Is atonal music dead?

In an effort to lift the discussions under this thread away from the trivial questions that seem to characterise it (ie What is the 2nd greatest sonata written by a left-handed female composer?), I pose the following question.

Is atonal music dead: has it passed on; has it's used-by-date long gone; is it a dead-end and a waste of time?Does it offer nothing for the future of classical music?

Obviously my opinion is yes otherwise I would not have posed the question in this form.

You could consider this fact. The earliest atonal pieces were written in the early 1900's. A century has passed since then. This is longer than the entire Classical or Romantic periods. If you consider, as I do, that atonality is essentially a style of music, then stylistically it has run its course and has nothing new to offer. Over the period of a hundred years it has failed miserably to find a significant audience. Now it is a worn-out style without an audience. Obviously, this does not mean you cannot as a composer use atonality. The issue is more about what composers should do to create an audience for new classical music. Atonality clearly will not do this. It's record of failure in this area is indisputable.

Atonal music has a big audience. Go to festivals like Donaueschingen, but buy your tickets half a year in advance, because it will be booked out very quickly. I've been to much smaller and less popular concerts/festivals than that and have often had a hard time getting a seat, and that in large concert halls. And I assure you, you won't find any traditionally tonal music in Donaueschingen.

And if a composer like Hans-Werner Henze (a serialist, mind you, even though a "moderate" one) premieres a new opera, there are sold-out opera houses and standing ovations. (Check out the reviews for Phaedra.)

The audience only seems so small because we are comparing it with the audiences other kinds of music have. But keep in mind that people have never listened so much to music as in the 20th/21th centuries. Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were (somewhat) successful, but their audiences weren't huge by today's standards.

There are quite a few "atonal" composers of today who easily have an audience as large as those composers of the past had in their lifetime.

I don't like the term "atonal" too much though, as there's no good way to define it and there are many so-called "atonal" works that certainly have a clear tonality, just not 19th century one made of major and minor keys etc.

But it's almost ridiculous to think the music you probably call atonal has "nothing more to offer". Non-tonality is the general case, CPP tonality is a specific system. Saying that -not- using a very specific method (in contrast to the more general case) is worn out, is saying that CPP tonality is the ultimate and perfect system, the epitome of art with which nothing can possibly compete. Sounds quite narrow-minded to me. Art is always changing, eveloping, branching out. It's natural that at some point you reach something that can no longer be described with the musical terms of the European 19th century. It doesn't matter if this new thing sounds like Sch

i dislike avant-garde. i dont think it is music. that is just my opinion though. other people may find structure in it. but i dont think that nonchalant whistling while driving a car recorded in a stunt drive facility is music. Seriously. Sound effects are sound effects. music is music.

now in regards to atonal. no its not dead.

i dislike avant-garde. i dont think it is music. that is just my opinion though. other people may find structure in it. but i dont think that nonchalant whistling while driving a car recorded in a stunt drive facility is music. Seriously. Sound effects are sound effects. music is music.

now in regards to atonal. no its not dead.

Avant-garde is a relative term, there's nothing concrete about it at all. Rite of Spring was avant-garde when it premiered, then Boulez was, then Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Avant-garde has no meaning, as does "atonal". I agree with Gardener, I hate that word.

atonal is a very strict term, and I don't think I know a lot of pieces strictly atonal. Gardener is talking about a serialist composer, not an atonalist! :D

But, exactly like Gardener, if by atonal you mean dissonance, lack of major/minor, weird harmonies, not based in triads, etc, then no by all means it's not dead at all! If you actually mean the early forms of atonality then the world has probably moved on.

I could also argue that in some parts of the world (London for example), serialism never caught on and moved on, as well as musique concrete (except Birmingham). While, as Gardener points out (yes, I'll stop refering to him at some point! :D) in other places you need t obook 6 months in advance! So...

Originally posted by ablyth

You could consider this fact. The earliest atonal pieces were written in the early 1900's. A century has passed since then. This is longer than the entire Classical or Romantic periods. If you consider, as I do, that atonality is essentially a style of music, then stylistically it has run its course and has nothing new to offer.

I find this comment very interesting, ablyth, because we regularly discuss neo-classical, neo-romantic, and even neo-baroque music. These styles have been around much longer that serialism or atonality, yet they still have possibilities to be explored. A lot of these possibilities include fusions of styles, mixing past with present. Furthermore, the styles and "rules" of atonality are constantly changing as well. An example in another style would be Adams's Short Ride in a Fast Machine. This piece is a lot more active and "interesting" than some of the more strictly minimalist pieces by Glass (esp. the earlier works). I do believe there is life for atonality and serialism, just like any other style.

Absolutely not, unless you take "atonality" to mean serialism, which is most decidedly dead as a style.

Many, perhaps most, living composers of serious concert music work within a style that is more or less wholly atonal. Including those who only partially incorporate atonality into their works, that's almost certainly a majority. Granted, many of these are old-guard modernists like Milton Babbitt or Pierre Boulez, but many are also not.

As for the future, I think tonality and atonality will continue to coexist as they do today, at least as far as art music is concerned. Atonality is a technique rather than a style, and is no more a period in itself than is tonality or modality. Therefore, it will not go out of style simply because it has been in use for a century, although specific atonal styles undoubtedly will (think about the decline of twelve-tone music in the last thirty years, for instance).

And goodridge_winners, atonal music doesn't necessarily need to be avant-garde. Many composers (Ralph Shapey and Shulamit Ran spring to mind) have combined essentially non-tonal languages with very conservative forms and styles. And isn't it a little arrogant to claim that something "isn't music" simply because it doesn't appeal to you? There are many composers and individual pieces I can't stand, but I've never believed them to be non-music simply because of my dislike for them.

True, absolute atonalism I never found appealing. And I don't think it had very much "life" to begin with. But the problem is is that very few pieces are true atonal. Most modern music isn't "atonal" so much as "unconventionally tonal". So it we're talking about the latter rather than the former than yes, I think there is still a lot of room to explore. I myself am always trying to push the bounds of what I can pull off while still remaining tonal. I don't believe in limiting one's music to diatonic scales. I believe that approach to music is boring. But at the same time, I don't see the point in rejecting those rules outright just to be non-comfortist.

Anyway, yes. I still think there is much to be discovered in music and we'll never discover these things until we can get past the simple "tonal" "atonal" labels.

If this is contradictory to anything I've said in the forum previously, I apologize. This subject comes up quite a lot on YC and some of the posts I've read have swayed my opinion quite a bit.

When I hear the word "atonal" I immediately think twelve-tone. Given that, I think it's a dead end as a foundation for composition but not as a compositional tool. There is a very definite effect, to me, that is possible with tone rows that doesn't need to be tossed out but I don't see how you can build entire pieces out of this technique and not have them all sound pretty similar. I remember listening to Lulu and thinking that it was interesting and created a sort of horror movie effect but I still could never become attached to anything that was going on. My favorite parts of music in this style are always the sections where tone rows and regular tonality get mixed together.

If by atonal you mean anything besides twelve-tone music.. well, I'm not knowledgeable enough about that to have a good opinion.

Atonality is no more a style than tonality is. I'd say it's more like a palette. Then by definition atonality is a very limited palette, whereas tonality makes up the rest.

I think it would be fair to say that Serialism is dead. That avenue has been explored to great extent by Stockhausen, Boulez, Nono, Babbitt and others, and has been proved to be a rather dead end. That is not to say that good music has not been created along this journey: Boulez's 3rd sonata and Structures are two of my favourites.

Atonality, on the other hand, has such a loose definition that it might be fair to say it has never been alive. It is difficult to really address where functional harmony ends, and "non-functional" harmony begins. It was a gradual phasing process - most people cite Wagner as the biggest exponent of this, but even with Schubert, the utilisation of major and minor tonality as interchangable, and remote key relationships differs wildly from the rigours of Bach.

The difficulty with all of this is trying to find a definition of tonality itself. How far does the concept extend? Most of the music of Stravinsky does not have conventional functional relationships (if it does he is making a point, usually), but major and minor chords are all there. If tonality is merely the perception of major and minor, then traces of it can be found in the swirling textures of Schoenberg. If it is more specific, the idea of a key center/heirachy, with tonic and dominant homing points, then this scores Schoenberg off the list. But where does Hindemith's Ludus Tonalis fall? Ultimately, we are stuck putting composers into boxes. With the vibrancy of expression in the 20th century, most of the time it is difficult to generalise, even within one era of a composer's career, or even a single piece.

So if the basis of tonality is causing us problems of definition, then maybe we should be looking to rid ourselves of its very foundation - the perfect fifth. This was the sound that Pythagoras saw as being most perfect, and from it constructed the first true chromatic scale. But why divide the octave into 12? Why not some other number? And once this is done, once a piece can be written and performed for an instrument that divides the octave into some other number, we will no longer be able to call it tonal or atonal - it will be neither: a middleground, or perhaps orthoganal to conventional tonality itself.

But nothing can be orthogonal to tonality: it is so ingrained into us as listeners to western music that we cannot but relate back what we hear to something that we have heard before, which sounded "nice". We are faced with the paradox: if music is just sound events organised in time, how is it that there are some "nice" musics, and some "not so nice" musics? How is it that we can be so steeped in a tradition that forces us to walk forwards looking backwards?

Ultimately, composers will write music that expresses the things they wish to express. This will occur in any number of ways, and I hope some new ways will be formulated, but, and this is a significant but, I feel it is crucial to embrace the expressive premises and stanpoints of each individual composer on his or her own terms. Humans are complex things; we make complex art. Surely the only way to view it is in terms of its own complexity, its own idiosyncracity. Each piece of art exists within a context, yes, but it also exists for itself, as a unique kind of experience and formulation. And over simplifying will not solve anything (and I think creates more problems in the long run).

Rather than worrying about the "future", maybe go and find out what's actually happening now. Composers now write some amazing stuff and a lot of crap as well. With sufficient interest in current composition, maybe the "future" of music will be obvious. Maybe it will be not. Personally, I hope it won't be.

L.

cygnusdei :

Heh...

Quite funny... cause your "by definition" doesn't appear to be that at all! It's your abstract thought really! At least in the way you formated and expressed your first sentence.

Well, isn't the definition of atonal "without tonal center" ? This can be achieved by following strict rules, breaking any of which could compromise the 'atonality'. Thus my 'by definition' of atonality being a very limited palette. Why funny?

Atonality is no more a style than tonality is.

So tonality and atonality are both styles! This is what I read here (remember I'm Greek! :D)

You didn't mention the definition of atonality (which is correct in the strict sense, btw, and I agree), you just said the above, which didn't make sense.

Now with your 2nd post it does! ;)

Strict rules wasn't what "atonality" started out at. It was an idea of liberation from certain boundaries and hierarchies. That later different rules were invented to assist with this kind of composing is irrelevant, as it was merely a tool.

The definition of tonality as "having tonal centres" also is very common, but very ambiguous. How long does a tonal centre have to dominate for the music to become "tonal"? Is a tonal centre that happened "by chance" without intention of the composer enough to create "tonality"? Is every kind of weighting or hierarchy between notes the same as "tonal centres"? Can there be more than one "tonal centre"? Is music only "tonal" if the tonal centres are actually perceived by the listener (and thus subjective)?

It is also incredibly easy to compose music without tonal centres of any kind, which is stylistically completely different from what is usually called "atonal music". You can easily achieve that by use of pentatonic or wholetone scales, for example.

There's so much music that has nothing to do with serialism or even the general sound of the New Vienna School, but which still clearly doesn't strive towards one single gravity tone.

Without a clear definition of what "tonal centres" actually are, we won't get very far.

One further "statistical" explanation: Assume a music where every pitch is randomly chosen by a computer. You have to accept this as the average case. There's a tiny chance something like a Beethoven symphony will be produced and a tiny chance a serial piece will be produced. But if we look at the average output of such a machine and determine whether it sounds tonal or atonal to us, we can easily judge which is the more basic, or natural case. And I assure you, most people (as we're making a statistical example here) certainly wouldn't classify this music as tonal. There won't be tonal centres over the whole piece. Something that resembles a tonal centre may pop up now and then, but it will soon vanish again.

The statistical average of "mindlessly produced music" is not tonal, so any musical creation that is tonal must be a conscious limitation of the possible material.

It is true that many "atonal composers" of the 20th century sought to avoid any hint of tonal centres. But it is a wrong assumption that their music would have become tonal if they hadn't avoided major chords by all costs. But a large part of the listeners are so trained to hear in traditional tonality, that they hear tonality -everywhere-, even where it doesn't exist, unless you try your best to work against it. Sch

I personally think that music is now finally at a state of relative equilibrium, i.e. that composers can do practically do whatever the heck they want and still get away with it. Atonality, tonality, twelve-tone row, tonality, whole-tone, whatever you feel like, is all valid today. That's what I feel.

One further "statistical" explanation: Assume a music where every pitch is randomly chosen by a computer. You have to accept this as the average case. There's a tiny chance something like a Beethoven symphony will be produced and a tiny chance a serial piece will be produced. But if we look at the average output of such a machine and determine whether it sounds tonal or atonal to us, we can easily judge which is the more basic, or natural case. And I assure you, most people (as we're making a statistical example here) certainly wouldn't classify this music as tonal. There won't be tonal centres over the whole piece. Something that resembles a tonal centre may pop up now and then, but it will soon vanish again.

Definition is a tricky thing because implications follow it. In this case you are alluding to a consensus approach (using a panel of observers) to ascertain (a)tonality. I believe this is very useful for a lot of things, including determining the value of a piece of music (by way of public reception). But I don't think it is necessary to resort to consensus to define (a)tonality. If anything the very same program used to generate the random samples can run an evaluation algorithm, thus providing objective, unbiased statistics.

Just to say what I always seem to say, since I enjoy repeating myself more than goddamn Philip Glass, no style dies. No aesthetic dies.

scraggy just goes out of fashion, but that doesn't mean you can't revive it. Audiences? Bleh, if it were for them we'd rather all be writing the next pop-hit, rather than even talking about atonality!

Not that there's anything wrong with pop.

Avant-garde is a relative term, there's nothing concrete about it at all. Rite of Spring was avant-garde when it premiered, then Boulez was, then Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Avant-garde has no meaning, as does "atonal". I agree with Gardener, I hate that word.

I knew that someone would get me up on that one. I meant avant-garde in todays context. Particuarly (and i said this),

nonchalant whistling while driving a car recorded in a stunt drive facility

Sounds are Sounds. Music is Music.

Ordering sounds from A to Z to make a soundtrack, is not music. It is a sound effect reel.

Ordering notes from B - Q, back to A and down through to 9...that, though it would sound odd, is music...because there would be defined pitches.

Music IS sound, they aren't exclusive...

Is all sound music? Eh, that's all opinion and I'm not in the business of making absolute boundaries for an art form. I hear music when I walk around my university and hear construction workers working on whatever. Others hear music in ambient sounds as well. Are bird calls music? I think so.

Atonal music certainly is not dead, but the idea that it is the only musical language of this time period that need be explored and expanded is quite stale and dated.

There will always be new tonalists.

Definition is a tricky thing because implications follow it. In this case you are alluding to a consensus approach (using a panel of observers) to ascertain (a)tonality. I believe this is very useful for a lot of things, including determining the value of a piece of music (by way of public reception). But I don't think it is necessary to resort to consensus to define (a)tonality. If anything the very same program used to generate the random samples can run an evaluation algorithm, thus providing objective, unbiased statistics.

That is totally correct, but note that I didn't -only- say that the majority of listeners would classify it as atonal, but also that such randomly generated music wouldn't have a tonal centre. Would you classify totally random music as tonal, yourself?

I'm pleased to have stirred up a bit of passion.

Gardener, I am not sure what CPP tonality is so you will have to explain it to me. However I don't think you can say that non-tonality is the "general case" unless you are referring to a very small clique, i.e. people who visit Donaueschingen. I don't think I was suggesting that tonality is the perfect system. It is more that, as you say, in comparison with the audiences that other kinds of music have, it is evident that atonal music will never be an audience winner for classical music.

To place this issue within a broader context, it is also evident (at least to me) that classical music programmes (live concerts, radio broadcasts, cd releases) are dominated by dead European males and this has been the case for a long time. Classical music in general has all the characteristics of a museum artifact. We accept this as normal but this was not always the case. For example, 100 years ago there were far fewer concerts but most live performances were concerned with new works by living composers not with plodding out the usual warhorses. I am not suggesting that this change is the result of composers writing atonal music. However, it appears to me that classical music in general needs to change. I think that this has to be composer led. Composers need to write from where audiences tastes are not from some theoretical or academic starting point. I suppose I am suggesting that atonality is not a good starting from which to imagine the future of classical music.

As some perceptive posts have pointed out you could consider atonality a technique that forms part of the composers pallette rather than a style. And it is true that techniques never disappear they just come and go and come back again before being put back in the bottom drawer for a while. Obviously a composer has the freedom to explore any technique that suits their expressive purposes and their purpose is likely to change over time.

This then brings me to my next point which is about how we should conceive of what we do. Presumably most composers start creating music for self-expression as their first impetus. However it is reasonable to expect that once you get beyond the need just to express yourself, you should aim to communicate. I would expect that most people sign up to a forum so that they can communicate with the like-minded and share ideas. But there is a wider world and one of my concerns is that because tonality is so pervasive in the world, it needs to be any composers starting point if they are going to communicate with the world at large. Perhaps some composers only wish to communicate with likeminded theorists. Personally I wish to reach a lay audience so I find myself more concerned with where they are in terms of their musical understanding. Of course there is plenty of tonal rubbish around. No technique guarantees the value of what you do.

- CPP tonality means "common practice period" tonality. It isn't a really good term, as there's no clear "common practice period" in the first place. Just read it as "major and minor tonality".

- I claimed non-tonality was the general case not in respect of the music actually played, but theoretically, considering all the possible kinds of music that -could- exist.

- One important reason why "classical" music is dominated so much by dead composers today in contrast to 200 years ago is the wide availability of it. Most people in Mozarts time had no clue of what had happened musically in the time before them, as there were no sound recordings and scores weren't distributed widely. You played and listened to the music of your time because that was the music that was most available. When people aren't "forced" to listen to something new, they often tend to be lazy and just listen to what they're already used to. The problem is that a great majority of musicians also support this "museum culture" by predominantly playing music of dead composers. That may not be the only reason, but I think it's an important part. However, I don't want to whine about all the people who don't listen to contemporary "concert music". The audience may be small compared to pop music or even Mozart's music, but it's still significant.

- You speak as if "audience oriented music" and "academic music" are the two only possible ways. But I think the majority of today's concert music (and even a large part of popular music) doesn't strictly fall in either of these categories. Where's the music that is simply there because the composer liked it most personally? Where's the "popular music" that also contains an intellectual approach? What if you write for an audience, but maybe not for a audience consisting of millions of people (say the people who write for Donaueschingen), or the people who write for a -really- small audience of, say, five "target people", or just a single person, themselves? They are all writing for an audience, just a different one. How big must your target audience be to "legitimate" your music? Is a small audience not worth a musical effort? Honestly, if all music was written with the intention of reaching as large an audience as possible we'd have a lot of music that sounds pretty much the same, and a great part of the music I enjoy listening to (well, probably ALL of it) simply wouldn't exist. I'd hate that, really. And you'd certainly be stuck without stuff like the late Beethoven string quartets.

- Also I quite agree with LDunn that our actual concern shouldn't be the future of music, predominantly. We simply don't know what it will be. What we -should- care about is writing great, original music -right now-. Music we want to hear and we want to compose, without worrying whether it will be the biggest success in music mankind has ever known.

- Edit: I didn't see your last post before I replied, so this is about "communicating with your music": What if the music you write is the thing you want to communicate?