# Tips to help appreciate atonal music



## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

I'd be interested in putting together tips or advice that might make it easier for an open-minded listener to appreciate modern/atonal classical music.

To start off, I'll offer some tips of my own:

Do not try to understand the theory behind it. - Take it for what it is. For instance, don't try to figure out the particular tone row of a twelve-tone composition or its manyfold shapes (inversions, etc.) throughout the piece. I've never tried to figure out the harmonics in Beethoven, Schubert or Richard Strauss either. Any piece should be engaging recardless of whether one can figue out its "mechanics" or not.

Know what you like. - For instance, two things I like very much are 1) a strong sense of continuity and 2) contrapuntal textures. So naturally, I love Bach. But I can discover these two qualities in atonal works too, such as Schoenberg's First Chamber Symphony or Ligeti's Etudes or Boulez' Dérive 2.

Explore the frontiers. - There are many works that that might help develop a taste for a more ambiguous musical language without have to jump right into pure atonality. Berg's Piano Sonata, Wagner's Tristan Prelude, the Ricercars from Bach's Musical Offering, Beethoven's Grosse Fuge, and the later works by Scriabin are all great introductions to expanded traditional tonality.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Sounds like I have a budding conscript here .......... Keep talking- I like it. There should be more of this and remember to vote for the Avant G's


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Nice idea. I only hope the thread doesn't get picked to pieces with people asking what you mean by "atonal" or trying to claim that the music is easy and doesn't need tips. It isn't easy at all. It's had well over a hundred years to become appreciated by the average classical listener and it still hasn't succeeded. Therefore it really is self evidently difficult.

I've been on the cusp of appreciating it for years however.


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## niv (Apr 9, 2013)

Close your eyes and listen


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

The only "tip" I can think of is he same as with other music: Listen to it until something speaks to you. Listen to that piece, try to find others like it, and keep keeping an open mind. Also, return periodically to things you haven't liked, but people you respect speak well of. You may never "get" it -- but at some point you may. Exposure is all. Music is meant to be listened to, not analyzed.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Schoenberg's Chamber Symphonies (either of them) are not atonal.

Anyway, other than that, I agree with the OP. The most important thing is not to get bogged down in theory. Everything you think you know about 12-tone music is probably either misleading or wrong. Don't let it get to you, just listen to the music as music.

Start off with something familiar. If you like orchestral music, listen to that, and if you like piano or or chamber or choral music, go for those first. The internal logic of the music will be clearer if it's presented in a context you normally understand, rather than something alien. This, I believe, accounts for the number of people who jump into Pierrot lunaire and find it revolting nonsense (it's brilliant music, and anything but formless; the setting that seems the most chaotic is actually one of the most highly structured).


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

Listen to Berg's _Violin Concerto_ or _Three Pieces for Orchestra_. If nothing here grabs you, I doubt you will want to hear much else from the _Second Viennese School_. Also, listen to Schoenberg's _Piano Concerto_, _Five Pieces for Orchestra_, _A Survivor from Warsaw_, and the _Violin Concerto_ (the Hilary Hahn/Salonen performance if you have access to it). If these works don't open your ears, then perhaps this music just isn't for you.

If you end up really enjoying Berg and Schoenberg, then do give Hartmann a try. He'll blow you away!


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Neo Romanza said:


> Listen to Berg's _Violin Concerto_ or _Three Pieces for Orchestra_. If nothing here grabs you, I doubt you will want to hear much else from the _Second Viennese School_. Also, listen to Schoenberg's _Piano Concerto_, _Five Pieces for Orchestra_, _A Survivor from Warsaw_, and the _Violin Concerto_ (the Hilary Hahn/Salonen performance if you have access to it). If these works don't open your ears, then perhaps this music just isn't for you.


I never liked atonal stuff much, but a year or two ago I saw Schoenberg's _Five Pieces_ on TV, and found myself ever more fascinated by it.

I would agree that it is not a good idea for the general listener to get too bogged down in the theory. It is also a grave mistake to sit and wait for some sort of conventional melody. I found that I just enjoyed the tone colours. It was like travelling through a sort of exotic aural landscape. Listening like this actually works pretty well for Mahler too, come to think of it.

Schoenberg is the musical equivalent of David Lynch's film _Mulholland Drive_. If you do not try to understand it too desperately at first, it becomes a quite mesmerizing thing.

But I have to say, I have to be in the mood for it.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Weston said:


> Nice idea. I only hope the thread doesn't get picked to pieces with people asking what you mean by "atonal" or trying to claim that the music is easy and doesn't need tips. It isn't easy at all. It's had well over a hundred years to become appreciated by the average classical listener and it still hasn't succeeded. Therefore it really is self evidently difficult.
> 
> I've been on the cusp of appreciating it for years however.


I'm sorry to be "that guy", but I can't accept this.

It is self-evident that people think that they have trouble accepting atonal music, and find the things they find difficult to fit their concept of atonal.
But, given that "atonality" as a concept is extremely vague and misunderstood, to the point of applying differently and inconsistently between individuals, it is not at all certain that this is so.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

brianvds said:


> I never liked atonal stuff much, but a year or two ago I saw Schoenberg's _Five Pieces_ on TV, and found myself ever more fascinated by it.
> 
> I would agree that it is not a good idea for the general listener to get too bogged down in the theory. It is also a grave mistake to sit and wait for some sort of conventional melody. I found that I just enjoyed the tone colours. It was like travelling through a sort of exotic aural landscape. Listening like this actually works pretty well for Mahler too, come to think of it.
> 
> ...


I'm really not a 'in the mood' kind of listener. I go on listening marathons in cycles. Two months may be dedicated to Shostakovich while one month may be dedicated to Ravel. Never a mood thing at all. Anyway, I'm starting to feel the word 'atonality' is quite dismissive and doesn't do the actual music any favors. While it is true that some serialism composers are caught up in the mind and very rarely rely on their own emotions, the best serialists like Schoenberg and Berg, for example, were able to conjure up a large palette of emotions just within 10 measures. Berg was ingenious at combing 12-tone principle with Mahlerian emotional excess. Schoenberg was a master of color and emotional shading. His music sounds so haunting and eerie, especially his purely 12-tone works and the early Expressionistic works.

It took me quite some time to appreciate Berg and Schoenberg, but I have no trouble with any of their music now and I think it's a shame that so much effort has gone into bashing these composers instead of listening with an open-mind. I'll clearly admit I can't get into Webern much. I like a few of his works like _Passacaglia_ and _Six Pieces for Orchestra_.


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## Guest (May 28, 2013)

Well, Mahlerian, I feel like joining you on the "that guy" platform.

I find the premise for the whole thread to be flawed. It's never stated anywhere, but the assumption is clear: modern/atonal music has to be treated differently from "normal" music. It has to be approached cautiously. You have to be prepped very carefully before you can appreciate it.

The music is fine. The attitudes that have created an atmosphere of fear and revulsion, however, have certainly got to go. Yeah, I'd agree with that! And please don't forget (you _had_ forgotten, hadn't you?) that the fear and revulsion pre-date "atonality" by anywhere from a decade to a century. That's right. A one hundred years of fear and revulsion preceded any of Schoenberg's or Stravinsky's earliest modernist experiments. Experiments, just by the way, that weren't really all that widely known until a decade or two after they'd been written. And never all that widely.

Just ask anyone to tell you honestly how much "atonal" music they've heard. If they're honest, they'll tell you "pitifully little." This is a self-perpetuating atmosphere, you see. It doesn't really need any experiential support. Fear and revulsion can feed on nothing.


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## ArthurBrain (Aug 19, 2012)

some guy said:


> Well, Mahlerian, I feel like joining you on the "that guy" platform.
> 
> I find the premise for the whole thread to be flawed. It's never stated anywhere, but the assumption is clear: modern/atonal music has to be treated differently from "normal" music. It has to be approached cautiously. You have to be prepped very carefully before you can appreciate it.
> 
> ...


I can't help but feel you're exaggerating on this really. I think atonal music has become, and has been an accepted part of the classical oeuvre for some time now. There's no longer the 'shock of the new' attached but it's also not going to be everyone's taste either. That has little to do with 'fear' however. Why would it? If you like music you like it, if you don't you don't, whatever genre it might happen to be in.


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

Play it for kids! They have fewer preconceptions and are more open to it. 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/3656560/Why-modern-music-is-really-childs-play.html


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## Bone (Jan 19, 2013)

I believe the premise was a bit simpler than the analyses of said premise: relax, open your mind, and let the listening experience happen. Or something like that. I do agree that equating modern/atonal with "difficult" and everything prior as "easy" when it comes to appreciating it might be stretching the point, but nonetheless it is in arguable that plenty of modern is quite emotionally gripping on first hearing while some of the thornier CPP stuff requires true dedication to begin savoring the music.


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## Llyranor (Dec 20, 2010)

So far, I haven't been able to yet. I've listened to Berg's violin concerto at least 7 times now, and I still can't appreciate it.

If I take Beethoven's Grosse Fuge - which I absolutely _adore_, though it took many listens to get there - as a starting point, what piece should I explore after that?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Llyranor said:


> So far, I haven't been able to yet. I've listened to Berg's violin concerto at least 7 times now, and I still can't appreciate it.


I'm sorry if this puts you on the spot, but you have to understand that this doesn't tell us very much about what your experience is. Can you recognize the themes as they appear and develop, but just dislike the music in some way, or does it just seem like an overload of undistinguished information?



Llyranor said:


> If I take Beethoven's Grosse Fuge - which I absolutely _adore_, though it took many listens to get there - as a starting point, what piece should I explore after that?


Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht (a string sextet movement in D minor) perhaps? Some of Bartok's Quartets?


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## Llyranor (Dec 20, 2010)

Mahlerian said:


> I'm sorry if this puts you on the spot, but you have to understand that this doesn't tell us very much about what your experience is. Can you recognize the themes as they appear and develop, but just dislike the music in some way, or does it just seem like *an overload of undistinguished information?*


The bolded. I didn't even dislike the music, it was just there. Didn't really make me feel or think anything (nor was I following the themes). I might have tried to listen to it too many times in too short a timeframe and thus grown tired of it, or maybe I wasn't paying it proper attention. Not sure what to say.

Thanks for the suggestions.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

Llyranor said:


> So far, I haven't been able to yet. I've listened to Berg's violin concerto at least 7 times now, and I still can't appreciate it.
> 
> If I take Beethoven's Grosse Fuge - which I absolutely _adore_, though it took many listens to get there - as a starting point, what piece should I explore after that?


Then sit the music aside for a week, a month, a year, and come back to it. There's nothing worse than forcing yourself to listen to music when you're not ready mentally to absorb it.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Llyranor said:


> The bolded. I didn't even dislike the music, it was just there. Didn't really make me feel or think anything (nor was I following the themes). I might have tried to listen to it too many times in too short a timeframe and thus grown tired of it, or maybe I wasn't paying it proper attention. Not sure what to say.
> 
> Thanks for the suggestions.


It might be best to leave it aside for a while in that case. Regardless of what some people seem to think, unless you find something interesting in a piece of music, jamming it through repeatedly is not going to help you like it.

Come back in a while after listening to other music, perhaps watching Berg's opera Wozzeck (be warned, it's heavy and dark material), where the presence of the text would help to orient your attention (this is not your fault! your brain is trying to look for patterns that aren't there, so it fails to recognize the patterns that _are_ there).


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## Llyranor (Dec 20, 2010)

I just finished listening to Verklarte Nacht. It's actually quite enjoyable.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

There's no magic formula. Just expose yourself to a considerable amount of it. If it's your thing, then sooner or later you will like something of it. If not, then you don't like this music. Try again some years later.
The most important thing, though, is your attitude. Do not approach the music with preconceived ideas, just let the music talk, try to understand it in its own logic, the logic of the composer, not your logic. Don't search your emotions in the music, let the music expand yours.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Llyranor said:


> So far, I haven't been able to yet. I've listened to Berg's violin concerto at least 7 times now, and I still can't appreciate it.
> 
> If I take Beethoven's Grosse Fuge - which I absolutely _adore_, though it took many listens to get there - as a starting point, what piece should I explore after that?


Less than a year ago I was essentially in your identical place. I had no idea why I could not enjoy what many called the greatest violin concerto of the 20th century. Luckily I found a BBC audio commentary which stepped me through the concerto discussing the music and then playing small portions to illustrate the thoughts. After listening several times to the commentary file and a couple more times to the concerto, I came to find it beautiful. Unfortunately the file no longer plays (I just get errors when I click the link). The experience was almost miraculous - taking me from uninteresting sounds to beautiful and moving music.

After that experience, I've searched for more audiofiles similar to that one. Unfortunately I'm not sure where to look because I have found very few along those lines.

I hope you can eventually have a similar experience.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Atonal music just needs to be popularized a bit more, by appropriate advertising campaigns...


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

A lot of atonal music doesn't really want to make you feel anything, it's more of an intellectual exercise. That's not everyone's cup of tea. I happen to find Berg's violin concerto quite beautiful and uplifting, but if that's not your experience don't sweat it! There is so much wonderful music out there.

Here are some more emotionally engaging atonal pieces in order of what happens to be on top of my brain at present
Debussy - some of the Preludes for Piano (Ce qu'a vu le vent d'Ouest, which is on my mind as I recently learned it, appears to be in F# minor but it really doesn't have a tonal center; if anything it's based on whole tone scales which is not the same thing as being in a key. Would make you feel however you would normally feel in an overwhelming gusty windstorm.) Some of the other Preludes are quite tonal. There is a lot of variety.
Ligeti - Atmospheres (tends to make me feel creepy, but also it's strangely beautiful)
Adams - In the White Silence - in the same vein as Atmospheres, less creepy and more beautiful
Ablinger - Voices and Piano - Ablinger derived the tonality of the pieces from the pitches of the speaking voices on the recordings. It is an attempt to match the pitch and rhythm of spoken words as closely as possible. It highlights the emotion of the spoken words, which is sometimes wonderful and sometimes disturbing.
Louie - I Leap Through the Sky with Stars - inspiring while communicating a sense of the vastness of space and harsh light against darkness - lives up to its title.

You're not likely to find much mid20th-21st century music whose goal is to tug unabashedly at your heartstrings in the manner of Tchaikovsky or Mendelssohn. It's out of style at present. I'm not willing to call that a good thing or a bad thing; I do love a good histrionic Romantic-era piece, but on the other hand, more ambiguous music that allows for multiple emotional responses is often more interesting.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

aleazk said:


> If it's your thing, then sooner or later you will like something of it. If not, then you don't like this music. Try again some years later.


Repeat as necessary.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

Look forget about all of this atonal business and just listen to Shostakovich and all will be well with the world.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Neo Romanza said:


> Look forget about all of this atonal business and just listen to Shostakovich and all will be well with the world.


Now there's a sentiment I can agree with... 

I do think that all the exciting 20th century stuff had one unintended consequence, at least for me, but I'm thinking I should start a new thread for it...


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead—your next stop, the Twilight Zone.


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

Another tip:

Try the shock treatment. - When I first discovered Luigi Nono, his works were the most avantgarde I had heard up to that point. At that point, I was already familiar with Schoenberg and the twelve-tone system. I listened to some pieces by Nono, which were fascinating but also quite bewildering. But when I then went back to listen to, say, Schoenberg's violin concerto or his later string quartets, they suddenly sounded almost mozartian in comparison.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Andreas said:


> Another tip:
> 
> Try the shock treatment. - When I first discovered Luigi Nono, his works were the most avantgarde I had heard up to that point. At that point, I was already familiar with Schoenberg and the twelve-tone system. I listened to some pieces by Nono, which were fascinating but also quite bewildering. But when I then went back to listen to, say, Schoenberg's violin concerto or his later string quartets, they suddenly sounded almost mozartian in comparison.


I tried that once. For my shock treatment, I tried out John Cage. Then I went back to Webern, and it still sounded very loud.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*It Take Time*

I never appreciated Schoenberg and Webern until I was in my fifties. Like many here the first atonal composer that I really liked was Berg.

I have come to feel that atonal is just one style of music. There are certain situations were atonal music can create a certain ambiance that tonal music can not and vice versa.

I realize that Berg could never compose _The Magic Flute_. By the same token if Mozart tried to compose _Lulu_, Jack the Ripper's final aria would have probably sounded like (Note: You have to click on the image.)


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## Guest (May 29, 2013)

brianvds said:


> I tried that once. For my shock treatment, I tried out John Cage. Then I went back to Webern, and it still sounded very loud.


Hah! You picked out two of the quietest composers of the twentieth century. Not that some Cage cannot be quite loud. But mostly quite quiet.

Coupla very brief loud bits in Webern. Nothing too rowdy, though.

This makes me strongly suspect that you are a) pulling our legs or b) not very familiar with the composers you've mentioned.

a) or b)?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas; you've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

brianvds said:


> I tried that once. For my shock treatment, I tried out John Cage. Then I went back to Webern, and it still sounded very loud.


Webern goes down very well after listening to Takemitsu and Boulez, who thought along similar terms. None of them, incidentally, were very interested in volume.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

some guy said:


> a) pulling our legs


That's the correct option. 

I was thinking of course of 4'33", which would make Webern sound loud. At least if it is performed in a quiet room.


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## Guest (May 29, 2013)

Whew!

I'm glad that I correctly divined your attitude towards the tenants.

That's the option I was hoping was the correct one!!


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

Pretend it is tonal music.


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## stanchinsky (Nov 19, 2012)

I've grown to enjoy some atonal music, I noticed that one thing I don't like is when the music has many random, disjointed rhythms. I don't know what to call it, perhaps a-rhythmic music?


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

Take their word for it. - There are artists and writers people whose aesthetic judgements I trust and whose opinions I greatly value. Among them: Glenn Gould, philosopher Theodor W. Adorno and novelist Thomas Bernhard, who were all great admirers of the Second Viennese School. Of course no such approval means that one must like a certain thing, but it might indicate that it is something legitimate and worth one's effort.

Contextualize. - Perhaps it's helpful to look at the beginnings of atonal music in the context of a greater movement in the arts in general. Roughly around the same time when tonality began to collapse (1910s), other art forms did so, too, in a way: cubism and dadaism come to mind. Onem ight say: atonal music was the consequence of a larger cultural evolution and is, as such, meaningful in itself.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Outstanding post*



Andreas said:


> Take their word for it. - There are artists and writers people whose aesthetic judgements I trust and whose opinions I greatly value. Among them: Glenn Gould, philosopher Theodor W. Adorno and novelist Thomas Bernhard, who were all great admirers of the Second Viennese School. Of course no such approval means that one must like a certain thing, but it might indicate that it is something legitimate and worth one's effort.
> 
> Contextualize. - Perhaps it's helpful to look at the beginnings of atonal music in the context of a greater movement in the arts in general. Roughly around the same time when tonality began to collapse (1910s), other art forms did so, too, in a way: cubism and dadaism come to mind. Onem ight say: atonal music was the consequence of a larger cultural evolution and is, as such, meaningful in itself.


Outstanding post. I have tried to make the same points myself. Your explanation is far superior to any of mine. :clap:


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## StevenOBrien (Jun 27, 2011)

Atonal music to me is music that is engineered in such a way to "disable" harmonic context to allow for a stronger focus on structure and form. To me, there's no consonance and no dissonance. It's purely percussive, rhythmic music that has the advantage of being able to use multiple pitch values to create "melodies".


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

brianvds said:


> That's the correct option.
> 
> I was thinking of course of 4'33", which would make Webern sound loud. At least if it is performed in a quiet room.


That's only your experience of it. When I attended a performance of 4'33", there was a loud explosion outside the concert hall, a bunch of car alarms going off, some guy yelling, and then a police siren began wailing just after that.

That's the problem with characterizing 4'33", anything could happen in that prescribed space.

If it were a "silent" piece, what you said might make more sense.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Andreas said:


> I'd be interested in putting together tips or advice that might make it easier for an open-minded listener to appreciate modern/atonal classical music.


I don't want anybody to "appreciate" modern/atonal music; it would be much better if they actually "liked" it.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

StevenOBrien said:


> Atonal music to me is music that is engineered in such a way to "disable" harmonic context to allow for a stronger focus on structure and form. To me, there's no consonance and no dissonance. It's purely percussive, rhythmic music that has the advantage of being able to use multiple pitch values to create "melodies".


Oh, by "percussive," you mean just events which occur, like in percussion music. It's almost as if you are saying to "ignore pitch except as melodic lines."

I can understand how atonal music is "music that is engineered in such a way to "disable" harmonic context," and when I hear early Stockhausen piano or early Boulez, I agree completely. But atonality often has "harmonic consequences" which happen after the engineering is done. This would be the concern of George Perle and his quest for all-interval, all-triad row forms which exhibit certain symmetry under inversion. Whether or not these harmonic consequences are "disabled" is up to the listener, to an extent.


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> I don't want anybody to "appreciate" modern/atonal music; it would be much better if they actually "liked" it.


That's asking for too much I think.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

neoshredder said:


> That's asking for too much I think.


Why? I like plenty of it.


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> some guy yelling


That was rude of you, some guy...


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## Guest (May 30, 2013)

:lol:Yes, and I'm sorry.


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## LordBlackudder (Nov 13, 2010)

that japanese zen music. or a horror soundtrack. cat on a piano.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

LordBlackudder said:


> that japanese zen music. or a horror soundtrack. cat on a piano.


Where would we be without your insights?


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

LordBlackudder said:


> or a horror soundtrack.


Horror soundtracks are pretty cool sometimes. Imagining that the piece is in fact a horror soundtrack is one route to appreciating it.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

brianvds said:


> Horror soundtracks are pretty cool sometimes. Imagining that the piece is in fact a horror soundtrack is one route to appreciating it.


At last, I now see the connection between Psycho and Shostakovich's 8th String Quartet (dedicated to the victims of those murdered in shower scenes). Uh-oh, that doesn't sound so funny, now, especially the shower part.

Hey, yeah, that's the ticket! While listening to Shostakovich's 8th String Quartet, imagine that it's the soundtrack to a movie called "World War II."


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## Guest (May 31, 2013)

A group of us back in the day used to play a little game with this idea.

It went something like this. Someone would put some music on. The rest of us would sit there for awhile.

Then someone would say, "It is dawn in the forest. There are deer in a meadow. Suddenly, they all run away."

This works equally for Bruckner and for Borbetomagus.


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

stanchinsky said:


> I've grown to enjoy some atonal music, I noticed that one thing I don't like is when the music has many random, disjointed rhythms. I don't know what to call it, perhaps a-rhythmic music?


It's interesting, because I've felt this way about certain pieces too. I remember listening to Boulez' 2nd piano sonata and felt there's no particular rhythm to it, or at least it seemed to change all the time. But then, one day, while listening to the fourth movement, I simply started tapping my foot to see if I could in some way synchronize it with the music. And to my surprise, I felt that there was, underneath the seemingly erratic rhythms, a fixed pulse that ran all the way though. I've never looked at the score, so I don't know for sure, but it certainly felt like it.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> Hey, yeah, that's the ticket! While listening to Shostakovich's 8th String Quartet, imagine that it's the soundtrack to a movie called "World War II."


It's the soundtrack to a movie called "Leningrad."


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

brianvds said:


> It's the soundtrack to a movie called "Leningrad."


That was Shostakovich's "Leningrad" symphony. Duhh. String Quartet No. 8 is "all inclusive."


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Andreas said:


> It's interesting, because I've felt this way about certain pieces too. I remember listening to Boulez' 2nd piano sonata and felt there's no particular rhythm to it, or at least it seemed to change all the time. But then, one day, while listening to the fourth movement, I simply started tapping my foot to see if I could in some way synchronize it with the music. And to my surprise, I felt that there was, underneath the seemingly erratic rhythms, a fixed pulse that ran all the way though. I've never looked at the score, so I don't know for sure, but it certainly felt like it.


Try some Madonna. It's usually got a real obvious beat.

But seriously, many of the "irrational rhythms" found in Boulez' (bracketed groups of notes with a ratio above, such as 4:5, 7:4, etc.) amount to "precisely-notated ritardandos."


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> That was Shostakovich's "Leningrad" symphony. Duhh. String Quartet No. 8 is "all inclusive."


If memory serves, he wrote the string quartet at about the same time, and it sounds very Leningrad-y. Don't know how it compares to the symphony, because believe it or not, I have never actually heard the Leningrad symphony. I have all manner of huge gaps in my culture. I can't afford to buy CDs, and here in Dark Africa, internet is so expensive that I can't really afford to listen to all that much on YouTube either.

Ideally, I should of course simply train my inner ear so that I can download scores and read through them, but alas, I have never been able to train myself to read even the simplest of melodies.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Andreas said:


> It's interesting, because I've felt this way about certain pieces too. I remember listening to Boulez' 2nd piano sonata and felt there's no particular rhythm to it, or at least it seemed to change all the time. But then, one day, while listening to the fourth movement, I simply started tapping my foot to see if I could in some way synchronize it with the music. And to my surprise, I felt that there was, underneath the seemingly erratic rhythms, a fixed pulse that ran all the way though. I've never looked at the score, so I don't know for sure, but it certainly felt like it.


I've looked at the score, and lived to tell the tale. You might not be so lucky!


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Tips to help appreciate atonal music:

Shake well before using; hold can upside down. Refrigerate after opening.


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## Guest (May 31, 2013)

Hahaha, good one.

Anyway, it is dawn in the forest....


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Tips to help appreciate atonal music:

Realize that it's "atonal;" it's not got harmony.

In 12-tone and serial music, the "spaces" or intervals between the notes are the only contributors to consonance/dissonance, so listen in terms of general sonority, not in terms of "relation to a tonic." Is that clear? If this doesn't work, rinse and repeat.


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## schuberkovich (Apr 7, 2013)

Look at a score. I found Webern's Symphony easier to digest following the score. Knowing what's going on makes it easier for your brain to not just "hear atonal noises". Also, even if you don't enjoy the music, the scores (especially Webern's) look like pieces of art and provide visual stimulation.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

Just listen, and enjoy something beautiful.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

To those who don't like atonal music: just lie back, close your eyes, listen, and choke on your own vomit.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> To those who don't like atonal music: just lie back, close your eyes, listen, and choke on your own vomit.


That comment made me choke with the soda I was drinking!.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

A tip for listening to 'atonal music': QUIT THINKING ABOUT IT AND JUST LISTEN TO IT!!!!


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Try listening while strapped to an inversion table; this gives more blood to your brain, so you can cerebrate better. When that vein on your head pulses with each note, you know you're tuned-in.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Let your cat walk across the piano keyboard and record it. Listen to the recording a few times. You'll soon be able to hear that there really is a difference between that and Schoenberg.


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

Yeah you would have to give me a pretty good tip to listen to atonal music. lol


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

brianvds said:


> Let your cat walk across the piano keyboard and record it. Listen to the recording a few times. You'll soon be able to hear that there really is a difference between that and Schoenberg.


But that has already been done: 



 (Scarlatti's "cat fugue")
According to the legend, Scarlatti's cat walked over the keyboard, Scarlatti liked the "theme" and then he composed this fugue with it!.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Cat Concerto*



brianvds said:


> Let your cat walk across the piano keyboard and record it. Listen to the recording a few times. You'll soon be able to hear that there really is a difference between that and Schoenberg.


There is also the Cat Concerto:


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Singing Dog*

How about a dog that sings and plays:


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Prey tell and what is wrong with our composer friends in the animal kingdom............


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

_Concerto for Piano, Chimpanzee and Orchestra:_ Unfortunately, the piano-playing chimp did not like the way the conductor was handling a certain section, and he chewed his face off. He then started throwing his feces at the audience.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Neo Romanza said:


> A tip for listening to 'atonal music': QUIT THINKING ABOUT IT AND JUST LISTEN TO IT!!!!


No, I don't think that's good enough for a deeper understanding and acceptance of atonal or serial music and the related "modern" or "experimental" musics. If you are open & positive to begin with, "just listening" will get you in the door, but you will only go so far.

In a nutshell, one must be conversant with the overall aesthetic thrust of modernist ideas & thinking. I'm speaking very generally here, and in all that follows.

Much of the idea-base of modern art, including philosophy, visual art, and music can be traced back to Nietzsche and his idea of "unconscious impulses," which greatly influenced Freud's idea of the "unconscious;" then Carl Jung's ideas of "archetypes. If you wish to go back further, go to Schopenhauer, a mentor of Nietzsche's. Interestingly, Schopenhauer ties-in with Eastern thought, although more pessimistic.

This gave rise to Klee, Kandinsky, Surrealism, Duchamp, Abstract Expressionism, and Warhol. There is a connection to all of these movements and figures: a desire to "bypass" one's own intentions, in order to create a "pure" art which is not influenced by one's own tastes, "ego," or intrusions of that nature. Automatic drawing, Mallarme, "drip" and splash paintings, John Cage and chance music, Warhol's soup cans & removal of his "personal" touch; all of this is relevant.

A common complaint about serialism is that it "depersonalizes" music, and all who compose using this system "lose their identity." Actually, there is much truth to this. The "system" is by its nature impersonal (to an extent), and the composer wants to create a "labyrinth" in which he can become "lost" or subsumed. This has to do with not willfully over-controlling the art, and thus, a sense of mystery, of no control of will. Rather, like in Chinese "yin/yang," the artist is a "receiver" or passive receptacle. This is contrary to the Western patriarchal "genius" idea of artist/persona.

No more "micro-management" of the artist. :lol:


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> _Concerto for Piano, Chimpanzee and Orchestra:_ Unfortunately, the piano-playing chimp did not like the way the conductor was handling a certain section, and he chewed his face off. He then started throwing his feces at the audience.


I believe Glenn Gould ended his career in live performances the same way.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> _Concerto for Piano, Chimpanzee and Orchestra:_ Unfortunately, the piano-playing chimp did not like the way the conductor was handling a certain section, and he chewed his face off. He then started throwing his feces at the audience.


How avant garde!


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

brianvds said:


> Let your cat walk across the piano keyboard and record it. Listen to the recording a few times. You'll soon be able to hear that there really is a difference between that and Schoenberg.


That's one damn talented cat, to be able to control motivic development and counterpoint in such a focused and concentrated way!


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Mahlerian said:


> That's one damn talented cat, to be able to control motivic development and counterpoint in such a focused and concentrated way!


Apparently not that good. Even _brianvds_ noticed that the cat was unable to establish order.

"First exposure" to Schönberg's atonal music presents the same difficulties as a rural Chinese might have seeing his first Westerners: they all look alike, because of prominent and unusual features.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Hilltroll72 said:


> Apparently not that good. Even _brianvds_ noticed that the cat was unable to establish order.


Define order. Schoenberg's music is a logical outgrowth of late romanticism. The Drei Klavierstucke contain numerous references to Tristan and the second of them is related stylistically to Chopin's A minor prelude.

(You know, I just realized that I misread brianvds's quote, and took it as "isn't" rather than "is"...)



Hilltroll72 said:


> "First exposure" to Schönberg's atonal music presents the same difficulties as a rural Chinese might have seeing his first Westerners: they all look alike, because of prominent and unusual features.


So continued dislike of pantonality (I don't believe that atonality really exists, and certainly not in Schoenberg's music) is akin to racism?


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## schuberkovich (Apr 7, 2013)

arpeggio said:


> There is also the Cat Concerto:


That is hilarious and amazing. Thank you for sharing it


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Mahlerian said:


> So continued dislike of pantonality (I don't believe that atonality really exists, and certainly not in Schoenberg's music) is akin to racism?


Quien sabe? The Chinese person's inability to differentiate has nothing to do with racism.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Hilltroll72 said:


> Quien sabe? The Chinese person's inability to differentiate has nothing to do with racism.


And we should note it is not just the Chinese. In a general sort of way, when people are exposed to a race they are not familiar with, members of that race all look the same to them. More broadly, to most of us, all monkeys or elephants or sparrows look pretty much the same, and we marvel that biologists studying their behaviour can identify and name them individually.

I distinctly remember a time when I thought Rachmaninov was about as avant garde as anything. "But there are no melodies! It sounds like a damn cat running on a keyboard!" Today he's one of my favourite composers. 

Moral of the story: one should be careful about assuming that there is no pattern simply because you cannot immediately see one. Counter-moral: humans are pattern-seeking animals (notorious for seeing the face of Jesus in the clouds and on pancakes and burned toast), and thus there is always scope for genuine fraudsters to create a bit of sound salad, cover it in a sauce of impressive sounding postmodernist terminology ("My work is about probing the inherent dualism of human experience via juxtaposition of seemingly random sounds on a basis of mostly oriental harmonies as heard through the mind of a modern postindustrial feminist") and then sit back and enjoy watching learned experts see profound patterns where none actually exist.

I don't expect the debate to en any time soon.


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## Guest (Jun 4, 2013)

brianvds said:


> ...there is always scope for genuine fraudsters to create a bit of sound salad, cover it in a sauce of impressive sounding postmodernist terminology ("My work is about probing the inherent dualism of human experience via juxtaposition of seemingly random sounds on a basis of mostly oriental harmonies as heard through the mind of a modern postindustrial feminist") and then sit back and enjoy watching learned experts see profound patterns where none actually exist.


I suppose that there is always scope, sure. But I don't see this happening ever. Who would do this? Aside from a smart aleck college student, maybe. But seriously. Imagine someone actually doing this. Who would it be?

Just to satisfy my own curiosity, do you, brianvds, know of any "genuine fraudsters" in the world of contemporary music?

I'm pretty well immersed in this world myself, and I don't know of any fraudsters, not even fraudulent ones.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

ahammel said:


> I believe Glenn Gould ended his career in live performances the same way.


LMAO! LMAO!:lol::lol:


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> That's one damn talented cat, to be able to control motivic development and counterpoint in such a focused and concentrated way!


:lol:



Hilltroll72 said:


> Apparently not that good. Even _brianvds_ noticed that the cat was unable to establish order.
> 
> "First exposure" to Schönberg's atonal music presents the same difficulties as a rural Chinese might have seeing his first Westerners: they all look alike, because of prominent and unusual features.


Actually, since the cat ostensibly possesses no conscious will in creating musical meaning, but is only doing the cat-like action of walking, then his "performance" is more accurately described as "aleatoric," not serial. Even though the music the cat makes is "ego-less," it did not devise a serial "system" in which this could occur, so this aligns the cat's actions closer to John Cage than with Boulez.

Then again, the cat's intention for walking on the piano might be for the purpose of getting attention or being fed; his performance can thus be seen as "performance art," employing the use of "blocks of sound" à la Henry Cowell or Varèse, which viewers can then see as "cat music."

Am I the only person around here who takes cats seriously?


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> LMAO! LMAO!:lol::lol:


Technically, you can only do this once.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> Define order. Schoenberg's music is a logical outgrowth of late romanticism. The Drei Klavierstucke contain numerous references to Tristan and the second of them is related stylistically to Chopin's A minor prelude.


But these are just metaphorical artistic references to earlier tonal ideas.



Mahlerian said:


> So continued dislike of pantonality (I don't believe that atonality really exists, and certainly not in Schoenberg's music) is akin to racism?


So, when Schoenberg began using ordered sets, he was creating atonality.

As to the "they all look alike," the cumulative effect of adding notes to an unordered set is a creeping-in of "redundancy" and lack of variation, as this chart from Howard Hanson's _Harmonic Materials of Modern Music_ shows:



> p=perfect fifth (or fourth)
> m=major third (minor sixth)
> n=minor third (major sixth)
> s=major second (minor seventh)
> ...


Which applies well to unordered scale-sets used harmonically, as Hanson is doing (note the title of his book, _*Harmonic* Materials of Modern Music_).

Then, Hanson puts his foot in his mouth with this statement:



> This is probably the greatest argument against the rigorous use of atonal theory in which all 12 notes are used in a single melodic or harmonic pattern. These constructs begin to lose contrast, and a monochromatic effect emerges.


-----------------------

*There is a flaw in Hanson's statement about atonality, however.* _The chart above assumes that these additional added notes all refer to every other element of the set,_ like an unordered scale does: in scales, each pitch shares an interval with every other pitch in the scale. 
_
But ordered tone rows relate only to each other (each preceding and succeeding note). 
_
Ordered tone rows are used for their _intervallic properties_, as _precise sequences_ of intervals. _These intervals possess sonority,_ in terms of consonance/dissonance.

The row-sets, although usable melodically as "themes" or motives, _are not referenced to a single tonic, as an unordered scale is,_ so the above chart of "creeping redundancy" is really *only applicable to unordered sets, i.e. scales,* as Hanson was using them.

This underscores the _true primary significance of ordered sets:_ as conveyors of *intervallic sonority* due to their interval differences (not primarily as melodic entities). The most "variety" and unity comes from these intervallic sonorities, which Webern seemed to understand the best of the "Big 3." Schoenberg was still playing with "themes" and seemed to be more concerned with this aspect of the row.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

I now post, once again, an only metaphorically C-majorish idea that has nothing whatsoever to do with tonality or tonal relations. Any triads present are not real, and shame on you and your ears (and your children's ears, unto the 5th generation) for hearing them. As for seeing them, well, that's your fault too, because ordered sets do not create any sort of hierarchy, and thus none can be present.









Once again, make sure that you understand that a V7-I cadence cannot exist in this music, which is artificially derived from *intervallic relations*, which, as you can tell from the term, have nothing to do with tonal relations. You see? The words are different!

Edit: The example above is based on the following *ordered* row: G-E-C-A-D-Bf-F#-C#-G#-D#-F-B, which is run through in its entirety twice. All of the verticals are allowed sonorities in post-Romantic music (including the four-note quartal chord).


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

some guy said:


> I suppose that there is always scope, sure. But I don't see this happening ever. Who would do this? Aside from a smart aleck college student, maybe. But seriously. Imagine someone actually doing this. Who would it be?


It has happened in postmodernist literature studies, when the physicist Alan Sokal managed to get an entirely meaningless article published in a learned journal, to high acclaim from supposed experts. Perhaps you have heard of the case. 



> Just to satisfy my own curiosity, do you, brianvds, know of any "genuine fraudsters" in the world of contemporary music?


Well, I have my doubts about Stockhausen, sometimes. 
And in the visual arts, a lot of contemporary (and relatively recent) stuff looks like utter nonsense to me. 
But I am indeed nowadays careful about making sweeping statements. I am actually not very familiar with the contemporary avant garde, and I'd rather admit that with some of it, I personally do not understand it and/or cannot see the point, rather than boldly claiming that there is none.

Those who do have the knowledge to explain the more startling examples of the avant garde are welcome to do so. Sometimes I find myself acquiring a new appreciation; sometimes I don't.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> I now post, once again, an only metaphorically C-majorish idea that has nothing whatsoever to do with tonality or tonal relations. Any triads present are not real, and shame on you and your ears (and your children's ears, unto the 5th generation) for hearing them. As for seeing them, well, that's your fault too, because ordered sets do not create any sort of hierarchy, and thus none can be present.
> 
> View attachment 19099
> 
> ...


Remember, sarcasm is easily misconstrued on-line. I suggest saying exactly what you mean, for clarity's sake.

There is a difference in ordered sets(rows) and unordered sets (scales). The *intervallic relations* in a scale are *pervasive,* relating every note to every other note.

In an ordered row, refer to Schoenberg's original definition of his system, which states that the notes of the row are *related only to each other* _(meaning each adjacent note preceding and succeeding),_ not a tonic.

Don't fall into the trap of being "hypnotized by the notes;" serial music is about *interval relations,* not pitch-identities.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

brianvds said:


> ...in the visual arts, a lot of contemporary (and relatively recent) stuff looks like utter nonsense to me.
> But I am indeed nowadays careful about making sweeping statements. *(?)* I am actually not very familiar with the contemporary avant garde, and I'd rather admit that with some of it, I personally do not understand it and/or cannot see the point, rather than boldly claiming that there is none.
> 
> Those who do have the knowledge to explain the more startling examples of the avant garde are welcome to do so. Sometimes I find myself acquiring a new appreciation; sometimes I don't.


I'm just the opposite. It took a lot of work, but now I experience an exquisite aesthetic ecstacy when listening to good serial or non-harmonic music like Webern, Schoenberg, Berg, George Perle, Roger Sessions, Persichetti, or Babbitt. I really can't describe the semi-Platonic satisfaction this music brings to me. Beauty becomes a fleeting, ever-changing experience of visceral sonority, as I transcend my accumulated knowledge, sit back in the plush leather driver's seat, and press the accelerator, feeling the smooth, sure power of the men and system which created it. _Vroom!_


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## Guest (Jun 4, 2013)

brianvds said:


> It has happened in postmodernist literature studies, when the physicist Alan Sokal managed to get an entirely meaningless article published in a learned journal, to high acclaim from supposed experts. Perhaps you have heard of the case.


Indeed. And anyone else who has heard of it will be wondering, with me, why you have brought this particular event into this particular conversation, where it seems to be quite clearly alien.

I'm also wondering about your use of the word "literature." And of "entirely," for that matter.



brianvds said:


> I am actually not very familiar with the contemporary avant garde, and I'd rather admit that with some of it, I personally do not understand it and/or cannot see the point, rather than boldly claiming that there is none.


Very good of you to admit this. I think that the ability to make up implausible scenarios is directly related to unfamiliarity. To others similarly circumstanced, as I have seen repeatedly, the scenarios appear to be plausible, but only to them.

I understand the urge to have opinions about things one doesn't really understand; I even understand how it is that opinions from ignorance are often stronger than those from knowledge. Best to just stick with what you know and what you feel, however.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

some guy said:


> Indeed. And anyone else who has heard of it will be wondering, with me, why you have brought this particular event into this particular conversation, where it seems to be quite clearly alien.


Is it alien? One can imagine a composer generating random sounds and presenting it as music, and learned professors of music then waxing lyrical about it. But perhaps this sort of thing doesn't happen in music. (Though one has to wonder about aleatory music... )

There does seem to be quite a difference between modernism in visual arts and modernism in music. In the case of the visual arts, during the twentieth century many universities completely abandoned the idea of technical proficiency as prerequisite of becoming an artist. Many of the professors themselves cannot draw a stick man, and it is not all that unusual for people with no discernible artistic skill of any kind to become famous artists. Jackson Pollock and Damien Hirst come to mind. (There: now I'll have to deal with the flak I'm going to get for that one...)

In music, this is not at all the case: the universities remain the bastions of technical skill. You don't get a degree in music if you cannot perform up to a very high standard (as far as I can work out, the technical standard is in fact today higher than it has ever been before, and many of the great virtuosi of the past might not look all that impressive to a modern audience.)

Thus, I would think it far less likely that you'll find jokers in a music department. But I do not really know.



> I understand the urge to have opinions about things one doesn't really understand; I even understand how it is that opinions from ignorance are often stronger than those from knowledge.


Yes, indeed: because the less certainty one has, the more likely one is to feel threatened by contrary views and then to react with aggression. You see this a lot in debates about inherently uncertain areas like politics, religion and morality. And then of course also aesthetics.

I have learned from personal experience not to summarily write off music I do not like at first hearing. As I reported before, it took much work for me to learn to appreciate even a romantic like Rachmaninov. The same goes for Bach, for that matter.

On the other hand, I also only have so much time and energy. Thus there is a lot of music out there that I'll never get around to. I have not even explored the standard repertoire very thoroughly yet: I have yet to hear most of the symphonies of Mahler, Shostakovich and Prokofiev, for example. I haven't explored Bartok's string quartets yet. Or most of Beethoven's for that matter.

Compared to some more recent stuff, the Second Viennese School actually seems quite tame by comparison. 

I have at least appreciation for some of the bits that I have heard, notably Schoenberg and Berg. Don't really know Webern's work.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> I'm just the opposite. It took a lot of work, but now I experience an exquisite aesthetic ecstacy when listening to good serial or non-harmonic music like Webern, Schoenberg, Berg, George Perle, Roger Sessions, Persichetti, or Babbitt. I really can't describe the semi-Platonic satisfaction this music brings to me. Beauty becomes a fleeting, ever-changing experience of visceral sonority, as I transcend my accumulated knowledge, sit back in the plush leather driver's seat, and press the accelerator, feeling the smooth, sure power of the men and system which created it. _Vroom!_


In my endeavor to learn to appreciate new music I have wondered how much work it will require. Obviously no one can tell for me, but I'm rather interested in learning about others' experiences. Could you give me some sense of what "a lot of work" meant for you?


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## Guest (Jun 4, 2013)

It was no work at all. It was sheer unalloyed joy.

And still is.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

some guy said:


> Indeed. And anyone else who has heard of it will be wondering, with me, why you have brought this particular event into this particular conversation, where it seems to be quite clearly alien.
> 
> I'm also wondering about your use of the word "literature." And of "entirely," for that matter.


The Sokal article does show that someone can create a work that is produced as a farce or hoax but was taken seriously within a specific field. His article was not a work of art, and I think that makes a large difference. It's harder for me to imagine someone creating a major work of art as a hoax. I guess someone might try if they felt about certain music the same way Sokal felt about some postmodern studies. Sokal field was not postmodern studies, yet he was able to create a work that fit perfectly within that field. I think a non-musician would greatly struggle with creating a major musical work. I think a musician would be vastly less likely to create such a farce.

The Sokal hoax was published in the journal "Social Text", a jounal of cultural studies rather than literature. He did work very hard to produce a work that was entirely garbage from his perspective (and I agree with his assessment).


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

mmsbls said:


> In my endeavor to learn to appreciate new music I have wondered how much work it will require. Obviously no one can tell for me, but I'm rather interested in learning about others' experiences. Could you give me some sense of what "a lot of work" meant for you?


For me personally, the music wasn't repulsive from the get-go, as it seems to be to others. It sounded different, sure, but no more so than when I heard Debussy's Images for the first time, which seemed as radical as anything, and I'd grown up on Rite of Spring.

I got into the Second Viennese School through Mahler, Bruckner, and Brahms. I got into Messiaen through Stravinsky and Debussy, and Takemitsu and Boulez through Messiaen. I got into Ives through a thorough grounding in American popular songs and hymn tunes.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

mmsbls said:


> In my endeavor to learn to appreciate new music I have wondered how much work it will require. Obviously no one can tell for me, but I'm rather interested in learning about others' experiences. Could you give me some sense of what "a lot of work" meant for you?


A person's "life" is the accumulation of experience; and we work as we accumulate this experience. So, the end result is simply "who you are" and how you have occupied yourself over the stretch of a lifetime. Hopefully, you did not let the more menial tasks of a lifetime of work define you, but always kept a "plan B" operating. This is called _"aspiration:"_ the desire to be more than what you have been defined to be, by yourself or by others, or by the morass of circumstance played-out by agents who are themselves victims of circumstance, never knowing "what might have been." Aspiration is a prayer in action; it is the will to rise above, to aspire.

Initially, I was puzzled by 12-tone and serial music; then one day back in 1970, while listening to a Domaine Musical LP of Henri Lazarof on headphones, I fell asleep. When I woke up, hearing the music in a half-conscious state, it "clicked" for me. Suddenly, I seemed to understand it, at least in an intuitive, visceral way. I had overcome my initial visceral "listening" obstacle. I could now listen and enjoy, with eagerness and acceptance.

The real "work" for me was overcoming the feeling that there was something in serial music that I was "missing out on" or for some reason did not know enough about. I'm not one to simply stop at a point; and as I got older and more versed, I decided to try to "figure out" serial music, and began reading modern composition texts.

This wasn't sufficient, though; I had not yet come to a satisfactory knowledge, a complete, simple, "grokking" knowledge, of exactly what the nature of 12-tone and serial music was.

grok |gräk|
verb ( grokked, grokking) [ trans. ] informal
understand (something) intuitively or by empathy : because of all the commercials, children grok things immediately.
• [ intrans. ] empathize or communicate sympathetically; establish a rapport.
ORIGIN mid 20th cent.: a word coined by Robert Heinlein (1907-88), American science fiction writer, in Stranger in a Strange Land.

I decided that I needed to understand how _tonality_ works, before I could understand how _atonality _worked in opposition to it.

I had been learning about harmonics and tunings while working at a wind chime factory, and I kept on studying and reading. 
Finally, by sheer tenacity and accumulation, I came to the multi-leveled realization of the "hierarchy" of how tonality works: the recursive circle of fifths vs. Forte's number line, more study of frequency ratios, how fractions are relations, not quantities, what "zero" is, pitch identity, ruminating on what "vertical" means as opposed to "horizontal," how time is measured and numbered, and pitch-identity vs. pitch as quantity; a lot of math, a lot of music-related texts.

For me, I must "invent the wheel" when I learn about something, and I now see the nature of tonality and atonality, and exactly why these systems work as they do. I'm sure that many young genius composers, who apply themselves and are nurtured properly, come to these kinds of realizations much sooner than I did; but I tried, I aspired, and now I know. The hour may be late, but I have largely completed this task.

BTW, I'm glad that the "pressure" seems, for a time, to have been lifted; that "the dogs have been called off;" and that whomever it was who had a grudge against me, and was working from hearsay or some behind-the scenes information pipeline, has finally _relented._

After September, my 6-month infraction will expire, and I won't have to click the "notifications" drop-down menu in dread of some new infraction which threatens my existence.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I can't tell anybody how to listen; I can only describe my own experience. But I will provide a progressive road map.

1. Tonal Chromaticism: music began becoming more and more chromatic, until the chord changes happened on every beat, and/or become too ambiguous to label functionally. Listen to Schoenberg's Pelleas and Strauss' Metamorphosen to get this idea of "tonal chromaticism."

2. Chromatic Tonality: listen to _Miles Davis at the Fillmore _to hear chromatic lines played over a static drone. This is the "inverse" of the above: no function

3. True Chromaticism: all tonal function is abandoned, and the octave is divided in various ways. Local tone centers are create, which shift constantly. Unordered scales are still used. Hard to identify reliably, since it is often mixed with functional tonality. Listen to Bartók, earlier Persichetti, Panufnik.

4. Atonality: systematically avoids all functional harmony. Ordered rows are used. Harmonically, you must listen moment-by moment. Melody or counterpoint will be more obvious.

-----------------------------------------------

There are certain ideas one must articulate in order to truly understand tonal, or atonal music.

1. Know the names and sounds of all intervals.

2. Understand how a scale works, how it is an unordered "index," and learn how to calculate the interval-content of a scale. This means making a list of all intervals and their occurence. Ex. C Major: C-D, C-E, C-F, C-G, C-A, C-B; then D-E, D-F, D-G, D-A, D-B; and so on until all intervals are listed and numbered, and redundancies (repeats) eliminated. 
Then, understand how a tone row is *not* like this, because it is ordered, *not* an index.

3. Compare the circle of fifths with an atonal number line, and understand the difference between a recursive hierarchy and a non-repeating number line. Understand modulo 12 math. (1=12, 2=13, 3=14, etc.). Understand how inversion differs in each model.

4. Understand how tonality is derived from consonance/dissonance in reference to a tonic.

5. Understand the difference between "pitch identity" in relation to a tonic, and "quantity" as interval-difference.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> There are certain ideas one must articulate in order to truly understand tonal, or atonal music.
> 
> 1. Know the names and sounds of all intervals.
> 
> ...


I think I can safely say that I'll never understand atonal music. :lol:

I still enjoy some of it, mind you.


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## Guest (Jun 6, 2013)

Is that the musical equivalent of "some of my best friends are black"?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Just as you can understand tonal music without knowing the theory behind it, you can understand atonal music without knowing the details of set theory, tone row manipulation, etc.

I've only studied one or two atonal pieces in real detail, glanced over the scores of a few others, and the rest I understood by ear. It's not impossible by any means.

Once you find that you have a sense of where the music came from, and where it's going, then you understand it.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

some guy said:


> Is that the musical equivalent of "some of my best friends are black"?


lol, or "don't get me wrong, I have gay friends" or "don't get me wrong, I have jewish friends" or etc.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> Initially, I was puzzled by 12-tone and serial music; then one day back in 1970, while listening to a Domaine Musical LP of Henri Lazarof on headphones, I fell asleep. When I woke up, hearing the music in a half-conscious state, it "clicked" for me. Suddenly, I seemed to understand it, at least in an intuitive, visceral way. I had overcome my initial visceral "listening" obstacle. I could now listen and enjoy, with eagerness and acceptance.


Thanks for your two posts discussing your gradual acceptance of certain music. I actually had a similar experience to what you describe above. I have wanted to explore and "learn to like" Ligeti for some time now. Some works I enjoyed immediately, but these were quite unlike his major works. Several people had suggested I should listen to his etudes as they felt those works were quite wonderful. I listened a number of times and found very little that I enjoyed. Then one day I was listening in the background as I concentrated on another task. I suddenly found myself moving to the music. When I concentrated back on the music, I realized that the rhythms were powerful and moving. I had listened primarily to the melodies before and missed this critical part of the work. Now I listen to the etudes and hear almost wholely different music. I don't know if that technique can help me with other music, but it's interested that subconsciously I found an entry to what I consciously had struggled with.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Once you find that you have a sense of where the music came from, and where it's going, then you understand it.

But is "understanding" a work of music any assurance of "liking" it?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Once you find that you have a sense of where the music came from, and where it's going, then you understand it.
> 
> But is "understanding" a work of music any assurance of "liking" it?


No. But it's harder to like something that you don't understand at all.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

I don't know a thing about Art, but I know what I like?:lol:


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## Guest (Jun 6, 2013)

Yes, let's all have a hearty laugh!! Huh huh huh.

Mayhaps we could get Beavis & Butthead to join us in our merriment.

Point is, as I'm sure St already knows, that liking something implies some sort of knowledge or understanding. So what's really funny about "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like" (which is how the expression usually runs) is that it advances a contradictory proposition. (Yeah, I know, advancing a contradictory proposition isn't all _that_ funny.)


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

some guy said:


> Point is, as I'm sure St already knows, that liking something implies some sort of knowledge or understanding. So what's really funny about "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like" (which is how the expression usually runs) is that it advances a contradictory proposition. (Yeah, I know, advancing a contradictory proposition isn't all _that_ funny.)


To like serial music, years of conditioning must be "unlearned." Finally, an "empty" state is reached, and the initiate can apprehend it without desire; enlightenment is attained.


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## Guest (Jun 6, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> To like serial music, years of conditioning must be "unlearned."


Careful, million, that you don't fall into the same trap as your opponents do, substituting one's own personal experience for Experience.

I had to unlearn nothing to like serial music, and I'm pretty sure the same is true for Mahlerian.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

some guy said:


> Careful, million, that you don't fall into the same trap as your opponents do, substituting one's own personal experience for Experience.
> 
> I had to unlearn nothing to like serial music, and I'm pretty sure the same is true for Mahlerian.


But you and Mahlerian like sound, and accept the premise that serial sound is music. That's true for all music, though. All music is approachable on a purely visceral, sensual level.

But I think there are very few people who understand serial music and savor how it is constructed in exquisite opposition to tonality, and how complete and clean its mark on tonality's bleeding neck is. Except maybe Boulez.


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## Guest (Jun 7, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> I think there are very few people who understand serial music and savor how it is constructed in exquisite opposition to tonality....


Well, I know that this is a favorite idea of yours, but I disagree is all. I understand serial music, and it sounds for all the world like tonal music sounds. Except for the being in a key part. Everything else is the same. Rhythm, melody, motifs, events, tone color, dynamics, tempo, space--all the logic of manipulation of those elements that tonal music has. Without the keys. And even the keys are present in some strange, subtle way, if your experience is any indication.

I do not, just for the record, "accept the premise that serial sound is music." I listen to serial music and hear its shapes and patterns and manipulations as utterly familiar from having spent a lifetime listening to non-serial musics of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

That all music is approachable on a visceral, sensual level I have no problem with at all. With "purely," however, I have all sorts of problems.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

"All music is approachable on a purely visceral, sensual level."



some guy said:


> That all music is approachable on a visceral, sensual level I have no problem with at all. With "purely," however, I have all sorts of problems.


I don't see why not. If we can listen, we can do this.


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