Is there REALLY such a thing as atonal music?

I don't know about you, but by categorizing music into atonal and tonal is contradictive.

Isn't atonal music a contradiction in terms? I mean, all music has tones, obviously. And come to think about it, doesn't all music have a tonal center? For example, you could even say that the first note of a tone row is a tonal center.

It seems to me, that for a lot of people, atonal music is basically just music with dissonance for dissonance's own sake. Is this in general true?

Even music by ligetti is tonal. Just not in the traditional sense of key signature, basic melody, etc. There's a focus.

Basically, I think atonal music is, dare I say, a derogatory term for music that a listener is unused to listening, and therefore, at the moment, considers it not Atonal per say, but aTYPICAL.

Kind of like shark meat. You can buy it at a grocery store, though it's not as common as, say trout, and because the taste is so foreign to the tongue, you may not be able to comprehend it, and of course, because usually if you can't comprehend something you don't like it, but sooner or later, if you allow yourself to grow, you might develop a fondness for it, and something that was atypical is now typical.

You could even say that Wozzeck is tonal.

I say that we get rid of the term atonal altogether, because the term instantly creates a bias in your mind. I imagine that if you were to put some six year old in a room listening to, say, Atmospheres, he might not like it originally because it's wierd, but it's like asparagus. Does anybody understand what I'm getting at? :P

Atonal music is a technical term for a very good reason, it's just sad that it's attracted such a stigma. Understandable, though, since atonal music is so grating on some people's ears.

Atonal music simply means that the music does not establish a key, or tonal center. While tonal music relies on a tonality and a specific diatonic or other scale, atonal music does not have that anchoring, and lacks a specific tonality. That's all the word means, and it's not at all derogatory unless used so.

Basically, I think atonal music is, dare I say, a derogatory term for music that a listener is unused to listening, and therefore, at the moment, considers it not Atonal per say, but aTYPICAL.

I mostly agree with your post, but even the word "atypical" is a misnomer, because atonal music has become typical in some circles.

Basically, it's all Wagner's fault, he started us all down the slippery slope of straying so far from the tonal center that well... eventually there is none.

Perhaps a way to look at the word A-tonal might be to invoke the word A-theist for comparision. There are some who would argue that an A-theist simply might not care if there is a God or not - but others would insist that an A-theist BELIEVE that God doesn't exist. Can you see where I'm going with this?

Is A-tonality the absence of tonality - OR the avoidance of tonality, OR the "I don't care" of tonality?

Since tonality is much more of a continuum than black-and-white (every atonal work has some tiny ounce of tonality in it, and every tonal work has some betrayal of the master tonality, no matter how small), it's probably an avoidance of tonality. The "'I don't care' of tonality" doesn't really say anything about the piece, just about the composer.

As someone who writes atonal music, I don't think it's necessarily an active avoidance of a tonal center. Tone centers are restrictive (please try to think of that word as neutral, though I know it's not), and so it's actually easier to intuitively avoid a tone center than it is to write within one. So I'd say it's the ABSENCE of tonality (as a conscious decision).

It's a fine line, and it's kind of strange to make the distinction. Making the tone center absent by choice is to shut off the messages from your brain saying, "Now take the predominant, and move it to the dominant..." and just let your mind go. AVOIDING the tone center is to say, "Okay, I'm at the predominant, but I don't WANT to go to the dominant, I'll go to the flat submediant instead, and then to throw everyone off, I'll go to the sharp subdominant of that flat submediant."

To AVOID a tone center is to first create one so that you can avoid it. To make it absent by choice is to not allow it in the first place.

I think that the word "atonal" implies that it doesn't have a strict tonal center like a lot of the traditional music. This was of course stated by many above in this thread. I like to think that like CDR was saying just above has a lot to do with it - the creation of the new one (the twelve tone) to avoid the old ones. To many it doesn't sound "natural" so I guess atonal was how it was used to describe it, however misleading it may sound.

Okay, I have no idea whether I just said anything useful. But it's what I've gathered over the last few weeks. So yeah, atonal music exists, just at different levels. A lot of music uses techniques of atonal music without fully employing it to the entire piece. I guess it's like a spectrum, like how people always get pissed off at being labeled as bi or gay or straight when there are so many shades on the spectrum to consider.

erm, that was probably one of my stranger analogies.

Nah, not really - if you read the FFA post about Maurice Ravel, apparently, a lot of music is about sex.

oh yes, of course! :D

The subtitle of that thread always cracks me up, for whatever reason. It's just very...attention grabbing!

Music for unpitched percussion instruments could be called atonal, right? But even then you could say that it's just really really complicated collections of tones...

I always find the term "atonal" amusing... it says what the music "is not". it does not say what the music "is".

I would not say my music is "atonal", since that does not describe my music. it's almost like saying "my music is not bach".

non-tonal music is almost, if not definately, more varied in techniques than tonal music.

That's because atonalism started as an attempt to remove something from music - tonal center. Sure, it may have a lot of techniques, but what ties it all together is the fact that it evades definition by traditional tonal rules.