See? I'm misunderstood once again. Obviously I didn't mean tone in the sense you're talking about. I'm perfectly aware that you mean "tonal" as in a system of tonality.
The thing is, if you try to make atonal mean "not tonal," it's either in relation to a very specific, restricted sense of tonality or it's going to be self-contradictory. That's what I've been saying this whole time and if you don't understand it by now, I really wonder what you HAVE been reading from my posts.
Then the real problem is that you don't see how modernist musical thought, as in Debussy, Stravinsky, Bartok, etc, is still essentially tonal, even though it may use modernist ideas, such as different octave division, local areas of seed-centricity, etc.; as well as in many cases having a much weaker sense of tone-centricity.
Apparently you haven't made the connection between tonal music and harmonic principles which relate to other 'less tonal' music. Both are essentially tonal, since both are based on harmonic principles, although the latter may have a much weaker sense of tone centricity. They are both still 'harmonic' forms of music, for numerous reasons which can both be heard and demonstrated.
As I said about Debussy, it doesn't matter if the whole-tone scale has no 'root,' it is still a construct which relates to the tonal system, and more importantly, it is a scale, or can be used as one. 'Harmonic' means that it follows a harmonic hierarchy of some sort.
As soon as you realize that tonality, and harmonic constructs, are both essentially tonal, then you can proceed.
The dividing line is 12-tone, and ordered rows. This ordering obliterates any harmonic or tonal hierarchy, and replaces it with the row order.
That doesn't mean 12-tone music is not 'harmonic sounding,' because, after all, it is sound. Tensions can be created between stacked 'chords' and can follow a definite logic of tension and release, and the results can be quite beautiful. But these areas of harmonic tension are not derived from a harmonic hierarchy, but are based solely on their 'self contained' sonance, unrelated to harmonic models or tonality. You have to be able to make this distinction. As well, I maintain that it is audible.
Also, I meant "discussing it as music, rather than as some theoretical abstraction or demonstrative of some technique." You know, the way we discuss any other music without all this recourse to talking about how it was put together. That latter isn't really important to Schoenberg's music compared to the actual music itself, which is so vital, so lyrical and expressive. Techniques and theories are pointless in the face of art.
Well, the reason Woodduck and I keep bringing up these technical issues of hierarchies, etc, is because you refuse to recognize that 12-tone is a "game-changer," in that it negates the tonal hierarchy.
I agree that Schoenberg's 12 tone music is great, but I know it is not tonal, or based on tonal principles except in the sense that he created these tonal allusions; they are not a "no-brainer" part of the music as tonality's meta-structures are. The 12-tone method is just a method, not an integrated syntax.