A Discussion About Tonal and Atonal Music

First, Hecklaphone is categorically wrong. Second, Nirvana, your response doesn't seem to address why it's wrong, at least not to my satisfaction. Maybe you're going too easy on Heckla :P

Forget what we know about "prescriptive" structures in these various languages and styles of music. None of these formulaic systems of compositional style are "concrete," per se. "Common-practice tonality" DOES NOT base itself on ONE NOTE. Traditional western music centralizes and manipulates a diatonic sonority, usually either the Major or Minor tonalities of the style. A 'C' isn't the gravitational factor, it's the combination of C, E, and G or A, C, and E, for example, that are the focal points of the style, and these are only "gravitational" due to the relationship of the dominant/dissonant sonority to the tonic/consonant sonority. In short, we wouldn't say a piece is written in the "tone of C", we'd say the piece was written in the "key of C", the "key of C Major/Minor," etc. because we're referring to a sonority, whether applicable in an ensemble work or harmonically implicit in solo works.

That music is formulaic doesn't legitimate it. I could make up any set of guidelines for organizing pitches, rhythms, sonorities, etc, claim it's a language of music, and no one will have any way to say, "No, it's not." Traditional western music doesn't even require that we follow every single one of its "form, rules," etc, which is one reason why we learn about "exceptional" composers of the tradition like Bach, Beethoven, etc who more or less made their own rules rather than blindly following in others' footsteps - one good example is Wagner's Liebstod from Tristan where the climactic harmonic progression is actually a "regression" from a V to a IV - not exactly a "common practice" of traditional western music, but who honestly thinks in makes a difference at this point whether it makes the Liebstod "tonal" or "atonal" because of some "rule"? In this way, Nirvana, I think you're misunderstanding what is "legitimate" about contemporary music...

Just like these composers of traditional music just happened to refine their approach to music in an "aesthetically convincing way", so to speak, that's exactly what we do in contemporary music where no harmonic hierarchies or "rules" apply. We're losing sight of this in the discussion of tonal/atonal music. It's not an issue of whether rules are followed, whether one is more complex than the other. The greatest thing we can take away from the emergent contemporary styles of the 20th Century in western music is the understanding that these "rules" aren't rules at all... we don't need to follow them to create convincing music. We only need to appreciate why these theoretical principles exist, why they are relevant to us (if at all), and whether our music benefits from the application of these principles.

Thus ends another rant. -AA

Yes, I know that there is plenty of 'rule breaking' even in 'common practice.' That's why I added 'with common practice *maybe*' To be honest, I was just trying to give him a bit of a break since I've had a few critical replies to him in the past and I feel bad that I may be bullying a 10 (11?) year old. He said something that is sorta right-ish so I over-generalized.

Of course, common practice music isn't based on 'one note' I mean, I can't think of too many pieces from even the Classical era that don't at least modulate to the dominant at some point. And of course, sonata-form is largely based around contrasting key areas and harmonic polarity. And of course, while you did have many composers who used the major and minor modes of a single note interchangably, you also have people like Schumann who wrote music where the major and relative minor interchangably. Same collection of notes but different centers. Hard to say that's based on 'one note' at all so much as a harmonic field.

EDIT And though I can't speak for SSC, I think what his problem with 'tonal centers' are is not whether or not they exist but how difficult the term really is to define. I gave plenty of examples in one of my previous posts about music that uses a single pitch as a point of structural reference but really can't be considered 'tonal.' At least, not unless you broaden 'tonality' to such a broad sense that the term basically becomes useless anyway. I mean, sure, I guess 'tonality' and 'atonality' exist but each define such a broad spectrum of music that really doesn't tell you much about the actual music at all that... what's the point? You can't be told that a piece is 'atonal' and have any idea of what to expect about what it is going to be.

It also becomes a dangerous term precisely because kids will hear a few 20th century pieces they don't understand, hear that it's 'atonal', and develop a bias against the term 'atonal' itself rather than any specific music. Then, of course, you get kids who don't even have any idea about what 'atonality' even is and it becomes even more of a problem.

It also becomes a dangerous term precisely because kids will hear a few 20th century pieces they don't understand, hear that it's 'atonal', and develop a bias against the term 'atonal' itself rather than any specific music. Then, of course, you get kids who don't even have any idea about what 'atonality' even is and it becomes even more of a problem.

I think you're hitting a key point here, that the terminology (and I've said this before) is misleading at best. "Atonality" is such a useless word anyway to describe some music that, for the incredible majority of works within that particular pedagogy, RELY ON TONES AND RELATIONSHIPS AMONG OR BETWEEN TONES/SONORITIES/ETC. For me, tonality is tantamount to "musical language" in the general sense. There are inherent patterns that emerge in different styles, and these patterns emerge because of some kind of aesthetic relationship that happens to exist between any number of elements in music regardless of the style.

We can look at Stockhausen or Crumb and point out these emergent patterns... the substance of the aesthetic involved in their music... and clearly establish that a tonality exists within many of these works. It may not be the traditional, tertian, functional harmonic schema of Western Classicism, but simply resolving ourselves to call it Atonal is hardly useful. If anything it genuinely denigrates (often it completely disregards) the tonality that actually exists within the language of the composer. I know there are relationships among the sonorities I happen to use in some of my more contemporary work. I'm keenly aware of those relationships because my aesthetic is driven to use them.

I see no reason why anyone should bother pursuing an understanding of "atonality" when we should all invest more time in understanding the plethora of styles from the composers that inspire us. Those are the learning tools, not the over-reaching generalizations of one of the shortest, yet probably one of the most innovative periods of music history of the past 2000 years. No one can successfully come to "understand" this period of music as "atonality." It's simply not accurate or informative to even attempt to categorize music of this period given the diversity of emergent styles over the past 100 years. So, my advice would be to forget you ever heard the word "atonality." It's a word that fails to define itself and epically fails to offer any credible insight into music.

Well, I'm not exactly sure that the term atonality is truly devoid of any definition. I think it depends on how much you really want to complicate/simplify it. As we all learn in theory, particularly common practice, tones in a scale are 'believed' to lead to a root tone. This root tone is considered the basis of the scale - and thus the tonal center. In application to chords, it is 'believed' that the chords resolve to other -hopefully, more stable- chords. If you take this basic view of things... then atonality would be the intentional avoidance of this. Again, it really depends on how you want to complicate/simplify it. That said, again, I think that people should best just research and try their hand at all they possibly can. If you try it - all that will happen is you'll grow as a composer.

Ignoring the term "atonality" means ignoring, or at least not giving significance to, the large group of composers whose music is specifically reacting to what they perceive as atonality, and the vast majority of people who believe in such an idea. While the idea might not be completely waterproof, no concept is without it's contradictions. It's important to understand the history of the word "atonal" because it's a huge part of the history of music in the last 100 years (the word and the related social structures). We can't just ignore the idea because our music is inevitably affected by that history.

Shaun (AntiA) and I discussed this in private as well. And I think its important to note, also, that really outside of the Western Tradition the word itself is rather moot (though not so much so now with globalization). I mean, if we are referring to say African tribal music.. then, yes, the word atonality would have no meaning...

Let's not forget these are just labels.

Saying the word atonality is meaningless doesn't make the music it's supposed to represent non-existent. Instead, it just means we should probably find another better way to talk about that music or describe it.

As for the "tonal center" thing, same thing. It means whatever you want it to mean, as I've heard everyone give different definitions of it each with different implications. It simply means that when used I have to pay attention to the particular meaning or context, but it also can't be used as it was used here in "general" to describe what something is not (or lacks.)

As an example: when talking about Liszt's prelude&fugue in the name of Bach for organ, a prof mentioned it didn't have a "tonal center," but that it wasn't atonal at all. He then went on to explain what he meant with tonal center (it doesn't stay in any particular key, almost never resolves to a tonic of any sorts.) But that doesn't make it "atonal" by itself.

I think everyone ends up using the term in some way or another, and I have less problems with some usages, specially when the person takes time to explain themselves as to what exactly they're calling "tonal center."

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Now, I questioned the validity of the term "atonality," but it's not really the word itself, it's the implication. It could be called "bear" instead and the argument would still stand. This is why the only thing I would actually call "atonal" is Schoenberg & Co, from that particular circle of composers. Everything else has better descriptions, and the word ITSELF doesn't matter so long as the meaning properly describes the music.

If we narrow it down to just a small group of composers, then the word "atonal" begins to be useful. Same way that a historical label like "baroque" becomes useful the less composers you have to deal with, and so on. However, because of the definition of "atonal" in general terms, it also would overlap with a whole lot of other music from other composers, but which is actually entirely different. This is the same way as saying the "tonal" label would overlap with 14th century modal music, but it wouldn't be very practical to bunch Mozart and Machaut in the same group, like it wouldn't be practical to bunch Schnittke and Cage, or Boulez and Penderecki.

They're in the end just labels and ways to organize all this information so that it can be presented and sorted. If you're dealing with teaching people or writing papers on this, then having a solid set of terms you can rely on is priceless otherwise you'd spend most of your time trying to explain what you meant with everything and not actually communicate anything (the delivery would be crap.)

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If you want to scallop about labels, you can for example oppose the fact we have a "classical" period in music viewed from the broken perspective of early 19th century "musicology" where basically Bach was seen as the beginning of music altogether, Mozart and Haydn as the paradigm that everyone should follow and Beethoven as extremely avant garde. Some of the labels are fossils that stuck for one dumb reason or another, and even if we use the old label, the meanings attached with it are basically gone these days. There's no serious musicologist that would argue the same views that a 19th century theorist would, specially in light of all the history we have access to now, and so on, but we still use the labels regardless.

"Atonality" is also a fossil word in the same sense, since it kind of falls apart with the further progression of music which it wasn't meant to actually predict much the same way that anyone can claim that whatever newer/older composer than Mozart is the paradigm to follow and assign the label "classic" to it instead, all this stuff has less to do with the music itself and more to do with shifting trends in the people actually making these labels.

Lets all go have milkshakes instead!

I'm game for a milkshake.

The brain freeze isn't nearly as mind-numbingly ridiculous as this thread.

But is a brain-freeze atonal?

Ignoring the term "atonality" means ignoring, or at least not giving significance to, the large group of composers whose music is specifically reacting to what they perceive as atonality, and the vast majority of people who believe in such an idea. While the idea might not be completely waterproof, no concept is without it's contradictions. It's important to understand the history of the word "atonal" because it's a huge part of the history of music in the last 100 years (the word and the related social structures). We can't just ignore the idea because our music is inevitably affected by that history.

All "atonal" amounted to for most of these composers you might be referring to (assuming we're talking about composers following the 2nd Viennese school) was a shift in thought from traditional diatonicism, chromaticism, and generally tertian harmonic functionality to something less antiquated and more representative of their generation and the events of their times. Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima is a good representation of this. As Gardener pointed out in another thread (or maybe this one, can't remember), a lot of these composers felt it disingenuous to return to antiquity, to a focus on "beauty" or something, when so much tragedy in the world was occurring.

I don't think it's very accurate to say ignoring the term "atonality" is tantamount to ignoring the struggles these people faced, the raw emotions they were conveying through their work in nuanced ways that avoided traditional methods of composition. I think ignoring "atonality" is ignoring the generalizations that are often made about works that, while aren't antiquated, do operate under some kind of evident structure of relationships among the various elements of music. We can't call these works "atonal" given the literal contradictions, and even taking the general understanding that "tonality" equates to just about any syntax where relationships exist among tones and sonorities, it makes no sense to say works that are evidently structured - where relationships exist among the various elements of music - should be called "atonal." Doing so is deceptive and misleading, and that's why we should ignore "tonality" and "atonality" as descriptive words because they carry only the meaning one happens to imprint upon them when it suits their individual purpose.

But is a brain-freeze atonal?

:hmmm:

I think it depends what kind of milkshake it is. I mean, chocolate or vanilla would be tonal, since the focus there is on a central flavor, thus resulting in a tonal brain freeze. However, if you get a chocolate/vanilla mix, for example, there is no dominant flavor, thus resulting in an atonal brain freeze.

;)

Nah. Modern composers write tonal stuff too.

So, to sum it up, the more modern day you get, the MORE atonal composers

;)

Okay, never mind that, but why don't we just have a friendly discussion about the actual topic?

Oh, I forgot... that won't be possible :veryunsure:

Just a thought

There's more atonal composers? Has there been a composer census that I haven't bee included on?

Yup. :ermm:

You're not in "the know" enough to be included. It's a conspiracy. :P

:hmmm:

I think it depends what kind of milkshake it is. I mean, chocolate or vanilla would be tonal, since the focus there is on a central flavor, thus resulting in a tonal brain freeze. However, if you get a chocolate/vanilla mix, for example, there is no dominant flavor, thus resulting in an atonal brain freeze.

;)

But as far as I know, Brain-freezes don't include tones...

But as far as I know, Brain-freezes don't include tones...

Does that mean unpitched percussion music is atonal?

There's no point in referring to non-pitched instruments as "atonal" because the distinction isn't even necessary. Any non-pitched instrument will lack "tones" in the traditional sense.

But all of this seems rather pedantic. In marching percussion instruments, we refer to crash cymbals as "cymbals" and snare drums as "snares", but we often call quad/quint toms as "tenors" and bass drums as "basses", so it's all a wash. It's an instrument family like any other, and we're so used to thinking of instrument families in a similar way to how we think of four-voice choirs - SATB. Snares and Cymbals ~ Soprano and Alto voices; Tenors and Basses ~ Tenor and Bass voices.

It's very generic to think in these terms, but w/e.

Yes, but "non-pitched" percussion are pitched. They're just of "indefinite" pitch. So they don't "lack tones" (which would have made it atonal in the literal meaning of the word!), they just don't have standard pitches.

How about if you apply some of Cowell's rhythmic ideas into percussion music -- then you have "rhythm harmonies" based on the harmonic series and functional tonality. Is that still atonal?!

Yes, but "non-pitched" percussion are pitched. They're just of "indefinite" pitch. So they don't "lack tones" (which would have made it atonal in the literal meaning of the word!), they just don't have standard pitches.

How about if you apply some of Cowell's rhythmic ideas into percussion music -- then you have "rhythm harmonies" based on the harmonic series and functional tonality. Is that still atonal?!

No, non-pitched percussion are without pitch. Otherwise, they wouldn't be called 'non-pitched' percussion.

Hmm, last time I checked (which was 30 seconds ago), Berlioz refers to them as instruments of "indeterminate pitch" in his book on orchestration. As does Adler, etc.

You have percussion instruments of indeterminate pitch and percussion instruments of definite pitch.

Seems to be that anyone writing a book understands that "unpitched" percussion are pitched.

I mean, they vibrate at a certain frequencey -- hence a certain pitch.

Hmm, last time I checked (which was 30 seconds ago), Berlioz refers to them as instruments of "indeterminate pitch" in his book on orchestration. As does Adler, etc.

You have percussion instruments of indeterminate pitch and percussion instruments of definite pitch.

Seems to be that anyone writing a book understands that "unpitched" percussion are pitched.

I mean, they vibrate at a certain frequency -- hence a certain pitch.

Here's the problem... certain pitch implies definite pitch, which is categorically -not- what a non-pitched percussion instrument delivers.

We can think of percussion instruments as high and low based on their timbre, the array of frequencies that result with the sound of the instrument. That's why a snare drum sounds "higher" than a bass drum, because the array of frequencies, the timbre, varies significantly between the two drums. There is no "certain pitch" in non-pitched percussion instruments. Of course, it's kind of misleading to acknowledge that we "tune" drums (i.e. tighten heads, etc.) to match the timbre of other drum heads or to sound relatively "higher" or "lower" than another drum. This is not really a "pitch-based" tuning but actually relies on matching timbres.

So, Berlioz and Adler are both wrong (I've met Adler, if I meet him again I'll let him know where I stand on this). I can see how they rationalize the "indeterminate pitch" argument, since there's no real standard among all non-pitched percussion instruments for what is "accurate" tuning and what isn't, but using the word "pitch" in this context is misleading and categorically wrong on many levels. We've come a long way since both of these composers and their books. When you make adjustments to a non-pitched percussion instrument, you're not necessarily relying on "pitch" as much as attempting to match timbre, relying on multiple harmonics and not simply one specific pitch or tone.

Hmm, last time I checked (which was 30 seconds ago), Berlioz refers to them as instruments of "indeterminate pitch" in his book on orchestration. As does Adler, etc.

You have percussion instruments of indeterminate pitch and percussion instruments of definite pitch.

Seems to be that anyone writing a book understands that "unpitched" percussion are pitched.

I mean, they vibrate at a certain frequencey -- hence a certain pitch.

Just because something vibrates doesn't mean it produces a recognizable pitch. Take a kazoo for instance. Or a any rubber band. A rubber band can vibrate without producing any definite pitch. However, if you stretch the rubber band out and then cause it to vibrate.. you have a pitch that is definite. Same thing with a violin string. The string can be vibrated while it isn't stretched across the violin but it will not produce any definite pitch. When I hear a drum, I don't hear any definite pitch - in the western sense. However, I do hear a sound. The sound, to me, I don't equate to pitch.

Just because something vibrates doesn't mean it produces a recognizable pitch. Take a kazoo for instance. Or a any rubber band. A rubber band can vibrate without producing any definite pitch. However, if you stretch the rubber band out and then cause it to vibrate.. you have a pitch that is definite. Same thing with a violin string. The string can be vibrated while it isn't stretched across the violin but it will not produce any definite pitch. When I hear a drum, I don't hear any definite pitch - in the western sense. However, I do hear a sound. The sound, to me, I don't equate to pitch.

They actually do produce a definite pitch, I've seen a video on youtube (can't find it again) of congas tuned to Em. The pitch is often hard to discern though, (though not impossible) thus, they are often refered to as un-pitched.

What Charlie is saying is simply that there can be sounds where the pitch is harder to discern or starts to approach white noise, in which case our brains can't process the pitch the same way we can with other instruments due to its acoustic properties. It doesn't mean there's no pitch. It's like saying that just because we can't see ultra-violet it doesn't exist.

So long as something is vibrating, it'll have a pitch. Regardless if we can or not hear it, discern it, or anything.

Hence calling an instrument non-pitched is nonsense. Indeterminate is a better word for it, as it's what the actual effect is.