The ending of Schoenberg's "George

Lieder" Op. 15/1 presents what would

be "extraordinary" chord in tonal
music, without the harmonic-
contrapuntal constraints of tonal
music (Forte 1977, 1). Play
Atonality
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or
key. Atonality, in this sense, usually describes compositions written
from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches
focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the
chromatic scale function independently of one another (Kennedy
1994). More narrowly, the term atonality describes music that does
not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies that characterized
classical European music between the seventeenth and nineteenth
centuries (Lansky, Perle, and Headlam 2001). "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" (Forte 1977, 1).
More narrowly still, the term is sometimes 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 (Lansky, Perle, and Headlam 2001). However, "[a]s a
categorical label, 'atonal' generally means only that the piece is in the Western tradition and is not 'tonal' " (Rahn
1980, 1), although there are longer periods, e.g., medieval, renaissance, and modern modal musics to which this
definition does not apply. "[S]erialism arose partly as a means of organizing more coherently the relations used in
the preserial 'free atonal' music. ... Thus many useful and crucial insights about even strictly serial music depend
only on such basic atonal theory" (Rahn 1980, 2).
Late 19th- and early 20th-century composers such as Alexander Scriabin, Claude Debussy, Bla Bartk, Paul
Hindemith, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, and Edgard Varse have written music that has been described,
in full or in part, as atonal (Baker 1980, 1986; Bertram 2000; Griffiths 2001; Kohlhase 1983; Lansky and Perle
2001; Obert 2004; Orvis 1974; Parks 1985; Rlke 2000; Teboul 199596; Zimmerman 2002).
Contents
1 History
1.1 Free atonality
2 Controversy over the term itself
3 Composing atonal music
4 Criticism of the concept of atonality
5 Criticism of atonal music
6 See also
7 Sources
8 Further reading
9 External links
History
While music without a tonal center had been written previously, for example Franz Liszt's Bagatelle sans
tonalit of 1885, it is with the twentieth 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" between the late nineteenth century and
early twentieth century in classical music. This situation had come about historically through the increasing use
over the course of the nineteenth century of
ambiguous chords, less probable harmonic inflections, and the more unusual melodic and rhythmic
inflections possible within the style[s] of tonal music. The distinction between the exceptional and
the normal became more and more blurred; and, as a result, there was a concomitant loosening of
the syntactical bonds through which tones and harmonies had been related to one another. The
connections between harmonies were uncertain even on the lowestchord-to-chordlevel. 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. (Meyer 1967, 241)
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 (19171922) 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, but his student, Anton Webern, 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 (Du
Noyer 2003, 272). 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. (Westergaard 1963, 109)
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 (du Noyer 2003, 272).
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.
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 innovation.
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, including
Elliott Carter, Gyrgy Ligeti, and Witold Lutosawski. After Schoenberg's death, Igor Stravinsky began to write
music with a mixture of serial and tonal elements (du Noyer 2003, 271). 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 (Xenakis 1971, 204).
Free atonality
The twelve-tone technique was preceded by Schoenberg's freely atonal pieces of 19081923, 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" (Perle 1977, 2).
The twelve-tone technique was also preceded by nondodecaphonic serial composition used independently in
the works of Alexander Scriabin, Igor Stravinsky, Bla Bartk, Carl Ruggles, and others (Perle 1977, 37).
"Essentially, Schoenberg and Hauer systematized and defined for their own dodecaphonic purposes a pervasive
technical feature of 'modern' musical practice, the ostinato" (Perle 1977, 37)
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" (Schoenberg 1978,
432).
"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.
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" (Perle 1962, 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 (Seeger 1930).
Further, Perle agrees with Oster (1960) and Katz (1945) 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"
(Perle 1962, 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" (Perle 1962, 1). 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 (DeLone and Wittlich 1975, 36272).
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" (Perle
1962, 910).
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" (Swift 198283, 272).
Another approach of composition techniques for atonal music is given by Allen Forte who developed the theory
behind atonal music (Forte 1977). Whereas in tonal music, chords belonged to the same scale, in atonal music
different operations on the chords are defined. Because of the lack of tonality, all twelve notes of the scale are
considered including sharps as well. It is useful to represent these notes on a circle where each note is
associated with a number (0 is A, 1 is A, 2 is B, 3 is C, and so on). No distinction is made between the scales
at different octaves meaning that an A is always noted 0 whatever octave it belongs to. Starting from a random
chord or pitch class, Forte describes two main operations: transposition an inversion. These can be easily
visualized on the circle above. Transposition can be seen as a rotation of t either clockwise or anti-clockwise,
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].
In this case, the chord is determined by three factors which are the choice of the notes also called pitch class,
the cardinal number which is the number of notes in the chord, and the interval content of the chord. To
determine if two chords are equivalent, the prime form is defined. This prime form is just a standard way of
writing down the chord, in a normal order. First, the pitch class indexes increase from left to right. Secondly, the
circular permutation (permutation obtained by placing the last element in the first position of the pitch class)
chosen is that with the smallest difference between the first and last note of the chord. If that is not enough to
differentiate the chords, the chord with the least difference between the two first notes is chosen as the prime
form. Two chords are equivalent if they can be reduced to the same prime form by transposition or inversion
followed by transposition. There are some chords which are not equivalent but have an identical interval content,
these are known as z-related pairs.
An important characteristic are the invariants which are the notes which stay identical after a transformation. It
should be noted that no difference is made between the octave in which the note is played so that, for example,
all Cs 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 (Forte 1977).
These equivalent chords,invariants, z-related pairs, identical subsets, all give a continuity to the musical piece
and compensate for the lack of tonality by defining new equivalence relations between chords.
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" (Webern 1963, 51). 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 keyit 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" (Westergaard 1968, 15).
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" (Grout 1960, 647).
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 (Simms 1986, 65). It is noted however
that centricity in tonal music is established through hierarchical relationships of chords functions and scale
degrees, and is not directly related to instrumentation, or temporal aspects.
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 (French for: The
foundations of music in human consciousness) (Ansermet 1961), 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 (Mosch 2004, 96). Modern atonal music, incomprehensible to Ansermet,
chooses interval relations by means that seemed random to him, so he claimed it could not achieve such an
impact, ethos, or catharsis for an audience. Musics of other historical periods and cultures do not have these
language constraints or difficulties.
See also
Emancipation of the dissonance
Klangfarbenmelodie
Noise (music)
Jazz improvisation
List of atonal compositions
Sources
Ansermet, Ernest. 1961. Les fondements de la musique dans la conscience humaine. 2 v. Neuchtel:
La Baconnire.
Baker, James M. 1980. "Scriabin's Implicit Tonality". "Music Theory Spectrum" 2:118.
Baker, James M. 1986. The Music of Alexander Scriabin. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Bertram, Daniel Cole. 2000. "Prokofiev as a Modernist, 19071915". PhD diss. New Haven: Yale
University.
DeLone, Peter, and Gary Wittlich (eds.). 1975. Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music. Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-049346-5.
Du Noyer, Paul (ed.). 2003. "Contemporary", in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music: From Rock,
Jazz, Blues and Hip Hop to Classical, Folk, World and More, pp. 271272. London: Flame Tree
Publishing. ISBN 1-904041-70-1
Forte, Allen. 1977. The Structure of Atonal Music. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
ISBN 978-0-300-02120-2.
Griffiths, Paul. 2001. "Varse, Edgard [Edgar] (Victor Achille Charles)". The New Grove Dictionary of
Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan
Publishers.
Grout, Donald Jay. 1960. A History of Western Music. New York: W. W. Norton.
Katz, Adele T. 1945. Challenge to Musical Traditions: A New Concept of Tonality. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Reprint edition, New York: Da Capo, 1972.
Michael Kennedy. 1994. "Atonal." The Oxford Dictionary of Music. Oxford & New York: Oxford
University Press. ISBN 0-19-869162-9
Kohlhase, Hans. 1983. "Aussermusikalische Tendenzen im Frhschaffen Paul Hindemiths. Versuch uber
die Kammermusik Nr. 1 mit Finale 1921". Hamburger Jahrbuch fr Musikwissenschaft 6:183223.
Lansky, Paul, and George Perle. 2001. "Atonality 2: Differences between Tonality and Atonality". The
New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John
Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
Lansky, Paul, George Perle, and Dave Headlam. 2001. "Atonality". The New Grove Dictionary of
Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan
Publishers.
Meyer, Leonard B. 1967. Music, the Arts, and Ideas: Patterns and Predictions in Twentieth-
Century Culture. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. (Second edition 1994.)
Mosch, Ulrich. 2004. Musikalisches Hren serieller Musik: Untersuchungen am Beispiel von Pierre
Boulez' Le Marteau sans matre. Saarbrcken: Pfau-Verag.
Obert, Simon. 2004. "Zum Begriff Atonalitt: Ein Vergleich von Anton Weberns 'Sechs Bagatellen fr
Streichquartett' op. 9 und Igor Stravinskijs 'Trois pices pour quatuor cordes' ". In Das
Streichquartett in der ersten Hlfte des 20. Jahrhunderts: Bericht ber das Dritte Internationale
Symposium Othmar Schoeck in Zrich, 19. und 20. Oktober 2001. Schriftenreihe der Othmar
Schoeck-Gesellschaft 4, edited by Beat A. Fllmi and Michael Baumgartner. Tutzing: Schneider.
Orvis, Joan. 1974. "Technical and stylistic features of the piano etudes of Stravinsky, Bartk, and
Prokofiev". DMus Piano pedagogy: Indiana University.
Oster, Ernst. 1960. "Re: A New Concept of Tonality (?)", Journal of Music Theory 4:96.
Parks, Richard S. 1985. "Tonal Analogues as Atonal Resources and Their Relation to form in Debussy's
Chromatic Etude". Journal of Music Theory 29, no. 1 (Spring): 3360.
Perle, George. 1962. Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of
Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07430-0.
Perle, George. 1977. Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of
Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. Fourth Edition. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of
California Press. ISBN 0-520-03395-7.
Rahn, John. 1980. Basic Atonal Theory. New York: Longman, Inc. ISBN 0-582-28117-2.
Stegemann, Benedikt: Theory of Tonality. Theoretical Studies, Wilhelmshaven, Noetzel 2013, ISBN
978-3-7959-0963-5
Rlke, Volker. 2000. "Bartks Wende zur Atonalitt: Die "tudes" op. 18". Archiv fr
Musikwissenschaft 57, no. 3:24063.
Schoenberg, Arnold. 1978. Theory of Harmony, translated by Roy Carter. Berkeley & Los Angeles:
University of California Press.
Seeger, Charles. 1930. "On Dissonant Counterpoint." Modern Music 7, no. 4:2531.
Simms, Bryan R. 1986. Music of the Twentieth Century: Style and Structure. New York: Schirmer
Books. ISBN 0-02-872580-8.
Swift, Richard. 198283. "A Tonal Analog: The Tone-Centered Music of George Perle
(http://www.jstor.org/stable/832876)". Perspectives of New Music 21, nos. 1/2 (Fall-Winter/Spring-
Summer): 25784. (Subscription Access.)
Teboul, Jean-Claude. 199596. "Comment analyser le neuvime interlude en si du "Ludus tonalis" de
Paul Hindemith? (Hindemith ou Schenker?) ". Ostinato Rigore: Revue Internationale d'tudes
Musicales, nos. 67:21532.
Webern, Anton. 1963. The Path to the New Music, translated by Leo Black. Bryn Mawr.
Pennsylvania: Theodore Presser; London: Universal Edition.
Westergaard, Peter. 1963. "Webern and 'Total Organization': An Analysis of the Second Movement of
Piano Variations, Op. 27." Perspectives of New Music 1, no. 2 (Spring): 10720.
Westergaard, Peter. 1968. "Conversation with Walter Piston". Perspectives of New Music 7, no.1
(Fall-Winter) 317.
Xenakis, Iannis. 1971. Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition. Bloomington
and London: Indiana University Press. Revised edition, 1992. Harmonologia Series No. 6. Stuyvesant,
NY: Pendragon Press. ISBN 0-945193-24-6
Zimmerman, Daniel J. 2002. "Families without Clusters in the Early Works of Sergei Prokofiev". PhD
diss. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Further reading
Beach, David (ed.). 1983. "Schenkerian Analysis and Post-Tonal Music", Aspects of Schenkerian
Theory. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Dahlhaus, Carl. 1966. "Ansermets Polemik gegen Schnberg." Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik 127, no.
5:17983.
Forte, Allen. 1963. "Context and Continuity in an Atonal Work: A Set-Theoretic Approach".
Perspectives of New Music 1, no. 2 (Spring): 7282.
Forte, Allen. 1964. "A Theory of Set-Complexes for Music". Journal of Music Theory 8, no. 2
(Winter): 13683.
Forte, Allen. 1965. "The Domain and Relations of Set-Complex Theory". Journal of Music Theory 9,
no. 1 (Spring): 17380.
Forte, Allen. 1972. Sets and Nonsets in Schoenberg's Atonal Music. Perspectives of New Music 11,
no. 1 (FallWinter): 4364.
Forte, Allen. 1978. The Harmonic Organization of The Rite of Spring. New Haven : Yale University
Press. ISBN 978-0-300-02201-8.
Forte, Allen. 1978. "Schoenberg's Creative Evolution: The Path to Atonality". The Musical Quarterly
64, no. 2 (April): 13376.
Forte, Allen. 1980. "Aspects of Rhythm in Webern's Atonal Music". Music Theory Spectrum 2:90
109.
Forte, Allen. 1998. The Atonal Music of Anton Webern. New Haven and London: Yale University
Press. ISBN 978-0-300-07352-2.
Forte, Allen, and Roy Travis. 1974. "Analysis Symposium: Webern, Orchestral Pieces (1913):
Movement I ('Bewegt')". Journal of Music Theory 18, no. 1 (Spring, pp. 2-43
Krausz, Michael. 1984. "The Tonal and the Foundational: Ansermet on Stravinsky". The Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism 42:38386.
Philippot, Michel. 1964. "Ansermets Phenomenological Metamorphoses." Translated by Edward
Messinger. Perspectives of New Music 2, no. 2 (Spring-Summer): 12940. Originally published as
"Mtamorphoses Phnomnologiques."
(http://www.entretemps.asso.fr/Philippot/Ecrits/11.Metamorphoses.html) Critique. Revue Gnrale des
Publications Franaises et Etrangres, no. 186 (November 1962).
Radano, Ronald M. 1993. New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton's Cultural Critique Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
External links
An Introduction to Atonal Music Analysis (http://www.robertkelleyphd.com/12-tone.htm) by Robert T.
Kelly.
Atonality, Information, and the Politics of Perception
(http://www.thinkingapplied.com/tonality_folder/tonality.htm) by Lee Humphries
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Atonality&oldid=610541729"
Categories: Musical techniques Post-tonal music theory
This page was last modified on 28 May 2014 at 20:26.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may
apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia is a registered
trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.