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...How to Listen To and Understand Atonal Music?

11K views 67 replies 13 participants last post by  Gargamel 
#1 · (Edited)
Been familiarizing myself with plenty of atonal music over the decades. My approach is just very melodical, but what I lack is the know-how to analyze it like analyzing tonal music. Although writings on 12-tone music often focus on the rows, that's not how most people listen to it. (The scottish composer Jonathan Harvey, studying with both Babbitt and Stockhausen, expressed doubts whether it's even possible to hear the series, or partitions of the series.)

I've tried if I can see, whether different motifs and themes can be outlined by the intervals they span. Example: Berg's String Quartet Op. 3. The first motif spans 8 semitones. The continuation spans 4 semitones, which is conversely the same as 8, and when the motive is repeated, it's 4 semitones lower. The next motif spans 10 (conversely 2) semitones. The accompaniment is starchly differentiated by avoidance of these aforementioned interval spans. Now, I can't make deeper sense of it than that. (I've also tried to hear atonal music, to no avail, in terms of bass movement).
 
#68 ·
Why is all composition taught to consist of four parts? Although there is no need for resolution in atonal music, the idea of having four voices is persisent. Maybe it's just most practical to teach it that way, or if you need to sustain a sense of indeterminate root, the 4-part chord with the least possible transpositions would be the dim7 chord?
 
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