently of one another.[2] More narrowly, the term atonality
describes music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies that characterized
European classical music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.[3] "The repertory of
atonal music is characterized by the occurrence of pitches in novel combinations, as well as by
the occurrence of familiar pitch combinations in unfamiliar environments".[4]

0:04 / 0:04

Ending of Schoenberg's "George Lieder" Op. 15/1

presents what would be an "extraordinary" chord in
tonal music, without the harmonic-contrapuntal
constraints of tonal music.

The term is also occasionally used to describe music that is neither tonal nor serial, especially
the pre-twelve-tone music of the Second Viennese School, principally Alban Berg, Arnold
Schoenberg, and Anton Webern.[3] However, "as a categorical label, 'atonal' generally means only
that the piece is in the Western tradition and is not 'tonal' ",[5] although there are longer periods,
e.g., medieval, renaissance, and modern modal music to which this definition does not apply.
"Serialism arose partly as a means of organizing more coherently the relations used in the pre-
serial 'free atonal' music. ... Thus, many useful and crucial insights about even strictly serial
music depend only on such basic atonal theory".[6]

Late 19th- and early 20th-century composers such as Alexander Scriabin,[7][8] Claude Debussy,[9]
Paul Hindemith,[10][11] Béla Bartók,[12] Sergei Prokofiev,[13][14] Igor Stravinsky,[15][16] and Edgard
Varèse,[17] have written music that has been described, in full or in part, as atonal.

History

While music without a tonal center had been previously written, for example Franz Liszt's
Bagatelle sans tonalité of 1885, it is with the coming of the twentieth century that the term
atonality began to be applied to pieces, particularly those written by Arnold Schoenberg and The
Second Viennese School. The term "atonality" was coined in 1907 by Joseph Marx in a scholarly
study of tonality, which was later expanded into his doctoral thesis.[18]

Their music arose from what was described as the "crisis of tonality" between the late nineteenth
century and early twentieth century in classical music. This situation had arisen over the course
of the nineteenth century due to the increasing use of

ambiguous chords, improbable harmonic inflections, and more

unusual melodic and rhythmic inflections than what was possible
within the styles of tonal music. The distinction between the
exceptional and the normal became more and more blurred. As a
result, there was a "concomitant loosening" of the synthetic bonds
through which tones and harmonies had been related to one another.
The connections between harmonies were uncertain even on the
lowest chord-to-chord level. On higher levels, long-range harmonic
relationships and implications became so tenuous, that they hardly
functioned at all. At best, the felt probabilities of the style system had
become obscure. At worst, they were approaching a uniformity, which
provided few guides for either composition or listening.[19]

The first phase, known as "free atonality" or "free chromaticism", involved a 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 phase, 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 oratorio Die Jakobsleiter and numerous smaller pieces, as well as his last two string
quartets. Schoenberg was the major innovator of the system. His student, Anton Webern,
however, is anecdotally claimed to have begun linking dynamics and tone color to the primary
row, making rows not only of pitches but of other aspects of music as well.[20] However, actual
analysis of Webern's twelve-tone works has so far failed to demonstrate the truth of this
assertion. One analyst concluded, following a minute examination of the Piano Variations, op. 27,
that

while the texture of this music may superficially resemble that of some
serial music ... its structure does not. None of the patterns within
separate nonpitch characteristics makes audible (or even numerical)
 sense in itself. The point is that these characteristics are still playing
their traditional role of differentiation.[21]

Twelve-tone technique, combined with the parametrization (separate organization of four

aspects of music: pitch, attack character, intensity, and duration) of Olivier Messiaen, would be
taken as the inspiration for serialism.[20]

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 at the end of World War II.

After Schoenberg's death, Igor Stravinsky used the twelve-tone technique.[22] Iannis Xenakis
generated pitch sets from mathematical formulae, and also saw the expansion of tonal
possibilities as part of a synthesis between the hierarchical principle and the theory of numbers,
principles which have dominated music since at least the time of Parmenides.[23]

Free atonality

The twelve-tone technique was preceded by Schoenberg's freely atonal pieces of 1908 to 1923,
which, though free, often have as an "integrative element...a minute intervallic cell" that in
addition to expansion may be transformed as with a tone row, and in which individual notes may
"function as pivotal elements, to permit overlapping statements of a basic cell or the linking of
two or more basic cells".[24] The decay of the sense of tonality and the subsequent distribution
into individual elements brought three concepts into play: 1. Musical elements that had since
been secondary to tonal form groups now became autonomous. 2. The absence of tonal
coherence prompted the search for a unity that could connect the disjointed musical language in
an alternative way. 3. Due to the replacement of diatonic principles, new concepts of form
arose.[25]

The twelve-tone technique was also preceded by nondodecaphonic serial composition used
independently in the works of Alexander Scriabin, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Carl Ruggles,
Elizabeth Lutyens and others.[26] "Essentially, Schoenberg and Hauer systematized and defined
for their own dodecaphonic purposes a pervasive technical feature of 'modern' musical practice,
the ostinato."[26]
Composing atonal music

Setting out to compose atonal music may seem complicated because of both the vagueness
and generality of the term. Additionally George Perle explains that, "the 'free' atonality that
preceded dodecaphony precludes by definition the possibility of self-consistent, generally
applicable compositional procedures".[27] 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.[28]

Opening of Schoenberg's Klavierstück, Op. 11, No. 1, exemplifying his four procedures as listed by Kostka & Payne 1995

Kostka and Payne list four procedures as operational in the atonal music of Schoenberg, all of
which may be taken as negative rules. Avoidance of melodic or harmonic octaves, avoidance of
traditional pitch collections such as major or minor triads, avoidance of more than three
successive pitches from the same diatonic scale, and use of disjunct melodies (avoidance of
conjunct melodies).[29]

Further, Perle agrees with Oster[30] and Katz[31] 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".[32] 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".[33] Equal-interval chords are often of indeterminate root, mixed-interval chords are
often best characterized by their interval content, while both lend themselves to atonal
contexts.[34]
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".[35]

Regarding the post-tonal music of Perle, one theorist wrote: "While ... montages of discrete-
seeming elements tend to accumulate global rhythms other than those of tonal progressions
and their rhythms, there is a similarity between the two sorts of accumulates spatial and
temporal relationships: a similarity consisting of generalized arching tone-centers linked together
by shared background referential materials".[36]

Another approach of composition techniques for atonal music is given by Allen Forte who
developed the theory behind atonal music.[37] Forte describes two main operations: transposition
and inversion. Transposition can be seen as a rotation of t either clockwise or anti-clockwise on
a circle, where each note of the chord is rotated equally. For example, if t = 2 and the chord is [0 3
6], transposition (clockwise) will be [2 5 8]. Inversion can be seen as a symmetry with respect to
the axis formed by 0 and 6. If we carry on with our example [0 3 6] becomes [0 9 6].

An important characteristic are the invariants, which are the notes which stay identical after a
transformation. No difference is made between the octave in which the note is played so that, for
example, all C♯s are equivalent, no matter the octave in which they actually occur. This is why the
12-note scale is represented by a circle. This leads us to the definition of the similarity between
two chords which considers the subsets and the interval content of each chord.[37]

Reception and legacy

Controversy over the term itself

The term "atonality" itself has been controversial. Arnold Schoenberg, whose music is generally
used to define the term, was vehemently opposed to it, arguing that "The word 'atonal' could only
signify something entirely inconsistent with the nature of tone... to call any relation of tones
atonal is just as farfetched as it would be to designate a relation of colors aspectral or
acomplementary. There is no such antithesis".[38]

Composer and theorist Milton Babbitt also disparaged the term, saying "The works that followed,
many of them now familiar, include the Five Pieces for Orchestra, Erwartung, Pierrot Lunaire, and
they and a few yet to follow soon were termed 'atonal,' by I know not whom, and I prefer not to
know, for in no sense does the term make sense. Not only does the music employ 'tones,' but it
employs precisely the same 'tones,' the same physical materials, that music had employed for
some two centuries. In all generosity, 'atonal' may have been intended as a mildly analytically
derived term to suggest 'atonic' or to signify 'a-triadic tonality', but, even so there were infinitely
many things the music was not".[39]

"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",
"multi-tonal", "free-tonal" and "without tonal center" instead of "atonal" have not gained broad
acceptance.

Criticism of the concept of atonality

Composer Anton Webern held that "new laws asserted themselves that made it impossible to
designate a piece as being in one key or another".[40] Composer Walter Piston, on the other hand,
said that, out of long habit, whenever performers "play any little phrase they will hear it in some
key—it may not be the right one, but the point is they will play it with a tonal sense. ... [T]he more I
feel I know Schoenberg's music the more I believe he thought that way himself. ... And it isn't only
the players; it's also the listeners. They will hear tonality in everything".[41]

Donald Jay Grout similarly doubted whether atonality is really possible, because "any
combination of sounds can be referred to a fundamental root". He defined it as a fundamentally
subjective category: "atonal music is music in which the person who is using the word cannot
hear tonal centers".[42]

One difficulty is that even an otherwise "atonal" work, tonality "by assertion" is normally heard on
the thematic or linear level. That is, centricity may be established through the repetition of a
central pitch or from emphasis by means of instrumentation, register, rhythmic elongation, or
metric accent.[43]

Criticism of atonal music

Swiss conductor, composer, and musical philosopher Ernest Ansermet, a critic of atonal music,
wrote extensively on this in the book Les fondements de la musique dans la conscience humaine
(The Foundations of Music in Human Consciousness),[44] where he argued that the classical
musical language was a precondition for musical expression with its clear, harmonious
structures. Ansermet argued that a tone system can only lead to a uniform perception of music if
it is deduced from just a single interval. For Ansermet this interval is the fifth.[45]

In France, on December 20, 2012, French pianist Jérôme Ducros gave a conference at the
Collège de France entitled Atonalism. And after?[46] as part of Karol Beffa's chair of artistic
creation. He compares the discursive properties of tonal language and non-tonal languages,
largely giving the advantage to the former, and considers the return of tonality as inevitable. This
conference sparked a heated controversy in the French musical world.

Examples

An example of atonal music would be Arnold Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire", which is a song
cycle composed in 1912. The work uses a technique called "Sprechstimme" or spoken singing,
and the music is atonal, meaning that there is no clear tonal center or key. Instead, the notes of
the chromatic scale function independently of each other, and the harmonies do not follow the
traditional tonal hierarchy found in classical music. The result is a dissonant and jarring sound
that is quite different from the harmonies found in tonal music.

See also

Emancipation of the dissonance

Jazz improvisation

Klangfarbenmelodie

Neue Musik

Noise music

List of atonal compositions

References

1. Lansky and Perle 2001. 11. Kohlhase 1983.

2. Kennedy 1994. 12. Rülke 2000.

3. Lansky, Perle, and Headlam 2001. 13. Zimmerman 2002.

4. Forte 1977, p. 1. 14. Bertram 2000.

5. Rahn 1980, p. 1. 15. Orvis 1974.

6. Rahn 1980, p. 2. 16. Obert 2004.

7. Baker 1986. 17. Griffiths 2001.

8. Baker 1980. 18. Haydin and Esser 2009.

9. Parks 1985. 19. Meyer 1967, 241.

10. Teboul 1995–96. 20. Du Noyer 2003, p. 272.