# Flirting with Atonality



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Having recently referred to Schoenberg in another thread, I felt like listening to some of the music he wrote before and after his tonal revolution (or evolution, depending on your context and point of view). I heard some interesting unpublished piano sketches that sounded much like Brahms; the _Verklaerte Nacht_, which is almost a postlude to Wagner; the first two string quartets; the monodrama _Erwartung_; and the _Variations for Orchestra_, which move us into his post-tonality period.

It interested me to hear the transitional phases in this progression, and it got me thinking about late Romantic composers whose music remains basically within the established tonal system but sometimes pushes tonal relationships to an extreme of ambiguity or to the edge of dissolution. I find certain moments when composers "flirt with atonality" to be especially exciting; I'm thinking of a couple of places in _Tristan und Isolde _ and _Parsifal _(yes, all the way back to the 1850s and '70s) where the usual anchor of harmonic relations seems to pull out momentarily, and the sensation for the listener (for me, anyway) is almost one of vertigo - rather frightening, which is surely just what the composer intended.

I wonder if others can name particular works, and passages within them, where they see the composer pushing against or beyond the limits of the tonal system, and can speculate on what effect or objective he/she was trying to achieve by doing so.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Having recently referred to Schoenberg in another thread, I felt like listening to some of the music he wrote before and after his tonal revolution (or evolution, depending on your context and point of view). I heard some interesting unpublished piano sketches that sounded much like Brahms; the _Verklaerte Nacht_, which is almost a postlude to Wagner; the first two string quartets; the monodrama _Erwartung_; and the _Variations for Orchestra_, which move us into his post-tonality period.
> 
> It interested me to hear the transitional phases in this progression, and it got me thinking about late Romantic composers whose music remains basically within the established tonal system but sometimes pushes tonal relationships to an extreme of ambiguity or to the edge of dissolution. I find certain moments when composers "flirt with atonality" to be especially exciting; I'm thinking of a couple of places in _Tristan und Isolde _ and _Parsifal _(yes, all the way back to the 1850s and '70s) where the usual anchor of harmonic relations seems to pull out momentarily, and the sensation for the listener (for me, anyway) is almost one of vertigo - rather frightening, which is surely just what the composer intended.
> 
> I wonder if others can name particular works, and passages within them, where they see the composer pushing against or beyond the limits of the tonal system, and can speculate on what effect or objective he/she was trying to achieve by doing so.


Mahler 9th Symphony


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Liszt can get very chromatic or even give up on a tonal center e.g. Bagatelle sans tonalité. This is part of his Mephisto Waltx set.






Equally unsettling is Nuages gris






Wiki makes a number of suggestions - he was looking at folk music especially Hungarian; he was depressed; he was working on a "harmony of the future".

Certainly in late Liszt you will material that could be Schoenberg, Debussy or Ravel. Liszt was undoubtedly influenced by the work of François-Joseph Fétis.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

You'll find whole pages upon pages in Strauss that don't imply any clear tonal center, and then he'll just stick in a V-I cadence that could have fit basically anywhere in the section. As mentioned above, Liszt and Debussy are important in moving away from a sense of tonal function, which is the defining attribute of much 20th century music.

Mahler flirted with bitonality on occasion. The Ninth Symphony linked to above isn't perhaps a great example, because by the time he wrote that, he was already familiar with (and supportive of) Schoenberg's work, _including_ the Second String Quartet, the last movement of which some have viewed as the first "atonal" piece.

Bruckner, like Wagner, avoids clear full cadences very often, and some of his later music is quite far removed from diatonicism in terms of its overall harmonic direction. Reger's music takes that chromaticism and pushes it into the forefront of all of the parts; it's worth noting that Schoenberg admired Reger.

(Note: Erwartung is already an "atonal" work, just not 12-tone like the Variations.)


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> It interested me to hear the transitional phases in this progression, and it got me thinking about late Romantic composers whose music remains basically within the established tonal system but sometimes pushes tonal relationships to an extreme of ambiguity or to the edge of dissolution. I find certain moments when composers "flirt with atonality" to be especially exciting; I'm thinking of a couple of places in _Tristan und Isolde _ and _Parsifal _(yes, all the way back to the 1850s and '70s) where the usual anchor of harmonic relations seems to pull out momentarily, and the sensation for the listener (for me, anyway) is almost one of vertigo - rather frightening, which is surely just what the composer intended.
> 
> I wonder if others can name particular works, and passages within them, where they see the composer pushing against or beyond the limits of the tonal system, and can speculate on what effect or objective he/she was trying to achieve by doing so.


The 2-piano reduction of Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1 was played on the radio the other day, and it sounds really convoluted, with constantly changing root movement. It never seems to resolve. This is part of the aesthetic, the idea of "unresolved angst" and of wallowing through a chromatic, seething mass of chord changes.

It's important to note that this type of "chromatic tonality" is due to constant root-movement of chords. It is similar to R. Strauss' _Metamorphosen.

_
Beyond this extreme chromaticism,which is really a form of tonality at its extremes,there is a further step into 'free atonality' which involves more than just constant root movement_, _and begins to bring other elements in. This approach is really more connected to what developed into 12-tone or serial music than extreme chromatic tonality was, since chromatic tonality was still concerned with root movement and function, regardless of how vague or ambiguous it was.


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## Guest (Sep 22, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> the sensation for the listener (*for me, anyway*) is almost one of vertigo - rather frightening, which is *surely** just what the composer intended.


Surely it is just not.

*Bolding is mine. It shows an example of "cake and eat it too" which is so popular. (And so widely deprecated by bakers. I mean, can you imagine?)


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

some guy said:


> Surely it is just not.
> 
> *Bolding is mine. It shows an example of "cake and eat it too" which is so popular. (And so widely deprecated by bakers. I mean, can you imagine?)


I know exactly what he means.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

I know what he means, too (Woodduck). In film, for example, there are techniques and methods that are employed to elicit a certain reaction from the viewer. From plenty of film theory experience, I say that a certain reaction from the audience is what the director *surely* intended.

Yet, at the same time, not everybody will have that same reaction, despite the director's intentions. Therefore, it's reasonable to say what Woodduck said, "*for me, anyway*", with regard to his sense of vertigo.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Brucvkner's unfinished 9th symphony contains some of the most extreme dissonances of the late 19th century 
and almost sounds Schoenbergian at times . The cimax of the 3rd movement, contains a grindingly
dissonaant tone cluster .


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Really, it should be "Flirting with Tonal Chromaticism," if we remain within tonal boundaries. But beyond that, "atonality" or "free atonality" actually crossed the boundary away from tonality "proper," and began to embody a broader definition of "tonality." 

This meant that the tonic, or roots of chords, could be established on more temporary or more changeable stations (as in the whole tone scales or diminished scales with their multiple possibilities of tonics). I've used Berg's Lieder to show this on several occasions.

This is why I think it's so important that we realize that "tonality" can have a broader, more general definition, as in "loyalty to a tonic."

If we keep on using the strict, minor/major definition of tonality, it becomes more difficult to explain these "outer boundaries" of tonality.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Really, it should be "Flirting with Tonal Chromaticism," if we remain within tonal boundaries. But beyond that, "atonality" or "free atonality" actually crossed the boundary away from tonality "proper," and began to embody a broader definition of "tonality."

This meant that the tonic, or roots of chords, could be established on more temporary or more changeable stations (as in the whole tone scales or diminished scales with their multiple possibilities of tonics). I've used Berg's Lieder to show this on several occasions.

This is why I think it's so important that we realize that "tonality" can have a broader, more general definition, as in "loyalty to a tonic." Forget major/minor and chord function of the old definition.

If we keep on using the old, strict, minor/major definition of tonality, it becomes more difficult to explain these "outer boundaries" of tonality.

Here is the relevant excerpt from my recent blog:



> Berg used many of the same "quasi-tonal" principles that Bartok used, such as the whole-tone scale, in his transitional *Four Songs Op. 2, No. 2,* and the way it can be used to generate two "dominant" areas, accessible by half-steps. In this song, there is only one Bb chord with a stable fifth above the bass, which indicates the unstable harmonic nature of most of the chords, and this b5 is in keeping with the b5 of the whole tone scale, C-Gb or F-B. The song has no key signature, and almost all notes have accidentals.
> 
> But this kind of quasi-tonal or "freely atonal" transitional style is still "tonal" or tone-centric in nature, and thus, is inherently *harmonic *(tonal), because it still uses a harmonic hierarchy/reference (a form of tonality) to a center note, even if that centric "seed" is localized and fleeting, to generate its structures.
> A whole-tone scale is still a _*scale*_, which is an index of notes with _no ordering,_ *not* a tone row. It still can reference a local tone center (be tonal), however shifting or ambiguous that center may be.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Having recently referred to Schoenberg in another thread, I felt like listening to some of the music he wrote before and after his tonal revolution (or evolution, depending on your context and point of view). I heard some interesting unpublished piano sketches that sounded much like Brahms; the _Verklaerte Nacht_, which is almost a postlude to Wagner; the first two string quartets; the monodrama _Erwartung_; and the _Variations for Orchestra_, which move us into his post-tonality period.
> 
> It interested me to hear the transitional phases in this progression, and it got me thinking about late Romantic composers whose music remains basically within the established tonal system but sometimes pushes tonal relationships to an extreme of ambiguity or to the edge of dissolution. I find certain moments when composers "flirt with atonality" to be especially exciting; I'm thinking of a couple of places in _Tristan und Isolde _ and _Parsifal _(yes, all the way back to the 1850s and '70s) where the usual anchor of harmonic relations seems to pull out momentarily, and *the sensation for the listener (for me, anyway) is almost one of vertigo - rather frightening, which is surely just what the composer intended. *I wonder if others can name particular works, and passages within them, where they see the composer pushing against or beyond the limits of the tonal system, and can speculate on what effect or objective he/she was trying to achieve by doing so.


Looking at a few responses here, I feel the need to quote myself to clear up something. I used a couple of unspecified (as to exact location in the scores) examples of "flirting with atonality" from Wagner (whose works I know well). I reported certain feelings these musical passages gave me (passage in bold above).The validity of my reactions was immediately questioned, or at least my presumption that Wagner intended his listeners to have such reactions.

I want to make clear that I am _not_ saying that these particular reactions are the intended effect of _all_ pieces of music in which composers push the boundaries of tonality, and I'm sorry if I gave any such impression. The particular passages I referred to have very specific dramatic contexts (they are opera, after all), and it's pretty clear that Wagner's harmonic choices at these moments were made to express extreme emotional states, undergone by his dramatic personages, to which my specific personal reactions were absolutely appropriate.

In the context of clearly tonal music, a purposeful undermining of the listener's orientation - his sense of where the music is going - _can_ be quite shocking and even painful (in a wonderful way, of course!), and Wagner knew quite well how to make that happen. _Of course_ such harmonic excursions can produce an enormous range of reactions in different listeners, and my interest is to hear the reactions of other people who can cite striking instances of such in other works and other composers.

I do hope, _pace_ some guy, that I now stand exculpated of patronizing those _patisseries_ where one has one's cake and eats it too.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

superhorn said:


> Brucvkner's unfinished 9th symphony contains some of the most extreme dissonances of the late 19th century
> and almost sounds Schoenbergian at times . *The cimax of the 3rd movement, contains a grindingly
> dissonaant tone cluster *.


Yeah, perfect example of the kind of effect I'm thinking of. I _love_ that moment!

How about the "scream" in the adagio of Mahler's tenth? Also interesting to note the resemblance between the first themes of these adagios - the wide-reaching melodies against shifting harmonies which sometimes provide little apparent tonal ground to stand on.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

I'm very bad at music theory but I will try to express this thought. It seems to me that extreme chromaticism is so much more efficient to me when there is a tonal centre around; then, chromaticism remains a _deviation_ from something, and all the more destructive, unsettling, shocking. Of course "freely floating" atonality is much more _modern_ in a Baudelairean sense - it can change "direction" as fast as it wants, like life in a modern city street - but I'm not a modern person in that sense. I can take all that change and lack of pattern in, as long as it is presented as a _deviation_ from an eternal truth, even if that truth is all but inaccessible to us.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Xaltotun said:


> I'm very bad at music theory but I will try to express this thought. It seems to me that extreme chromaticism is so much more efficient to me when there is a tonal centre around; then, chromaticism remains a _deviation_ from something, and all the more destructive, unsettling, shocking. Of course "freely floating" atonality is much more _modern_ in a Baudelairean sense - it can change "direction" as fast as it wants, like life in a modern city street - but I'm not a modern person in that sense. I can take all that change and lack of pattern in, as long as it is presented as a _deviation_ from an eternal truth, even if that truth is all but inaccessible to us.


I don't believe that any music primarily dealing with tones lacks a tonal center (or centers). That center can be affirmed or denied, but the nature of musical notes is such that emphasis, gesture, and register will provide centricity. I listen to more "atonal" music than the average person, and I don't hear atonality at all (tonality I do hear, and quite clearly).



Woodduck said:


> Also interesting to note the resemblance between the first themes of these adagios - the wide-reaching melodies against shifting harmonies which sometimes provide little apparent tonal ground to stand on.


There's an essay on Bruckner's methods that I read once, and they showed the sketches that led to the formation of that opening theme. I've compiled a synthesized version. It's interesting to note how the first few versions don't have any of the ambiguity that the final version does, and for that reason, none of the momentum.

View attachment Bruckner 9th Sketches.mp3


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

I think Alban Berg's Piano Sonata op. 1 is a work quite on the edge of tonality.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Since the fifth, our most traditional root movement, can be replaced with a minor second root movement (called a tri-tone substitution), then it's an easy step from normally modulating fifths into a chromatic morass of half-steps, which incidentally makes perfect tonal sense to the ear.
So it's really not chromaticism or half-step root movements which destroy a sense of tonality, although it helps.

Even the chromatic collection, when considered as a "scale" or index of notes which can be freely drawn from, is easily "tonal-ized" by putting a reference tonic note under it.

What has to happen in order to create a situation of "no tonality" is to remove logical references to a tonic.

A descending chromatic root movement will not do it, since it is so easily related to a cycle of fifths which has been tritonally substituted into a series of dominant seventh chords.

Better would be root movement by major seconds (eventually outlining a whole-tone scale, with no fifths), or major thirds (eventually outlining the augmented scale), or leaps. 
This scheme avoids tritones (which can't be "cycled" since they are symmetrical, and invert to themselves), fifths and fourths (the common tonal movement), minor seconds (too much like a tritone-related fifth), and minor thirds (eventually outlining a diminished scale, ambiguous tonally, but "inward-directed" towards "local" root points within the octave).

Still, all of these "projections" of different intervals, used as root movements, are still going to have tonal references, because of inherent symmetries within the 12-note division of the octave.

On top of that, the ear still tends to hear harmonically. No matter what note we put in the bass, it's still going to sound "root-like" or have some tonal reference, like a harmonic with its partials. We hear "up," from bottom to top.

So, if no matter what we do, the ear will still try to hear it tonally (harmonically), then we are left with no other alternative in our quest to destroy tonality, but to dismantle the system itself.

CP tonality achieves its effect in two ways:

1. By considering chords as harmonic entities unto themselves, rather than as the congruence of separate musical lines or melodies. This is derived from vertical harmony, as opposed to horizontal melody.
2. By using melodic lines which create tonal references, by constructing these melodies by using "scales," which are "indexes" of notes (unordered sets) with the first note listed in skeleton form as the tonal center.

So, to counteract these ways of achieving tonality, we could create a system which effectively does away with these elements:

1. Harmony is not considered as chordal entities, with functions, but as the congruence of melodic lines. This greatly necessitates a polyphonic approach.
2. Whatever melodic lines are used, will be created *not* by using scales, since the scale is an "index" which can be freely chosen from, enabling repetition and tonal reference as an unordered set will do;
3. Melodic material will be synonymous with an ordered set consisting of all 12 notes, with no repetition.

Therefore, in this non-tonal or serial method, we have an essentially non-harmonic schema, which is polyphonic in nature, and non-scalar, since it is ordered, with no repetition, which insures a total chromaticism of the lines and suppresses any tonal tendencies which might be created by melodic means.

Although pre-tonal Gregorian chant is similar in that it is melodic (later polyphonic), it is scalar, not harmonic, and achieves its tone-centric sound by using modes, which are essentially scales (unordered sets of notes) which allow tonal references to be created.


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