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What is the point of Atonal music?

294K views 3K replies 286 participants last post by  Larkenfield 
#1 ·
(Okay, I'm pretty sure alot of people are scoffing at the title of this thread. :p )

Since almost the very beginning of my introduction to classical music (A few years ago, though it practically consumes my life now;)), I have been aware of atonal composers and few of their works. Studying composition myself, I have always been told by teachers and professors that Atonal music or near atonal music (sorry I don't have a better term for this genre) is the only way to push forward with music.

I have made an effort on a few occasions to really listen to atonal music and witness the superior range of expression contemporary composers claim it has. In general, I find most of what I listened to is just kind of terrifying and sometimes annoying. For instance, in Nono's piano concerto, I was either finding humor in how random some moments were, or being terrified by the sounds I was hearing. There is such a focus on this genre of music with musicians and composers now that I just don't understand.

Classical music is dying, and composers are writing this.

I understand that composers are always supposed to push the limits and find their own voice in their writing, but if that Sciarrino piece represents the new voice of music, who will want to listen to it? It's true that good music should stimulate and challenge it's audience, but how challenging should it be to enjoy an artist's expression? In all of the different phases and evolutions of classical music, ours is certainly the age of challenged listeners.

I could write more, but I don't want to drag this out into a huge essay. I guess my questions to those that enjoy (and perhaps also compose!) atonal muisc would be: Have you ever heard an atonal work that expressed joy, or another emotion other than sorrow or violence, that you could relate to? Do you feel strongly enough about the music to suggest that a friend should listen to it? What is the point of writing without tonality?
 
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#2 ·
I think youre looking at it from the wrong paradigm. It isnt romantic music. Atonal music is not often written with the purpose of expressing emotions. When you hear terror and fear it is because you are listening to it as is you are listening to tonal music.

Go and see a modern masterpiece in concert, for example - Boulez's Le Marteau sans Maitre. Just go and experience it. Tonality is just a way of organising pitches, composers have developed new ways of organising sounds and no longer is tone the dominant parameter. I think if you go to and hear the music in person you may feel that these new methods do work and you may be moved.
 
#5 ·
I think youre looking at it from the wrong paradigm. It isnt romantic music. Atonal music is not often written with the purpose of expressing emotions. When you hear terror and fear it is because you are listening to it as is you are listening to tonal music.
That's probably true. However, I think atonal music can be especially hard to fathom because if you look at the entire history of music, never before has music been written without the intent of drawing out some emotion in the listener. Medieval chant was composed to elevate the listeners to a higher spiritual state. Classical composers aimed to make their listeners happy with pleasant and sweet-sounding melodies. Romantic composers were probably the most successful at conveying tragic emotions. And of course, pop music is all about instilling some sort of definite emotional state.

But now, modern composers are creating something completely different, not even related to emotion. And frankly, many of us aren't certain if this type of music can be successful or not. If you're not supposed to feel anything, then what is the listener supposed to do?
 
#4 · (Edited)
... that Sciarrino piece represents the new voice of music, who will want to listen to it? It's true that good music should stimulate and challenge it's audience, but how challenging should it be to enjoy an artist's expression? In all of the different phases and evolutions of classical music, ours is certainly the age of challenged listeners.
Challenged in a different way, not the same type of challenge you find from tonal masterpieces. The piece you posted sounded very energetic judging by the sound produced. The first few seconds I thought the pianist was performing that by banging his head on the keyboard, not by using his hands/fingers. :lol:

But at the end of the day, even if the pianist was performing it by banging his head on the keyboard, so what? What did it achieve?
 
#6 ·
Music can be used politically.
Music can be paint a picture.
Music can speak to the fundamentals of your subconscious.
Music can reveal principles of nature and philosophical ideas.
Etc...

Tonality seems capable only of appealing to the emotional part of your brain (you could say 'the heart'). If you want to reach other goals with the music such as those I listed above then tonality might not be the best method.
If you listen to music in order to e filled with emotions then stick to tonality.
I sometimes want to stand in awe at the power of the forces of nature, to be frightened by what is revealed in my mind, realise the futility of life, realise that life is full of meaning etc... Some of these things are done better without tonality.
 
#7 ·
It's matter of what kind of people are making music today and for who they are making it, that's the fundament of music history. In romantic era music was written by romantics for other romantics (in original meaning of this word) so it was all great. Now the music is made by uninteresting people who could as well work as some boring officials in tax office for other boring people who, at the other hand, have some intellectual potential and can enjoy intellectually challenging music like produced today. They're still all boring geezers though, so is the music they produce.

Individuals that would rise to greatness in XIXth century because of their romantic spirit remain unknown today since they can't find a place for themselves in era of tax office workers writing music without any greater inspiration, just like romantic era buried a lot of intellectual yet little inspired composers who are now forgotten.

So the question you have to ask yourself is 'where do I belong'? Could you stand working in tax office? No? Then don't force yourself to listen to clerk's music.
 
#9 ·
I think losing tonality is often just that - a loss. I believe whatever it is that composers are trying to do by dismissing tonality might be better done with a format other than music. Indeed that is what many think it is: non-music. I do occasionally love dissonance (which I admit is not quite the same thing as atonality), but without some tonality there can be no dissonance, only annoyance. That Sciarrino piece is annoying to me. For those who do like it, do you also cover your partner in sandpaper to make love?
 
#10 ·
I'm with all the musical conservatives on this one.

The most important distinction for me is that tonal music was never consciously tonal (at least not until the late Romantic period onwards) - it was like that because of tradition; because hundreds of years of musical practice had led to a set of rules (malleable ones, but rules nonetheless) that arguably came about (and there are convincing arguments for this) because a sense of tonality is exactly what the human brain most readily comprehends (and therefore enjoys).

Atonality, on the other hand, has always been a deliberate artifice - an intellectual exercise in challenging the idea that there are, or should be, any rules in music. There's the implicit suggestion that the brain has no artistic predispositions and that anything goes so long as the audience is willing to try to understand it. Personally, I think this is a challenge that has failed, and the continuing hold of atonality is a form of academic prejudice.

[Of course, I'm all for anyone composing in any style they choose, but this persistent notion that you can't be taken seriously if you compose in a pre-atonal manner is just ridiculous.]
 
#12 · (Edited)
because hundreds of years of musical practice had led to a set of rules (malleable ones, but rules nonetheless) that arguably came about (and there are convincing arguments for this) because a sense of tonality is exactly what the human brain most readily comprehends (and therefore enjoys).
I think we enjoy it because we've had hundreds of years to listen to, get used to, and respond to music composed in familiar forms. We're bombarded with tonal music in pop songs and movie soundtracks, and familiar with enough Beethoven and Mozart to use their music as background noise for whatever else we happen to be doing.

-Vaz
 
#11 ·
Err, most tonal music is rubbish, so why should atonal music be any different?

Like any kind of music there is stuff I like and stuff I don't. I can say I don't like most Rihm or Lachenmann but similarly I don't like most Wagner or Haydn. I'm not a fan of the kind of music most serialists produce, I can safely say that, but I also dislike opera and the majority of opera is tonal. There's more to music than just the vertical organisation of the sounds.

Another gripe I have is lots of peoples conception that 'tonality' is a singular system. It is not only the old diatonic method but any system where pitch is organised and related around a single tone. There are composers who are still making a tonal kind of music, it's just that it isn't the readily recognisable major/minor type that people are used to.

So basically the point of atonal music is the same as the point of tonal music; the composer creates what he likes.
 
#13 ·
So basically the point of atonal music is the same as the point of tonal music; the composer creates what he likes.
May I assume that there is an emphasis here on the 'he'? In that case the composer is not attempting to communicate anything. The composition is for his own enjoyment/edification. So... why bother to get the music published, or even heard?
 
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#24 ·
Well, people on this forum have said this before but I'll say it again. Most atonal music has everything that tonal music has. They have themes, timbre, harmony, form, rhythm. Sure, some of the pieces abandon nearly everything except timbre and perhaps form, then so what? Just listen to the sounds, aren't they interesting? Aren't they cool? Everything is expressive of something if you are listening. A lot of Schoenberg's atonal music actually sounds pretty humorous and fun, like the serenade, and some of it can be very dark, like Peirrot Lunaire. So yes, I think atonal music can be just as widely expressive as tonal music.

Besides, it's not like every composer is composing in this style anyway. The ultra-serialist movement is pretty much over now and composers are turning back to composing using a more tonal gamut.
 
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#25 · (Edited)
It's 2011. Where are your ears?

A historical observation. To people living in the 18th century, Baroque music did not sound like it sounds to us. Nor did Classical music. Nor did Romantic music in the 19th. Nor did Impressionism. The puzzlements the OP reports as hearing in what he calls "atonal" music (why has no one questioned the use of this term?) are very much like the puzzlements people have reported about many other kinds of music, including pieces that every "tonalist" here thinks is pretty, pieces that elicit happiness or joy in their hearts.

A personal observation. Don't take your personal difficulties as being in any way universal, even if it seems like they are shared by others. This comment was very revealing in this regard: "I'm simply saying that, when I try to listen, I don't know how to react. I don't know what to listen for. It sounds completely alien to my ears because it is so far removed from how people have felt music should sound like over the last thousand years, and therefore, I can't feel anything." I've put the switch in bold.

An observation about audience. Audience is not a single monolithic thing. Audiences are composed of individuals. Even a fairly conservative audience in a fairly conservative symphony hall is composed of individuals, some of whom can't stand Brahms, some of whom adore him. And that audience, however large (we worship size, don't we?), is not the only audience.

Composers did not suddenly stop writing for an audience a hundred years ago. Composers today are not ignoring their audience. I attend new music concerts almost exclusively. They consist, most of them, entirely of pieces that do not use a tonal system. I personally do not feel ignored at all by that, because that's exactly what I want to hear. (I also like hearing music written with tonal systems, just by the way, but I don't have to make a special effort to hear that, because it's everywhere. This is the most puzzling thing to me about anti-atonality screeds--tonal music is ubiquitous. No one anywhere has to listen to more than a token five or six minutes of anything else on the odd symphony concert or two when something mildly adventurous gets programmed.)

You can only make the "audience" claim if you have privileged one particular audience. The concerts I attend all have audiences. Those audiences apparently enjoy all the stuff they hear.

That, in a nutshell, is the point of "Atonal" music, to provide enjoyment. Why, that's the same point of every other kind of music!!

Edit: I don't often disagree with anything violadude says, but I think this is wrong: "composers are turning back to composing using a more tonal gamut."

Some composers are. Some composers have always done this. Some, not all. It's not the only thing going on. This plays right into the illusion that the one big conflict in music is between tonal and atonal. It's maybe the conflict that's most visible in magazines and in symphony halls and in online forums. But there's more. So much more.

IT'S 2011. WHERE ARE YOUR EARS?
 
#26 ·
The fact that the Berg Violin Concerto was voted in as the 9th most popular violin concerto of all time by the members of this forum who participated in the top VC thread, shows that there are listeners that very much appreciate this music. I think the reasons for it being unpopular in the general population are many and complex, and as pointed out - classical music in general is not popular right now, so its not really that surprising that the newer more challenging works are suffering.

I agree with the poster that suggested like anything else, there are good and bad atonal works. Its just a different form of artistic expression and I don't think it should be a contest. I've never believed tonal systems to be outdated. There is plenty of room for both types of music to exist, and many people will enjoy both. I think if all new composers went atonal things would get really boring and there would be a big hole created in the repertoire. We need all kinds of artists. Let them get crazy with their expression and push boundaries - thats great. For those who don't like atonal, I think that is fine too. Nobody has to like everything, and its not a sign of inferior artistic tastes imo either. When it comes to music people just like what they like and what suites them at this moment - these things are always changing, so as long as people keep an open mind its all good.
 
#30 ·
Hmmm. Most of my favourite visual art is abstract. Paintings of people and plants that actually look like people and plants get a bit boring. I'd rather see something I couldn't see in nature.

Webernite said:
The problem is that Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, etc. are massively unpopular as well. Only a tiny number of people listen to them.
Considering their modern day competition, I'd say those guys do pretty well after 200+ years.

A bigger problem is that even on a site dedicated to classical music few people listen tothe likes of Lubomyr Melynk, Christopher Fox, Halim el-Dabh, Alvin Curran or any number of none mainstream living composers. (None of those make music like the OP is tirading against by the way).

some_guy said:
IT'S 2011. WHERE ARE YOUR EARS?
Same place they were in 2010, the side ov me head, guvnor.
 
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#29 ·
Whew! You did have me worried there for a while.

I think I might start a thread about how our discourse is always framed around questions of tonality, as if that were the only thing going on.

If I do, just know that I'm not directing it at you. This tonality/atonality debate is truly the only debate that has any traction online, anywhere. Listeners nowadays seem to me to be even more out of touch than at any other time. Ironic, given the ubiquity of radio, TV, and the internet. The more communication devises we have, the less we know, it seems!!

Anyway, good listening to you.
 
#34 ·
I don't know if I've got the energy to participate further!

So far, there's been the usual back and forth with no progress, but I'm still left pondering what secret knowledge proponents of atonality have. I've tried to put forward the suggestion that there is something intrinsic about atonal music that predestines it to be unpopular (I'll dig up a number of musicological papers over the next couple of days if you like). Could the people who oppose this please try to address this particular point and tell me exactly why you are convinced that the unpopularity is not something intrinsic to the music, but rather to do with the prejudice of the audience?

How do you know that, if this music was given a proper chance, it could be just as popular? Just as moving? Just as successful? Mightn't it be better for you to concede that you're in a cognitive minority of people who can appreciate this largely brain-bending stuff?
 
#35 ·
@Argus it does sound tonal to me. It's simply using modern technique (block chords, electrical instruments). Sounds like a gnat swarm, which isn't the most unpleasant thing on Earth.

I'm so glad this topic was started! I've always been asking the same question. Many of these posts were very interesting to read, to hear people's opinions.

The thing is, atonality is intriguing to me in some aspects.

A favorite quote by Prokofiev:
"Of course I have used dissonance in my time, but there has been too much dissonance. Bach used dissonance as good salt for his music. Others applied pepper, seasoned the dishes more and more highly, till all healthy appetites were sick and until the music was nothing but pepper."

Because of what I have discovered on my own, dissonance is not an evil thing, but far from it. Dissonance is indeed a "seasoning," and it's only a matter of the degree of the dissonance were it may be borderline on incomprehensible. The way I see it is this: dissonance of any kind is there to bring out and emphasize what is consonant. That's its chief end.

That's my one solid argument against atonal music. Where is the contrast between the consonant and dissonant? For my personal needs, there needs to be this contrast to be a good piece of music. To put it simply, I find atonal music lacking in contrast.

If you want to get to know atonal music, I guess you can always think about how sad, hopeless and fallen this world is, and then you'll discover the inspiration of this world. If life is meaningless, why not make atonal, chaotic music? Why not make music that suppresses the emotions, when there are no emotions worthy to express?
 
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#45 ·
Where is the contrast between the consonant and dissonant? For my personal needs, there needs to be this contrast to be a good piece of music. To put it simply, I find atonal music lacking in contrast.
This is key. This is your response. Not everyone responds this way. (And, again assuming that I know what you mean by "atonal," and I don't, I respond to atonal music perfectly well. It is not at all lacking in contrast. (Besides, are pitches the only things going on in music? Is there not also timbre and dynamics and space? Is there not tempo and volume (as in mass--one flute or 100 flutes, say)?

If you want to get to know atonal music, I guess you can always think about how sad, hopeless and fallen this world is, and then you'll discover the inspiration of this world. If life is meaningless, why not make atonal, chaotic music? Why not make music that suppresses the emotions, when there are no emotions worthy to express?
Really? I mean, aside from the fact that sadness and hopelessness are also emotions (how many emotions are there, really?), nontonal musics are not any more uniformly sad or hopeless than any number of hundreds of lieder from hundreds of years ago.

In any case, music is something for our ears. Any particular piece may seem joyful or chaotic depending on whose ears are listening to it, and which brain those ears are hooked up to. This is what the anti-atonalists just refuse to countenance, that there are any other ears in the room but theirs. That anyone who claims to enjoy any musics that don't use tonality somehow is either lying or showing off or just being contrary. Come on, really? Is it really that hard to believe that any given piece of music, whatever its physical properties (dynamics, instrumentation, tempi, whatever), can be pleasing to someone, even if that someone is not you? Are we really and truly so locked into our own, individual experiences of the world that we cannot even understand how anyone else could have different experiences from ours?
 
#42 ·
Have you ever heard an atonal work that expressed joy,
i don't think it's possible.

or another emotion other than sorrow or violence, that you could relate to?
this one is Midnight among the hills by Barbara Pentland, a piece that i absolutely love. Very lyrical and mysterious, i'd be curious to know what you think about it (it's very brief)
 
#46 · (Edited)
All I have to say is my own opinion of the purpose of atonal music. I don't expect everyone to respond to it the same way, because the beautiful thing is, we're all different. And we have the ability to enjoy and identify with different things. So vive la différence!

First off though, I must say I disagree with the notion that tonal composers don't consciously write in a tonal idiom compared to atonal composers who do try to write in an atonal idiom. Either way they're just writing music, and that can take both a conscious and unconscious effort. Anyone who has tried a hand at composition knows that when any composer puts their pen to paper, there is stuff that works for them and stuff that doesn't. And the tonal paradigm is this - everything that doesn't fit into the idiom of accepted Western tonality just doesn't work. One has to search for a correct tone, harmony, rhythm... and only then is the work allowed to remain within this idiom. Perhaps it's the idiom most brains most easily accept, but that could just be a result of years of imprinting and the fact that humans have only explored but a few parts of their own mind that they are most comfortable with.

With atonal music, I can actually sense a freeing from this traditional mindset - in other words, the composer is actually allowing more of his unconscious to take over his work because he no longer cares about the centuries-old rules and regulations that tonal music works with. So basically, what I'm suggesting is not serialism - which is based more on a set of rules, but rules to prevent a reliance on tonality - but rather the idea of atonality as a whole, and what's so enjoyable about it. It's essentially the freeing of sound, and consequently, of the dogmas of one's mind too. The fact that it forces me to venture beyond what I am generally accustomed to is what makes it stimulating and interesting for me. And I do find much atonal music beautiful just as I find tonal music beautiful, but perhaps it's just a different part of my mind that's being set off. And this is fine, to enjoy both.
 
#51 ·
The fact that it forces me to venture beyond what I am generally accustomed to is what makes it stimulating and interesting for me.
Good response, Air. I can agree with this key comment you wrote. And I think that's probably the strongest point about the more "extreme" types of the avant-garde. Although it might sound horrible, like the two Sciarrino pieces posted in this thread so far, it is stimulating and interesting in its own way, though it is very unlikely I will return to it again with much frequency if ever.
 
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#63 ·
Polednice: I do sympathize with your argument to some extent. Most avant-garde music probably is more difficult for the brain to "process" or "decode" than Mozart and Beethoven. But I don't see that as a reason just to dismiss it. Besides, we're talking in generalizations. There are lots of different kinds of avant-garde music, and probably a few pieces you'd even like on first hearing.
 
#65 ·
I don't mean for it to be entirely dismissed. As an intellectual, artistic exercise, I think atonal music has great merits, and its impact on musical traditions cannot be downplayed. It's just that, on a personal level, I find it at worst pretentious, and at best disappointing, for people to create art in a medium that most people can't (or indeed simply won't) appreciate.

I'm a big sucker for the old Romantic ideal espoused by Wordsworth and Coleridge in the preface to their 1798 collection Lyrical Ballads, where they described that their poetry was an experiment in using the everyday, vulgar vernacular as a vehicle for the high-brow endeavour of Art - not just as a novel excursion into unchartered territory, but particularly so that anyone could read and understand. Poetry prior to the 19th century was often steeped in references to classical civilisation, and no one except for aristocrats with expensive educations would understand it (or even be able to afford a book in the first place). Wordsworth and Coleridge made steps to bringing art to the masses.

So, whether it's because of evolution, cultural conditioning, or - most likely - a complex interaction of both, tonality is so heavily imprinted on the minds of most people that it is the musical vulgar vernacular. If an artist wants to be able to engage as large an audience as possible - which, for me, is one of the most important artistic ideals - then I feel they simply have to recognise and utilise the power tonality has over us, desirable or otherwise.

Once again, I'd reiterate that I don't mean this to the detriment of all atonal music, but if an artist feels they have something profound and moving to say about the human condition, why wouldn't they want to communicate it with as many people as possible via a means that strikes a fine balance between technical quality and ultimate accessibility? Why hide it in the recesses of the confusing avant-garde? There is beauty in the vulgar, you know ;)

And, with that, I'm off to bed!
 
#69 ·
Maybe some guy is an alien and simply used to Ligeti-like noises. But I'm curious about his response to this question too. For aliens, I feel that dissonance may not necessarily be an objective thing.
 
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#76 ·
About dissonance. If by that word you mean "pitches within a certain distance from each other played simultaneously,
then I suppose that has a fairly objective quality to it. Problem is, what is that certain distance? Is it a fourth? A third? A minor second? A tritone? Different cultures and different times within the same culture will return different answers to that question.

If you mean "a tone or chord that we expect to resolve in a certain way," B to C in a C major scale, for instance, then the conditioning implied by "we expect" means that we will get different answers, too. (I no longer feel, for instance, that the sequence C, D, E, F, G, A, B is headed strongly towards one particular pitch, though I can remember a time when I did. (I may be an alien, but I became one, then. I was born right here!))

If you mean, an unpleasant sound or (perhaps) a sound that is only pleasant if it moves quickly to another sound--a sound that if prolonged would be unpleasant, which is what Prokofiev seems to have been saying with his spice analogy (which I reject, you may imagine), then that has nothing objective to it at all.

It all comes down, again, to individual experience. If it could somehow be agreed that it should stay there (and not be turned into some quasi-scientific conclusion about the inherently inaccessible qualities of atonal music), I think we might then lay this contentious quarrel to rest.

R.I.P. dear quarrel.
 
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