Atonal and tonal music

[Jo498]

The "post-"prefix for me does not indicate progress. More like that "after progress/the good stuff/something/... has ended we need another name for the next epoch". (More often than not it indicates some change for the worse or decadence; I do not think most people use e.g. "post-democratic" in a sense of positive progress.)
I have read "atonikal" in German, supposedly to avoid the often derogatively used "atonal".

BTW it is not at all true that most listeners agree what "atonal" is supposed to mean. Very often it is simply used by somewhat ignorant listeners to describe music one does not like, even if it is obviously NOT "atonal" in the Schoenberg tradition. Or it is simple ignorance. I have read opinions referring to the music of Zemlinsky and Schreker as "atonal" which is simply wrong, unless the word is used in the sense of "somewhat modern music I don't like".

[Wanderer]

...the complete futility of your whole exercise in trying to change minds by changing words.

That sums it up quite well. Partisans often target terminology, as if this will magically dispense of the opposing view.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

I like calling Schoenberg's op. 37 one of his 'string quartets' and I dont care......try and stop me

[ahinton]

I have read opinions referring to the music of Zemlinsky and Schreker as "atonal" which is simply wrong, unless the word is used in the sense of "somewhat modern music I don't like"

And that would also be wrong in the use of the term "modern", to the extent that  the former composer died almost three quarters of a century ago and the latter 82 years ago.

[ahinton]

I like calling Schoenberg's op. 37 one of his 'string quartets' and I dont care......try and stop me

Why should anyone do that when that is what it is?! I'm sure that Gershwin would have called it that when he decided to fund his friend's work's first recording.

[Jo498]

And that would also be wrong in the use of the term "modern", to the extent that  the former composer died almost three quarters of a century ago and the latter 82 years ago.

Yeah, but the really atonal pieces by Schoenberg or Berg are roughly as "old" as the tonal ones by Zemlinsky, Hindemith or Schreker. It basically proved the ignorance of these people and I only mentioned it because some claimed that there was a somewhat systematic and accepted usage of atonal.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

And that would also be wrong in the use of the term "modern", to the extent that  the former composer died almost three quarters of a century ago and the latter 82 years ago.

I think some scholars have begun calling the period of time right after the romantic period as a kind of 'modern era' which covers the beginning of this post-tonal time we live in up until some point mid century or just after mid century. It would be certainly wrong to call Zemlinsky 'contemporary.'

I always chuckle internally whenever I hear someone call someone like, say, Bartók 'contemporary.' I think he's been dead for longer than he's ever been 'contemporary.'

[Jo498]

I extend "contemporary" to composers whose lifetime overlaps with mine. So Stravinsky barely misses being a contemporary of mine and even if I was a few years older it would be somewhat misleading as most of his important works were written before my parents were even born.
But by this criterion there is quite a bit of music written 20 years or more before I was even born I consider "contemporary" in that sense because Stockhausen's, Boulez' and others lifetimes considerably overlap with mine and there music was sufficiently advanced avantgarde in the early 1950s to be considered modern/contemporary even several decaded later.
Actually, I usually take this second criterion (sufficiently avantgarde) also into account and therefore, maybe paradoxically, would not call (e.g.) Shostakovich a contemporary although his lifetime overlaps with mine for a few years.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

I extend "contemporary" to composers whose lifetime overlaps with mine. So Stravinsky barely misses being a contemporary of mine and even if I was a few years older it would be somewhat misleading as most of his important works were written before my parents were even born.
But by this criterion there is quite a bit of music written 20 years or more before I was even born I consider "contemporary" in that sense because Stockhausen's, Boulez' and others lifetimes considerably overlap with mine and there music was sufficiently advanced avantgarde in the early 1950s to be considered modern/contemporary even several decaded later.
Actually, I usually take this second criterion (sufficiently avantgarde) also into account and therefore, maybe paradoxically, would not call (e.g.) Shostakovich a contemporary although his lifetime overlaps with mine for a few years.

Heh, if anyone used only the 'overlapping life span' logic then Elliott Carter would be a contemporary of Saint-Saëns.........

[ahinton]

Heh, if anyone used only the 'overlapping life span' logic then Elliott Carter would be a contemporary of Saint-Saëns.........

As would the even longer lived Leo Ornstein, who was 18 when Elliott Carter was born...

[ahinton]

Yeah, but the really atonal pieces by Schoenberg or Berg are roughly as "old" as the tonal ones by Zemlinsky, Hindemith or Schreker. It basically proved the ignorance of these people and I only mentioned it because some claimed that there was a somewhat systematic and accepted usage of atonal.

And Liszt's Bagatelle sans tonalité referred to previously is a lot older still.

[knight66]

Heh, if anyone used only the 'overlapping life span' logic then Elliott Carter would be a contemporary of Saint-Saëns.........

A good point economically made.

Mike

[Jo498]

As I said, it is only a rough rule. But clearly, Pierre Boulez whose lifetime overlapped for more than 40 years with mine, was a contemporary of mine.
And it seems pedantic to do fine-graining afterwards and say that his pieces from the 1950s are not "contemporary" any more in the wide sense but the ones from the 1970s are. Obviously, neither are contemporary in a narrow sense as in "written a few years ago from 2016". But they were written by a contemporary composer who dies less than a year ago.
When I used "modern" above I meant the generally accepted term of "modern" for early/mid 20th century.

[knight66]

I am a contemporary of Vaughn Williams, I assume you are not.....so is he or is he not a contemporary composer? Or is he only contemporary for me but not for you?

Mind you, this is a side issue here.

Mike

[Jo498]

No, he isn't. He is a contemporary of yours but he is not a contemporary composer in 2016. But Boulez who died in January obviously is. And I would extend the timeframe at least to the last 20 years or rather more. David Bowie was a contemporary popular musician although a lot of his most important stuff was done 30+ years ago. "Classical" music should not have a more narrow timeframe than popular, I'd say.

The point above was not about "modern" at all (although I think the sense according to which ca. 1900-1950/60 is called "modern" is fairly well established) but that people use "atonal" unburdened by any knowledge or acumen for stylistic differences. But they remember enough about the somewhat established connection with some early/mid 20th century music that, no matter how ugly or irritating they might find Beethoven's op.133 or late Liszt or whatever they would not use the term for that music.

[ahinton]

When I used "modern" above I meant the generally accepted term of "modern" for early/mid 20th century.

But is that the "generally accepted" meaning of that term and, if so, on what grounds? Early 20th century means a century or more ago and, whilst the number of living centenarians is increasing, referring to music composed during the first decade of the past century as "modern" can make no sense even to them, since they obviously postdate that music.

What I suspect all this possibly to be about is the unfounded and untenable notion that music can credibly be described as "modern" if it is thought to weaken or loosen the bounds of tonality as it was used before some indefinite point around 1900, but what does or can that usefully tell anyone? Why around 1900 anyway? Don't examples in early Chopin or late Beethoven raise similar questions? A glance through some contemporary reviews of the première of Chopin's E minor piano concerto with the young composer as soloist reads as though he'd torn up the rule book in favour of writing dissonant and ugly music with no sense of harmony, incredible as that might seem to us today. One has also only to consider a passage in Chopin's even earlier piano trio in which for a few bars the harmony changes at every quaver (eighth note), or his slightly later B minor scherzo, whose violence of expression (including the violence of contrast between its outer sections with its serene central one) leads to an ff "dissonant" chord that includes E#, F# and G which he then repeats eight times as though to drive home its point (and curiously he uses precisely the same chord, albeit at a much lower dynamic level and pitch, just before the central section of his Polonaise-Fantaisie). And as for the opening of the middle movement of Alkan's Grand Duo Concertant for violin and piano from the late 1830s - a portrayal of Hell - well, that speaks eloquently for itself! And all those funny modernistic bits in J. S. Bach and Gesualdo! It's almost enough to make one wonder whether anything much isn't "modern" or at the very least in some danger of being so!

[North Star]

Modernism, and modern, are words used in reference to the movement from the late 19th century to around the Second World War, not only as a synonym of contemporary.

[Jo498]

Exactly. "modern" is an accepted term for an epoch in the history of art and music, roughly the turn of the century until WW II or a little later. And there is also a sufficiently clear sense in which Stravinsky was "modern" in 1920 whereas his contemporary Elgar was late "romantic". (Demanding mathematical precision from terms in the history of music is simply mistaken therefore it should not count agains those necessarily vague terms.)
There are several meanings of "modern". (I am always confused for a split second when I see the English language use of "early modernity" referring to the 16th-17th century because we use a different term (Neuzeit) in German and reserve "modern" for a later period from the late 19th century on.) But it has nothing to do with contemporary anymore. That's why postmodernism or other more precise terms were coined for later stages of art history.

[BasilValentine]

Here is a definition of the term atonal reflecting its standard usage among musicologists and theorists:

The term atonal applies to non-triadic music in which a systematic pitch hierarchy does not play a structural role and in which modes and standard "synthetic" scales (whole-tone, octatonic, hexatonic) are not part of the central vocabulary.

Under this definition, "atonal" cannot be stretched to cover Debussy or Palestrina or Machaut or Prokofiev or Shostakovich or even most of Schnittke, which is good because no one with the requisite training ever intends to use it for these (or like) composers.   

[ahinton]

Exactly. "modern" is an accepted term for an epoch in the history of art and music, roughly the turn of the century until WW II or a little later. And there is also a sufficiently clear sense in which Stravinsky was "modern" in 1920 whereas his contemporary Elgar was late "romantic". (Demanding mathematical precision from terms in the history of music is simply mistaken therefore it should not count agains those necessarily vague terms.)
There are several meanings of "modern". (I am always confused for a split second when I see the English language use of "early modernity" referring to the 16th-17th century because we use a different term (Neuzeit) in German and reserve "modern" for a later period from the late 19th century on.) But it has nothing to do with contemporary anymore. That's why postmodernism or other more precise terms were coined for later stages of art history.

But the very coining and usage of "post-modernism" itself contributes materially towards the defeat of the object of such attempted codification, since everything after the so-called "modern" period would thereby inevitably be by definition "post-modern", whereas "post-modern" and its associated "ism" is itself a term in which certain musicologists have sought to invest a connotational specificity that appears to represent some attempt to define yet another particular period in musical history.

Your Elgar and Stravinsky example, however, is one in which you've hit on something that actually does matter, in the sense and to the extent that the sense of a broadly recognisable lingua franca began to disintegrate in the latter 19th century, never to be reinstated or regained, as is clear from the ever broadening diversity of styles of, persuasions in and approaches to composition today.