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Atonality

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Musical genres, styles,
eras and events

   Atonality describes music not conforming 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 George Antheil, Béla Bartók, John Cage,
   Carlos Chávez, Aaron Copland, Roberto Gerhard, Alberto Ginastera, Alois
   Haba, Josef Matthias Hauer, Carl Ruggles, Luigi Russolo, Roger
   Sessions, Nikos Skalkottas, Toru Takemitsu, Edgard Varèse, and others,
   including jazz artists such as Anthony Braxton, Ornette Coleman, John
   Coltrane, and Cecil Taylor (Radano 1993, 108-109), have written music
   that is described as atonal, and many traditional composers “flirted
   with atonality,” in the words of Leonard Bernstein.

History of atonality

   While music without a tonal centre 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
   between 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 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 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 colour 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 centre were explored and named. A
   vocabulary described as musical set theory encompasses all pitch and
   pitch-class sets, whether used in tonal, atonal, modal, or other music.
   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.

Controversy over the term itself

   The appropriateness of the term "atonality" has been controversial.
   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. . . .
   [T]o 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). For some, the term
   continues to carry negative connotations.

   "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 centre" 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 (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.

Criticism of atonal music

   Composer Anton von 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), whereas musicologist Robert Fink has stated that all
   music is perceived as having a tonal centre .

   Famous 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 (Ansermet
   1961) 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. For Ansermet, 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 the incomprehensible (to Ansermet) modern
   atonal music, by choosing interval relations seemingly at random, could
   not achieve such an impact, ethos and catharsis for an 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. In other
   words, both good and bad music can be created under any system, or
   without using one at all. Serialism itself has been taken up by a few
   tonal composers as a modest replacement for the common practice
   tendencies of certain traditional forms to conform to certain tonal
   expectations.

   Composers of the American minimalist movement, such as Steve Reich,
   Philip Glass and John Adams, were reacting against what they saw as the
   stilted academicism of American university composition departments.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonality"
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