# What point does a tune cease to be tonal?



## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

I have heard a great many pieces, that could qualify as blurring the lines between tonality and atonality, and I was just wondering, when is it official that you have abandoned tonality all together in your work?


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

When you use Schoenberg's serial technique for harmony.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I'm not a musician so I don't know. But basically, after about 1945, tonality versus atonality became less of an issue, in terms of technical things. You had the emergence of an era of just sound being the focus. A lot of that went beyond what even guys like Schoenberg where doing anyway - like microtonal and use of electronics, stuff that would have been alien to the Viennese atonalists, maybe even not interested them. Of course, their innovations where taken on board after 1945 in many unique ways too.

The other thing is that what's 'tonal' to Beethoven is not the same as what 'tonal' meant to late 19th century (and post 1900) composers. Its likely Beethoven would have thought Debussy and Wagner to be noise. Even Beethoven's first two symphonies did not go down well with Haydn, from what we know. So the meaning of what's 'tonal' or 'diatonic' changes over time.

Its just some history things I'm adding to the mix here but I don't have the skills to answer your question. Maybe musicians on this forum can.


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## Mephistopheles (Sep 3, 2012)

Unfortunately, "atonal" can mean many different things, and it's misleading that people use this single word to refer to so many things. Schoenberg's dodecaphonic serialism, for example, is only one kind of atonality, so while you can say that a piece is "officially" atonal if written in that manner, that doesn't mean everything else is tonal. However, if you want to be purely technical, one of the defining features of tonality is that the music is built upon a key and therefore a tonic - if you cannot reasonably find a tonic on which to end the piece to make it sound final, then it is very likely that it is atonal, or at least of questionable tonality.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

Sid James said:


> The other thing is that what's 'tonal' to Beethoven is not the same as what 'tonal' meant to late 19th century (and post 1900) composers. Its likely Beethoven would have thought Debussy and Wagner to be noise.


I highly doubt that. Beethoven would have probably liked at least Wagner. Beethoven's late music was very forward-thinking (his late quartets sounding almost like Schoenberg or Berg or Webern at times, and his late piano sonatas suggesting the piano music of Debussy), and even many of his _less_ unusual pieces were considered quite dissonant for the time. If anything, you could make the argument that the dumb music critics of Beethoven's time would have thought Wagner and Debussy noise, but they also thought that way of Beethoven, Chopin, and Brahms. We can never _really_ know for sure, but I personally think Beethoven would have liked the late-Romantics.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

Tonality is somewhat vague. To me, something is atonal when there is no established pitch center for the piece (or centers, in the case of polytonal/modal works).


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

BurningDesire said:


> I highly doubt that. Beethoven would have probably liked at least Wagner...We can never _really_ know for sure, but I personally think Beethoven would have liked the late-Romantics.


WEll its an interesting 'hypothetical' type question. Maybe a sort of 'proof' would be if we knew what Beethoven thought of Gesualdo, highly 'zany' chromatic stuff like that. Between Gesualdo and Wagner not much of that happened (except some Baroque, J.S. Bach did a bit of it in his 'Goldberg Variations,' Glenn Gould said in an interview it had the most chromatic music between Gesualdo and Wagner).

As for Debussy, I don't think Beethoven would have come near to grasping things like pentatonic (Asian) scales that was in Claude's music, nor things like ragtime.

All my point was that 'tonal' music, though it lasted for like 300 years, it always kept changing. It got more and more hard to separate things after 1900. Schoenberg, Bartok, Stravinsky all did things within and without (and in between) tonal, atonal, serial.

But its not my job to separate and know these things though. I leave it to those who have musical training - eg. they have to know these things to a high level. I don't.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

When the piece lacks a harmonic progression which in any way establishes tonality (particularly the tonic/dominant relationship), it is not tonal.

EDIT: if we're talking about monophony, I guess I should add that if it lacks progressions which imply tonal harmony (especially cadential progressions such as 7-1 and 3-2-1). Monophony is a bit more difficult, though.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Any piece that prompts some edgy exchanges between St Lukes and some guy.


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## Krisena (Jul 21, 2012)

It's atonal when the relationship between all 12 pitches is equal. As in, no pitch is more dominant than the other.


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

BurningDesire said:


> I highly doubt that. Beethoven would have probably liked at least Wagner. Beethoven's late music was very forward-thinking (his late quartets sounding almost like Schoenberg or Berg or Webern at times, and his late piano sonatas suggesting the piano music of Debussy), and even many of his _less_ unusual pieces were considered quite dissonant for the time. If anything, you could make the argument that the dumb music critics of Beethoven's time would have thought Wagner and Debussy noise, but they also thought that way of Beethoven, Chopin, and Brahms. We can never _really_ know for sure, but I personally think Beethoven would have liked the late-Romantics.


Actually, when it comes to _harmony_, I don't think Beethoven was particularly 'forward-thinking'. I also doubt very much if he would have approved of Wagner's music as he said to have criticized Spohr for being too chromatic!

Tonality and atonality are very difficult terms to pin down. Ligeti used the term non-atonal to describe his approach to some of his music. If you listen to Arc-en-ciel from Book 1 of his Etudes you can hear what he means. 
I suppose there are degrees of tonality and that strict dodecaphony can be seen as abandoning any sense of hierarchy of pitch, where as the Ligeti retains that sense, at least in many passages. Perhaps we only hear some passages as tonal (as in the beginning of the etude) because our ears recognize familiar harmonies. But those harmonies may be a consequence of the other processes at work in the piece and perhaps it is only an illusion of tonality. Either way I think it sound damn good!






I don't think it is possible to actually say there is a line beyond which a piece is atonal. Possibly one would have to look at it phrase by phrase.


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## Renaissance (Jul 10, 2012)

Krisena said:


> It's atonal when the relationship between all 12 pitches is equal. As in, no pitch is more dominant than the other.


This is only Schoenberg's view of atonal music, particularly his 12-tone technique (or dodecaphony). However, this technique has been abandoned too, it is now considered "traditional atonal music"


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

Sid James said:


> WEll its an interesting 'hypothetical' type question. Maybe a sort of 'proof' would be if we knew what Beethoven thought of Gesualdo, highly 'zany' chromatic stuff like that. Between Gesualdo and Wagner not much of that happened (except some Baroque, J.S. Bach did a bit of it in his 'Goldberg Variations,' Glenn Gould said in an interview it had the most chromatic music between Gesualdo and Wagner).


Yes, Gould was referring to Variation 25, specifically. He said something similar about the entire Art of the Fugue, too. But I'd have to agree, Beethoven certainly would have understood Wagner and Debussy, technically. Not sure whether he would have liked their music, but he would have understood it. Schoenberg was the tipping point. I think Mahler said he couldn't understand the score of Schoenberg's second string quartet (atonal finale).


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## Mephistopheles (Sep 3, 2012)

Krisena said:


> It's atonal when the relationship between all 12 pitches is equal. As in, no pitch is more dominant than the other.


As Renaissance said, this is only one view of atonality, which is why I made the point earlier that dodecaphonic serialism is only one variety. Take any variety of "noise music" for instance; almost all of it is atonal but almost none of it is serialist.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Andreas said:


> Yes, Gould was referring to Variation 25, specifically. He said something similar about the entire Art of the Fugue, too. But I'd have to agree, Beethoven certainly would have understood Wagner and Debussy, technically. Not sure whether he would have liked their music, but he would have understood it. Schoenberg was the tipping point. I think Mahler said he couldn't understand the score of Schoenberg's second string quartet (atonal finale).


Supposedly Schoenberg claimed that is what Mahler said, but I don't know if a reputable source for the quote has been found.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2012)

starthrower said:


> Any piece that prompts some edgy exchanges between St Lukes and some guy.


Haha, good one, star!

Anyway, I'd like to go back to the OP and ask Manok a question: Why do you care?

I ask as a musician, btw.

(One thing never comes up in these conversations, and that is that while the word tonal identifies a system, atonal doesn't. So even though they use many of the same letters, and even though they look like opposites, they're actually not at all equivalent.

Serial. Now there's a system. So you could usefully have a conversation about tonality and serialism. They're both systems for managing relations between pitches. Serial is just as pitch dominated as tonal, even though the attempt, with total serialism, was to include all the other things in the mix. The twentieth century was full of things that had little or nothing to do with how to manage pitches, though. And to call all those various things "atonal" is just lazy and sloppy. Like calling chairs and skyscrapers and humans and cats and dandelions "acanine.")


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## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

I only ask because it seems that often some composers are labled atonal, while others are labled tonal, and it seems like everyone has their own definition of what is tonal, I was just curious to know if there was a standard definition or how to tell in the compositions that seem to flow from one to the other, if it is technically tonal or not. Basically I ask out of curiosity.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

If you can't walk down the street whistling it, it's probably atonal.


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## Guest (Sep 27, 2012)

That's right, G. If it isn't furry and doesn't bark, it's a not-dog.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Manok said:


> I only ask because it seems that often some composers are labled atonal, while others are labled tonal, and it seems like everyone has their own definition of what is tonal, I was just curious to know if there was a standard definition or how to tell in the compositions that seem to flow from one to the other, if it is technically tonal or not. Basically I ask out of curiosity.


Well I would recommend to just go to some source on music, esp. dealing with 20th century music. Could be a book or Groves online (or hardcopy, but some libraries have it online these days), or even wikipedia as a start.

I must admit that since I do read books on music, 'atonal' label is not applied much (or at all) to composers after 1945. Of course the 'big three' of the Modern Viennese School where the original 'atonalists.' I mean after 1945, many other things came, and some 'mixed' or where inspired by the atonalists, others weren't. Theres electronics, microtonal, chance-based, minimalist musics emerging, and also older approaches around, some mixing with newer ideas (eg. neo-classical, neo-romantic).

Re serialism, again it was Schoenberg 'inventing' it in the 1920's, but after 1945 it was taken on in many ways. So many ways that departed from what he did (eg. like using computers and tape technology). There where more 'strict' ways of doing serialism and ways that where less so.

Bottom line is that I don't call Xenakis, Penderecki, Ligeti, Partch, Stockhausen and so on 'atonal.' But the label can be used for the 'big 3' of the 2nd Viennese School. Outside that I don't know cos guys like HIndemith, Stravinsky, Bartok all did things that I see as a bit related but also very different - they did not fit into that 'school' of course, but where aware of and informed by its ideas.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Here's a juicy little quote from Schoenberg, from the book by Malcolm MacDonald:

"The expression 'tonal' has itself been wrongly used, exclusively instead of inclusively. It can mean only this: everything that results from a series of tones, whether its cohesion is the result of a direct relationship to a single tonic, or from links of a more complex kind, forms tonality...A piece of music will always have to be tonal at least insofar as, from one tone to the next, there is bound to be a relationship by which all the tones, successive or simultaneous, produce a progression that can be recognized as such."

This brings to mind the phrase "Man, the pattern-seeker." This process occurs even when you look at a tiled floor, and your brain struggles with the grid, sometimes seeing it as various sizes of squares, or triangles, constantly searching, hunting for pattern. 

Conspiracy theorists rejoice!

this post was recycled from another post of mine. go green


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

A lot of these "question" threads are really being used to propogate certain views, to "spin" ideas, perpetuate perceptions, to call into question, to question the validity of, to raise doubt; an "appeal to the most common denominator."

Are you any better off now than when you heard Webern for the first time? Any better off at all?

For me, it's like asking "Is Mozart's music listenable?" or "is the kiwi a fruit?" 

What is Spin? It's a vortex of assumptions; an aphoristic vacuum, longing for what it lacks: "If you dig a big enough hole, everybody will want to jump in." (Firesign Theatre)

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

A valid question. People seem to use "atonal" as a synonym for "chromatic" or "anything with a hint of discord".



> A lot of these "question" threads are really being used to propogate certain views, to "spin" ideas, perpetuate perceptions, to call into question, to question the validity of, to raise doubt; an "appeal to the most common denominator."


Ahh yes. The Glenn Beck technique.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

millionrainbows said:


> Here's a juicy little quote from Schoenberg, from the book by Malcolm MacDonald:
> 
> "The expression 'tonal' has itself been wrongly used, exclusively instead of inclusively...."
> 
> ...


I have read similar quotes by Schoenberg. Basically he did not like the label_ atonal._ I believe he preferred _pantonal._ No music, he said, is devoid of tones. That would be impossible in a literal sense.



millionrainbows said:


> A lot of these "question" threads are really being used to propogate certain views, to "spin" ideas, perpetuate perceptions, to call into question, to question the validity of, to raise doubt; an "appeal to the most common denominator."


I agree but in the case of this thread, the person who is asking the question is simply doing that: asking a question (unlike the 'what is the point of atonal music?' endless merry-go-round thread, all the waffle on that, incl. my own).

But its like certain words in thread titles like 'atonal' or 'dissonant' or even 'seeking music with melody and structure' end up having people come on and ask the person why he's asking the question in the first place. Then query how he's asking it, the words he's using (semantics). & all the rest, you know the drill.

I think its good if someone is coming to 'atonal' or whatever types of music new to them and asking a question. People are naturally curious and inquisitive and they like to do that. But I can smell a 'hidden agenda' from a mile away, and I don't think manok is doing that here.

& I will also do 'rehash' here. It might be of use to manok. I went to a public lecture about the Second Viennese School and in it, Andrew Ford talked about all the dogma and 'sacred cow' type aura surrounding this whole thing. His aim was to demystify it and let people understand the difference between the music and the dogmas of 'progress' and all that which various people attached to it.
http://www.talkclassical.com/10930-second-viennese-school-21st.html


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Atonality, when it was first coined, was not a well defined word. It certainly wasn't restricted to (or even applied to) the Second Viennese School and its successors (serialism, etc.). It basically meant any music that did not depart from and return to a tonal center (even the prelude to Tristan is in A). It was often applied to composers like the more astringent Bartok, early Prokofiev, etc. Schoenberg certainly raised the ante, but after he derived the twelve-note system, he preferred that term to the more benign "atonal." 

Any answer to your question ("when does a tune cease to be tonal?") has to be indeterminate, although I would to tend to think that for something to be called a "tune," it would almost have to be largely diatonic. If by "tune" you mean something broader -- like theme or passage -- the answers float all over the map, but the lack of some identifying key center (even a fleeting one) would probably be a good start.

george


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

GGluek said:


> Any answer to your question ("when does a tune cease to be tonal?") has to be indeterminate, although I would to tend to think that for something to be called a "tune," it would almost have to be largely diatonic. If by "tune" you mean something broader -- like theme or passage -- the answers float all over the map, but the lack of some identifying key center (even a fleeting one) would probably be a good start.


I think he uses tune like I use tune, basically a more casual term for a composition. I call things like Varese's Arcana and Boulez's piano sonatas tunes (or pieces). One could also use tune as a casual replacement for the word melody. My definition of melody is any sequence of pitches, which would include angular, very difficult to follow tone row melodies, and all the notes played by accompanying instruments under the main melody of something like a song or concerto.


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

Manok said:


> I have heard a great many pieces, that could qualify as blurring the lines between tonality and atonality, and I was just wondering, when is it official that you have abandoned tonality all together in your work?


A tune ceases to be tonal when it loses its sense of gravitational like pull back towards an established tone centre from whence it came... "Can you hear me major Tom? Can you hear me major Tom?" It is possible within tonal music to drift far above the moon, so long as you do not lose touch with Cape Kennedy/Canaveral... if you follow my drift.


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## Guest (Sep 27, 2012)

KRoad said:


> A tune ceases to be tonal when it loses its sense of gravitational like pull back towards an established tone centre from whence it came...


It? *It* loses its sense? No.

For three hundred years, listeners (listeners, not the tunes) have complained about music losing its sense of gravitational pull. But wasn't the music; it was the listeners not perceiving the pull. Succeeding generations managed to hear it, in older music, while continuing to complain about new music's lack of pull.

Perhaps that's a reason we're still complaining in 2012 about music written a hundred years ago. In the twentieth century, composers finally realized the centuries old fear of losing gravitational pull. And so there's no "Oh now we can hear the pull" moment. There really is no pull.

Apparently a lot of people have not yet learned how to listen to music without a pull to a tone centre. Music without a tone centre to exert a pull. Music that attends to other things, a multitude of other things, a plethora, a cornucopia. Musics as different from each other as a chair is from a cat, as a human is from a bridge, as hunger is from a window, but all lumped together in a category that doesn't categorize.


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

^^^^^ Erm, you've kind of lost me there dude...^^^^^


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## Mephistopheles (Sep 3, 2012)

some guy said:


> It? *It* loses its sense? No.
> 
> For three hundred years, listeners (listeners, not the tunes) have complained about music losing its sense of gravitational pull. But wasn't the music; it was the listeners not perceiving the pull. Succeeding generations managed to hear it, in older music, while continuing to complain about new music's lack of pull.
> 
> ...


I think you're being far too sensitive. To me, KRoad was making a totally uncontroversial statement about the fact that traditionally tonal music is built upon a hierarchical structure of tone relationships, which is what creates the sense of a tonic - that "gravitational pull". That was just a metaphorical explanation of a technical concept, but you decided to read value judgements that weren't there.


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## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

Sid if you want to know what prompted this question, I was listening to I think the flute and oboe concerto by Ligeti and began to think about the various composers I know of who were neither tonal, nor atonal, and I realized I had no real definition of atonal, other than that music that sounds really weird to someone used to listening to music from the 1800s. I really did just want to find out what the actual definition was, if there was one beyond having no tonal center.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Manok said:


> Sid if you want to know what prompted this question, I was listening to I think the flute and oboe concerto by Ligeti and began to think about the various composers I know of who were neither tonal, nor atonal, and I realized I had no real definition of atonal, other than that music that sounds really weird to someone used to listening to music from the 1800s. I really did just want to find out what the actual definition was, if there was one beyond having no tonal center.


I understand that. One of the things that Andrew Ford said (in the lecture I put in my last post in this thread) is that he likes those special harmonies and sounds in 'atonal' music. I think that they are "wierd" or at least different to a lot of the music which came before.

But I think that the 'tonal' or 'diatonic' system, with its tendency (as some have here said) to have this tension between pushing away from the tonal centre and then coming 'back home' and resolving that tension, it kind of disappeared with the Second Viennese guys. But what they did retain (& Schoenberg said this) was a sort of thematic unity. They have that in common with composers before them. I mean the first 'atonal' work I got to know was Berg's 'Wozzeck,' and it didn't take me long to hear those themes (leitmotifs) going through the whole work.

So 'atonal' and other newer type musics can and do have things in common with music of the past, esp. of Wagner and Brahms (both hugely influential on the Second Viennese guys) but also streching right back to Bach and Handel, through Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn.

The reason I recommend to read books or online sources, even look up 'atonal' or 'serial' in a dictionary of music (like Grove), is because all this relates back to the past. It is indeed hard to explain 'atonal' without referring to 'tonal.' & there lies the dilemma for me, I'm not a musician. But I do know some of this music, and the older music, I have been able to make these connections with my ears and also by reading and talking to people like we are now.

It takes time and effort, that's all. But for me its been positive overall, for me the uniqueness of these types of new or newer music has been a thing that attracts me to them. Not to everything, I pick and chose, but its the same as with the old stuff.


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## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll definitely at least look up the definition, I came to "atonal" music partly through my piano teacher and partly through a music appreciation course I took my first time in college, a light clicked and I realized that some of it wasn't that bad.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

...But be careful what you ask for, tonal-gravity proponents, or you may get it, like the brass monkey. 

One of tonality's biggest advantages is its ambiguity. Even in Bach, let's say the Prelude in Eb major, we hear him go into C minor territory, E-flat major's relative minor key.

Even since the days of plainchant, there has been an ambiguity.

Lately, I've been thinking about Hauer's 'tropes' and their significance, and why did Schoenberg go further, 'fixing' the intervals? Hauer's 'tropes' were 6-note scales (hexads) which were unordered sets, like scales are. They are an 'index' of notes from which choices can be made freely.

Why did Schoenberg 'fix' the order of his sets (also usually splitting them into hexads)? Perhaps it was a decision to limit the harmonic relations. As you will recall from an earlier chart I posted from Howard Hanson's book:

2 notes: 1 interval
3 notes: 3 intervals
4 notes: 6 intervals
5 notes: 10 intervals
6 notes: 15 intervals
7 notes: 21 intervals
8 notes: 28 intervals
9 notes: 36 intervals
10 notes: 45 intervals
11 notes: 55 intervals
12 notes: 66 intervals

That is, if the sets of 2 notes to 12 notes are used as "indexes" or scales, where every combination is accounted for, resulting in redundancies or repeats of certain intervals.

In Schoenberg's system, the 12 notes are related "only to each other," excluding other members of the ordered set, resulting in a greatly reduced number of intervals, namely, 12.


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## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

To further the discussion is this rather interesting wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonal


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Manok said:


> Thanks for the suggestions, I'll definitely at least look up the definition, I came to "atonal" music partly through my piano teacher and partly through a music appreciation course I took my first time in college, a light clicked and I realized that some of it wasn't that bad.


WEll I think its good to do that, to be able to choose from things. Maybe its like a supermarket, you don't buy everything, you buy what is suited to your needs and all that. I try not to come down hard on people for liking for example some 'atonal' things and not others. I'm the same with a lot of things. I don't like Bach's choral but I like his instrumental musics. I don't see anything wrong with that and I will fight anybody here who is trying to take away my right to express these kinds of thoughts and preferences I have.

So good on you for initiating this dialogue.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Sid James said:


> I think its good if someone is coming to 'atonal' or whatever types of music new to them and asking a question. People are naturally curious and inquisitive and they like to do that. But I can smell a 'hidden agenda' from a mile away, and I don't think manok is doing that here.


No, I don't smell a hidden agenda either, but unless you tie your food up in a tree, critters might appear.


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## Guest (Sep 28, 2012)

Sid James said:


> I will fight anybody here.


Well, that should be fun!:lol:


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

some guy said:


> The twentieth century was full of things that had little or nothing to do with how to manage pitches, though. And to call all those various things "atonal" is just lazy and sloppy. *Like calling chairs and skyscrapers and humans and cats and dandelions "acanine."*)


There has been much discussion of atonal music and arguments over the usefulness of the term. I like your example pointing out that atonal music is _not_ a specific type of music but rather _not_ another specific type of music (tonal). Technically atonal refers to a large number of generally unrelated musical works. Thank you for that clarifying example.

I would say that _sometimes_ it is useful to use the term, "atonal", when referring to all works that are not tonal, but more often, being more specific would be helpful. I, like many others, have probably used atonal a bit too sloppily, and hopefully I will find ways to be more specific in my wording of certain modern music.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

What point does a tune cease to be tonal? When it outlines or elaborates a chord progression, real or implied, which can no longer be analyzed in terms of tonality; or when the harmonic progression is so ambiguous that it can be analyzed in several different non-conclusive ways. But all that ambiguity can suddenly go down the drain if the proper chord is placed in proximity, like a "Ta-Dah!" at the end. In fact, the "tonality" of a tune can be controlled in various ways, with various solutions.

So the answer to "What point does a tune cease to be tonal?" is: whenever _*I *_say it ceases, because _*I *_am the God-almighty controller of tunes!"


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

All 12-tone music is atonal, but not all atonal music is 12-tone . Berg's Wozzeck, for example is atonal on the whole, but not 12-tone. But the later Lulu, uses Schoenberg's 12tone technique, but not slavishly .
Schoenberg's earliest atonal works use what is called "free atonality" before he had developed the 12-tone system .
Elliott Carter's music is certainly atonal, but he has never used Schoenberg's 12-tone system , having developed his own personal technique of composition .


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

When the ear no longer senses the scale degrees (or harmonies built upon) IV, or V, are in their 'tonal' play of relationships, and that the tune or harmony no longer refer to or implies IV or V as sounding as if they want or need to 'pull to home,' i.e. I = Tonic

In the various genres of 'atonal' music (early 20th Century duodecaphonicism, or later other varieties of atonalism,) you will find any hint of IV and V is assiduously avoided.

It is already pointed out that 'atonal' is a near joke of a misnomer ~ since there is no music without 'tones', pitched or otherwise

A more accurate and less misleading term might be 'Atonic' music.


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

*Myth #1: It is possible to write atonal music.
*

This is a leitmotif of mine (see here, and here). I've never quite bought into the idea of atonal music, mainly because I've always perceived some level of tonal logic in works that I'm told are completely atonal. So-called "atonal" music skews our sense of tonal centre in the same way that post-Romantic chromaticism does - by using so many different pitch-classes (simultaneously or in succession) that it is impossible to perceive one of them as a tonic. The only difference between a piece by Wagner and one by Webern in this regard is that any individual combination of pitches in the Wagner will sound more familiar than the combination of pitches in Webern. (In his book, The Evolution of Music Through the History of the Perfect Cadence, Alfredo Casella shows how the increasing elongation and complication of cadential patterns through the nineteenth century finally gave way to a twentieth-century language in which cadential patterns are sometimes almost imperceptible, but still definitely present.)

And so - to rephrase what I've written previously - atonal compositional methods do not prevent a listener from perceiving pitch centres in a piece. If the composer is truly dedicated to his atonal ideal, the only way to stop the listener from hearing pitch centres is to change tonalities so quickly that the listener is completely disoriented - an effect that Hindemith commented on with disapproval. But this doesn't eliminate the influence of tonality; it merely suppresses it, and if the music was played more slowly, the listener would begin to detect patterns and impose the idea of a tonal centre upon the music.

_*Atonal music, in other words, is just tonal music where the changes happen too quickly to follow.*_ Which has nothing to do with the compositional methods used to write the music (I'm fairly certain that Webern would be horrified to find that his audience could infer tonal patterns in his orchestral music), and everything to do with the human tendency to impose patterns upon the external world.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> * Atonal music, in other words, is just tonal music where the changes happen too quickly to follow.*[/I] Which has nothing to do with the compositional methods used to write the music (I'm fairly certain that Webern would be horrified to find that his audience could infer tonal patterns in his orchestral music), and everything to do with the human tendency to impose patterns upon the external world.


Allen Shawn _(Arnold Schoenberg's Journey)_ and Malcolm MacDonald _(Schoenberg)_ both contend in their books that Schoenberg did, indeed, hear his works tonally.

Which brings into question whether "tonality" is all just in the ear of the beholder, since with the proper context, serial music can be made to sound tonal, either by skillful methods, or by putting a "drone" under it. Violá! Instant Miles Davis! Just put a groove in your serial thang!


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