Atonal music has long since been embraced and dismissed. It is a historical curiosity, an experiment resulting from many decades of strained tonal relationships proving too cumbersome to manage and at the end of the day, counter-productive. Atonality seeks to sabotage the tonic by all means, removing the regular pulse and the expectation of down and up beats (and therefore tension and resolution), ensuring some degree of negative attraction to any one tonic among the materials used, and so on and so forth. This culminated in 12-tone serialism, or, "a method of composition with twelve tones related only with one another" as Schönberg put it. With its governing principles you could be sure that unless you were really not being careful at all the resulting material would be reasonably democratic (more often than not it necessitated or at least invited even more cleverness).

This is all old news, 12-tone serialism has been kept on limited life support since Cold War times but that's it. If one had to devise a term for the major composers that have been at work since then, it might be something like non-tonal or some variation of post-tonal if you take care to define it beforehand. The word "tonality" isn't politically corrosive anymore, neither is use of diatonic material. I think it is important to realize that composers like Ärvo Pärt and Steve Reich are not at all tonal composers, and that composers like Pierre Boulez and György Ligeti are not atonal composers.

Not even this is tonal, even though it uses almost exclusively diatonic material:

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28 minutes ago, Kimoworld said:

How can it ever be bad to be you ?

Since liking something or not liking something is the same as just being, who you are.

it makes no sense that not liking something should ever be bad.

That is just nonsense.

Different people will neccesarily like different things.

 

 

Ok, i was just asking though.

This could pretty much be merged into the other thread, since the topic is closely related.

43 minutes ago, robinjessome said:

People might try and make me feel bad about an opinion about music...doesn't necessarily make it "Bad."   

It's not my intention at least to make anybody feel bad about their opinion. I'm only a humble crusader for knowledge and self-betterment. It is strange that in the arts you find such hostility to any discourse about knowledge. Do you know what happens in chess when you play from the heart, using only moves that you like? You get your subjectivity neatly handed to you and will continue to fail unless you make yourself well read on the chess literature, master the basic techniques that need to be second-nature, and develop a keen strategic mind. Then you will know the immensely greater pleasure that is achieved by playing from the mind as well as the heart. There are equally strange developments in chess as there are in music, but no grandmaster today throws up his arms proclaiming the death of chess and calls for the good old Romantic days. Why? Well, because when you sit down to play with someone that is versed in modern playing styles, you are playing against an opponent that knows more than you and has a better chance of outplaying you. When is ignorance ever a virtue? It is undoubtedly very exciting to see fast games with brilliant sacrifices as well slow games with solid defensive play, but it is also exciting to see the struggle between two players in an "atonal" chess game - the excitement is just located elsewhere.

Is the analogy intelligible at all?

1 hour ago, robinjessome said:

People might try and make me feel bad about an opinion about music...doesn't necessarily make it "Bad."   

 

Yeah. An opinion is just an opinion. It is not fact. It is not right or wrong. People can have their opinions. They shouldn't force them on people like it is Truth. I think we have lost our ability to respect in our society. We are so self congratulating these days. So opinionated and so in each others faces. Being an individual with certain taste and preferences and beliefs is a very special thing to hold dear. A lot of human history is based on the lack of freedom to think and appreciate and speak your mind. We take for granted that we have been living in the freest times in human history where we are allowed to be an individual with a well developed and educated mind and have those opinions to ourselves. If we would learn to respect each other again even if we disagree with each other then we would make true strides in furthering civilization. 

1 hour ago, RequiemLord said:

So how do you guys think music will progress in the future? Like will we start embracing Atonal music or will we just keep ourselves to the good old Tonal music? What new genres might pop up? New instruments?

I just want to hear what you guys think honestly.

 

I think you have already seen it. I think atonality serves a purpose. I don't throw all of it out. I certainly love a lot of it. I don't like serialism. I think minimalism reaches its limits very quickly. There are all kinds of experimental genres. But I think it all pushes people back toward a desire for tonality, lyricism, solid structure, etc. The further we went toward the Xennakis/Stockhausen route the faster we were gonna come out the other end with a new form of a Rachmaninoff or a Prokofiev. We traveled around the Steve Reich, Phillip Glass realm for a second - you could lump some of John Adams in their with that. However, we have come out searching for some more innate beauty in our music rather then just a serial mind stimulation. I believe that is the whole reason that the Atlanta School of Composers is able to exist. I believe that is why Robert Aldridge's Elmer Gantry is so Puccini-(in a Copland/Bernstein)-esque and it works. I think that is why John Adams eventually started really expressing himself more lyrically albeit while he still stayed within his knack for minimal shifts and changes in rhythm and layers meters against each other, etc. The Dharma at Big Sur is an incredible piece of music with tons of lyricism and tonality even if it is all open tuned. You've got a number of my more favorite relatively recent works two of which I have already mentioned in Elmer Gantry and The Dharma at Big Sur. However, I love Jennifer Higdon's On a Wire and Blue Cathedral. I am a huge fan of everything Adam Schoenberg. Michael Gandolfi's The Garden of Cosmic Speculation is incredible and beautiful. His Engaging Richard Feynman is also a favorite. Of course one of the huge hits from this recent wave of composition is Rainbow Body by Christopher Theofanidis. There is even some Arvo Part - I am not a huge fan nor am I a harsh critic. I do think Arvo has his place.

All I am trying to say is that the place to go forward in a logical linear direction from the atonality of Stravinsky and Boulez and so and so is even less relationship with note tone and pitch, less order in structure and harmony, less rhyme and reason, more complication. We did that. We went to what I would call straight noise. Then the only way to go after that is to back out and head the old direction, but try to do it in new ways. An I think you are seeing that happen.

Traveling towards Atonality right now...

What i think about Atonal music is that it is very unpredictable(and thus unconfortable), and there are a lot of new original things in it, now i know this, i want to explore it, see what these ideas are. so my suggetion: don't look for comfort in the music, perhaps on some parts you still can! but look for the ideas and the spectacular sound. ( a car racing by at top speed, that is exciting! why not atonal music for that matter?). and what comes after atonal music, mmh.. anti-tonal music?(rhytmic music) maybe you have heard  Iannis Xenakis Psappha (otherwise listen!) but we have seen this so what comes after this... one thing i can think of would be something for the future, it is controlling the brain to have certain emotions going through your body, and then pasted on an timeline, of lets say 20 mins. since its still trying to convert an emotion or feeling over time would it still be music? idk. I'm busy with making my brain get a good taste of Atonality, so that i can have good judgment when i'm composing atonal music. and on this search i heard this:

Gian Francesco Malipiero ‒ Preludi autunnali totally love it! i also want to know if there are very specific rules for when it is atonal, is this atonal or does it have advanced tonality, and when you use repetition in a atonal peice does it not automatically introduce tonality. because you heard that flavor of atonality before (repetition) it will make more sense in your head, so then it will be less atonal? or is this ridicoulouse?

All of the composers mentioned here in negative terms have produced at the very least a good listening experience. The trouble with atonal music, which I prefer to call deconstructionist, is twofold. First, you cannot deconstruct in perpetuity. It gets tiresome and vapid. And second, most of the music is not worth a second listening. Meaning, I'm a hundred percent interested the first time and 0% the second. One exception to me is Ligeti, who's brilliance I find endless, AND he manages to avoid being pidgeon-holed into a genre. Let's just call him "modern." There is a reason people watch Seinfeld reruns. They stand up to repeated viewings because they are meant to be. Same with music.