Atonal and tonal music

[PotashPie]

I have no idea if Elliot Carter's Variations for Orchestra is technically atonal.  All I know is that I like it.

Me too! Just don't call it "tonal" just because you like it. 

Carter uses set theory, from "all possible sets of 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, 11, and 12 notes that are possible."
He developed these on his own, independently, but they are the same sets that Allan Forte listed, called "Forte sets." (see the books above, Rahn, Basic Atonal Theory, which lists these sets in the index.)

So, although Elliott Carter is not technically a "serialist," he is using the same materials. At this point in history, I couldn't call Boulez a serialist, either. This is just part of the modern musical language.

[Mahlerian]

Mahlerian you have previously used the expression "total chromaticism". What does it mean in your opinion?

Music that makes use of the total chromatic gamut consistently without being based on a diatonic scale.  So it includes Berg and Boulez and some Bartok.  Some works will not use a total chromatic language throughout, obviously, like Lutoslawski's Third Symphony, which ends with diatonicism, or Berg's Violin Concerto, which has a few moments of diatonicism.

[PotashPie]

As you can see from San Antonio's post, the term is in common usage. For me, it means "music which is constructed without a tonal hierarchy, using sets instead."

[Mahlerian]

Beyond this, if you can't grasp this idea, then you can hear it. If you have fairly good ears, you should be able to immediately tell what music is tonal, and which is atonal, or does not sound tonal. And you will be correct 99% of the time.

Unlike Mahlerian, I trust people's ears more. I don't think people throw around the term "atonal" as recklessly as he seems to think. "Never underestimate the intelligence of your audience."

I trust my own ears very well, and I can consistently hear more relationships in music than I can read in a score.  I've never heard anything that sounds atonal to me, though common practice functional harmony is easy to hear, and I'm very sensitive to faulty intonation or wrong notes in any musical context I'm familiar with.

I also trust other people to report their perceptions, so when they say that they hear Shostakovich's Violin Concerto or Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht as atonal, I believe that they hear it in a way that aligns with their own idea of what that word means.  You seem willing to accept people's perceptions only insofar as they are identical to yours.

[SharpEleventh]

Music that makes use of the total chromatic gamut consistently without being based on a diatonic scale.  So it includes Berg and Boulez and some Bartok.  Some works will not use a total chromatic language throughout, obviously, like Lutoslawski's Third Symphony, which ends with diatonicism, or Berg's Violin Concerto, which has a few moments of diatonicism.

I think if you can understand what it means to use all the notes of a chromatic scale "consistently" you understand what it means to use all the twelve tones "roughly equally", i.e. without any of them being a tonal center.  It's really the same way of saying the same thing.

[Mahlerian]

I think if you can understand what it means to use all the notes of a chromatic scale "consistently" you understand what it means to use all the twelve tones "roughly equally", i.e. without any of them being a tonal center.  It's really the same way of saying the same thing.

I can't agree with this step.  Tonal centers do not need to be established by means of exclusion of notes outside of a scale.  You can easily find very brief passages in the common practice era making use of all of the notes of the chromatic scale, and yet even the strict sense of tonality employed in their era is not in the least threatened.

Tonal centricity is established by a number of factors, including rhythm, register, cadences, dynamic emphasis, and so forth.  If you broke any of these in a common practice work, it would destabilize the tonality, even apart from changing the harmonic context.  A complex or ambiguous harmonic context, as exists in music by composers such as Mahler, Bruckner, Schoenberg, Debussy, Stravinsky, and Bartok, may not reveal its tonal orientation at all times or it may not be established conclusively but merely by implication.

Equal usage of tones in no way implies a lack of centricity.  A composition that consisted merely of chromatic scales rising from C0 to C5 would use all of the tones exactly equally (and follow the 12-tone method perfectly, to boot!), and still be heard as centered on C.

I think there's a misconception common today that tonality is based on scales, whereas it's really the opposite.  Scales are a representation of tonal factors.  Calling notes outside of the scale "outside of the key" is bizarre.  Does Mozart's 23rd Concerto leave A major in its second chord?

[PotashPie]

According to that standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, Wikipedia, the word can be attributed to the composer Joseph Marx in a 1907 study.
"It was the composer Josef Hauer who coined the term "atonal music," according to the liner notes of a Chandos CD of his works.

I don't know what context Joseph Marx was using the term "atonal," whether it was to noise or to music. Marx may have been comparing noise and music.

Josef Matthias Hauer made the term "atonal music" popular, because he used it as a title for a group of his published works. He also wrote a book on the subject.

Schoenberg was aware of this, and felt his "position in German music for the next 300 years" to be threatened.

This is the real reason Schoenberg did not want the term to be used to describe his own music.

[Mahlerian]

According to that standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, Wikipedia, the word can be attributed to the composer Joseph Marx in a 1907 study.
"It was the composer Josef Hauer who coined the term "atonal music," according to the liner notes of a Chandos CD of his works.

I don't know what context Joseph Marx was using the term "atonal," whether it was to noise or to music. Marx may have been comparing noise and music.

Josef Matthias Hauer made the term "atonal music" popular, because he used it as a title for a group of his published works. He also wrote a book on the subject.

Schoenberg was aware of this, and felt his "position in German music for the next 300 years" to be threatened.

This is the real reason Schoenberg did not want the term to be used to describe his own music.

You're assuming that Schoenberg didn't mean what he said.  Why?  There is no evidence for this.  He explained multiple times that the reason for his rejection of the term was that it was meaningless, as it implied something without any tonal center:

l do not consider my music as atonal, but rather as non-tonal. I feel the unity of all keys. Atonal music by modern composers admits of no key at all, no feeling of any definite center.

Elsewhere he said that atonal was merely the name for music the tonality of which would be discovered in the future.

[PotashPie]

I trust my own ears very well, and I can consistently hear more relationships in music than I can read in a score.  I've never heard anything that sounds atonal to me, though common practice functional harmony is easy to hear, and I'm very sensitive to faulty intonation or wrong notes in any musical context I'm familiar with.

I also trust other people to report their perceptions, so when they say that they hear Shostakovich's Violin Concerto or Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht as atonal, I believe that they hear it in a way that aligns with their own idea of what that word means.  You seem willing to accept people's perceptions only insofar as they are identical to yours.

My position is based on two fronts: objective and subjective. You only responded to the subjective part. I mentioned the subjective only as an alternative for those who can't get the theory part.

With the subjective, there is no right or wrong.

WIK: Donald Jay Grout similarly doubted whether atonality is really possible, because "any combination of sounds can be referred to a fundamental root". He defined it as a fundamentally subjective category: "atonal music is music in which the person who is using the word cannot hear tonal centers." 

[PotashPie]

I do think it's possible to listen to 12-tone music as "tonal centers which change every moment," but I think it is unlikely that this is how Schoenberg conceived it.

This only makes sense if we see this as the culmination of the late Romantic chromaticism (Strauss Metamorphosen), taken further, until it is totally chromatic and shifting "roots" at almost every moment. This makes sense in pre-12-tone works like Pelleas and Transfigured Night, Berg's Op. 1, or Webern's Im Sommerwind.

I hesitate to hear 12-tone Schoenberg as "root movement," but rather as polyphony. As such, as lines, I don't see the emphasis as being on "tonality" at all, but rather a return to thematicism, polyphony, unconcerned with harmony except as a random consequence.

This way of hearing tonality in 12-tone Schoenberg, as harmonic rather than linear, would be a very "vertical" experience, compressed in time. I doubt that most people would want to sustain the concentration to do this. I think they hear it linearly, because that's more natural to do in such dense polyphony.

[Mahlerian]

My position is based on two fronts: objective and subjective. You only responded to the subjective part. I mentioned the subjective only as an alternative for those who can't get the theory part.

With the subjective, there is no right or wrong.

WIK: Donald Jay Grout similarly doubted whether atonality is really possible, because "any combination of sounds can be referred to a fundamental root". He defined it as a fundamentally subjective category: "atonal music is music in which the person who is using the word cannot hear tonal centers." 

Okay, I'll respond to your "objective" part.

The 12-tone method and its principles developed into serialism and set theory.

These later methods dropped the use of pitch names and replaced them with numbers. This is because "pitch identity" had become irrelevant. All that mattered now was intervallic relationships measured in terms of "pitch distance" or quantity, not identity.

You have to be able to understand this in order to truly understand that 12-tone music and its derivatives are "not tonal" in the most basic sense.

So...atonal music is atonal because it's "not tonal".  Your argument is completely circular.  The methods used to analyze music called atonal are not the same as the music itself.  Schoenberg certainly did not think in terms of set theory, and although set theory has been used to explain much post-common practice music (including Debussy and Bartok), it does not follow that music that responds better to set theory analysis than traditional common practice analysis is therefore atonal.  You yourself admit this, as you insist that Bartok and Debussy are tonal, so set theory is entirely a red herring.

Furthermore, just because set theory doesn't consider certain aspects of music doesn't imply in any way that those aspects are irrelevant.  Think about the impact of Le Marteau sans maitre without its gamelan of percussion or Schoenberg's Farben without any tone color or register, and you will see that simply analyzing these works in terms of their constituent intervals, horizontal and vertical, doesn't come close to telling us everything important about them.  Going even further, traditional functional analysis does not consider the difference between voicings of a chord, but a C major chord entirely in the bass/tenor range surely has different harmonic properties than a C major chord spread across several octaves.

[Mahlerian]

I do think it's possible to listen to 12-tone music as "tonal centers which change every moment," but I think it is unlikely that this is how Schoenberg conceived it.

This only makes sense if we see this as the culmination of the late Romantic chromaticism (Strauss Metamorphosen), taken further, until it is totally chromatic and shifting "roots" at almost every moment. This makes sense in pre-12-tone works like Pelleas and Transfigured Night, Berg's Op. 1, or Webern's Im Sommerwind.

I hesitate to hear 12-tone Schoenberg as "root movement," but rather as polyphony. As such, as lines, I don't see the emphasis as being on "tonality" at all, but rather a return to thematicism, polyphony, unconcerned with harmony except as a random consequence.

This way of hearing tonality in 12-tone Schoenberg, as harmonic rather than linear, would be a very "vertical" experience, compressed in time. I doubt that most people would want to sustain the concentration to do this. I think they hear it linearly, because that's more natural to do in such dense polyphony.

There is something to hearing it in terms of polyphony, like one would Renaissance music, and it is certainly true that not every vertical formation is harmonically important, but Schoenberg was very concerned about the vertical outcomes of his lines, and certainly emphasizes intervals such as thirds and fourths throughout his works.  To call the consequences "random" implies that these outcomes are accidental, which is simply wrong.

I hesitate to hear it as "root movement" either, but rather as various colors of harmony, and I am quite attuned to the difference between a Viennese trichord (perfect fourth plus augmented fourth) and a chord of stacked perfect fourths.  Tonal centers do not require root progressions, or else monodic melody would be without tonal implications.  Schoenberg's 12-tone works are not in a key, but neither do they lack implications of centers, and Schoenberg tends to limit the rows he uses in order to establish and maintain relationships between notes.

[PotashPie]

Okay, I'll respond to your "objective" part.

So...atonal music is atonal because it's "not tonal".  Your argument is completely circular.  The methods used to analyze music called atonal are not the same as the music itself.  Schoenberg certainly did not think in terms of set theory...

It did not exist as such, but he did think that way. He broke 12-note rows down into hexads, as in the Wind Quintet, which I listed above.

[PotashPie]

I can't agree with this step.  Tonal centers do not need to be established by means of exclusion of notes outside of a scale.  You can easily find very brief passages in the common practice era making use of all of the notes of the chromatic scale, and yet even the strict sense of tonality employed in their era is not in the least threatened.

Yes, like Bach's Sinfonia Nr. 9 in F minor, which uses 11 notes. But other structural factors make us see these as mostly passing tones, and also reinforce the tonality.

Schoenberg's 12-tone works are linear and thematic, so assertion of certain notes would be a way of suggesting tone-centricity. But this is not harmony.

[Mahlerian]

Yes, like Bach's Sinfonia Nr. 9 in F minor, which uses 11 notes. But other structural factors make us see these as mostly passing tones, and also reinforce the tonality.

Schoenberg's 12-tone works are linear and thematic, so assertion of certain notes would be a way of suggesting tone-centricity. But this is not harmony.

Why?  What makes the major triad ending Schoenberg's Ode to Napoleon "not harmony"?  As far as I can tell, your definition of harmony is circular, so that Schoenberg's harmony is not harmony because it's atonal, and the music is atonal because it's non-harmonic.

It did not exist as such, but he did think that way. He broke 12-note rows down into hexads, as in the Wind Quintet, which I listed above.

Yes, and Debussy also broke the chromatic scale into complementary hexads, in music which you considered obviously tonal.  What's your point?

[PotashPie]

There is something to hearing it in terms of polyphony, like one would Renaissance music, and it is certainly true that not every vertical formation is harmonically important, but Schoenberg was very concerned about the vertical outcomes of his lines, and certainly emphasizes intervals such as thirds and fourths throughout his works.  To call the consequences "random" implies that these outcomes are accidental, which is simply wrong.

I call it "random" in the sense that whatever tonality you're hearing is not the result of harmonic factors which are part of an overall, self-referencing, multi-connected system such as tonality is. These linear "happenings" are due to whatever allusions Schoenberg could squeeze out of these lines he was constructing.

I hesitate to hear it as "root movement" either, but rather as various colors of harmony, and I am quite attuned to the difference between a Viennese trichord (perfect fourth plus augmented fourth) and a chord of stacked perfect fourths.

That's the way I hear it, as color, without tonal meaning, usually.

Tonal centers do not require root progressions, or else monodic melody would be without tonal implications.  Schoenberg's 12-tone works are not in a key, but neither do they lack implications of centers, and Schoenberg tends to limit the rows he uses in order to establish and maintain relationships between notes.

I can agree with that. Still, the fact that the lines are so chromatic, and the fact that this perceived tonality does not result from "tonal infrastructure" with all its implications and layering of connections, makes it both objectively and, for most listeners, subjectively "not tonal sounding, "something different, "not Debussy," "not Claire de Lune," "not Stravinsky."

[Mahlerian]

I call it "random" in the sense that whatever tonality you're hearing is not the result of harmonic factors which are part of an overall, self-referencing, multi-connected system such as tonality is. These linear "happenings" are due to whatever allusions Schoenberg could squeeze out of these lines he was constructing.

Obviously.  Schoenberg, like Debussy and Stravinsky, does not depend on the common practice tonal system for his harmony.  But the harmony is far from random in any sense.  It has progression and direction like any other music.

That's the way I hear it, as color, without tonal meaning, usually.

I can't hear music without tonal meaning.  What is it like?

I can agree with that. Still, the fact that the lines are so chromatic, and the fact that this perceived tonality does not result from "tonal infrastructure" with all its implications and layering of connections, makes it both objectively and, for most listeners, subjectively "not tonal sounding, "something different, "not Debussy," "not Claire de Lune," "not Stravinsky."

You still haven't explained your objective explanation in a non-circular way.  I know that I don't hear one of these as not tonal in some sense that the others are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTJPYmFS6eo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy9fvi31ps8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQFnr65Yu3Q

[PotashPie]

Obviously.  Schoenberg, like Debussy and Stravinsky, does not depend on the common practice tonal system for his harmony.  But the harmony is far from random in any sense.  It has progression and direction like any other music.

Schoenberg is much more chromatic than either of those.

I can't hear music without tonal meaning.  What is it like?

You yourself said you hear it as color, or as linear.

You still haven't explained your objective explanation in a non-circular way. 

You mean as opposed to your "square" academic way?

I know that I don't hear one of these as not tonal in some sense that the others are.

Well, you yourself said you hear everything tonally.

[PotashPie]

I remember trying (and failing) to make sense of the term, to no avail. It seemed to be being used to refer to all sorts of very different (to my ears) things, and I remember thinking that it was odd that I'd never run across anyone calling Varese's music atonal. (This was the seventies. I did eventually run across this.)

You probably couldn't make sense of those books with that word in the title, either.

Years ago on the Talk Classical site, I outlined six different, distinct usages for the word. As I recall it was six, ranging from "not in a key" to "music I don't like." The guy who coined it, in 1907, used it in the latter sense to refer to people like Strauss and Mahler. It is certainly a very useful term for designating "music I don't like."

Ok, you side with Joseph Marx and Mahlerian. I'll side with Josef Matthias Hauer, George Perle, Alan Forte, and John Rahn.

'Course, we did manage, pretty well anyway, to get rid of nigger. Maybe we can do the same with atonal. Worth a shot.

Oh, my God, give me some slack!

[PotashPie]

What about composers like Messiaen? Are they "tonal" or "atonal"?

By your definition of course

The terms don't apply very well to Messiaen, but his music is closer to being "tonal" than Schoenberg because it is based on harmonic sonorities.

"Tonal/atonal" is a dialectic which applies to music in which tonality, or its negation, is one of the prime concerns.

Messiaen is "moment time" music, like Varese, in which there is no development in the Western CP sense.

New Conceptions of Musical Time

Linear time: Music that imparts a sense of linear time seems to move towards goals. This quality permeates virtually all of Western music from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras. This is accomplished by processes which occur within tonal and metrical frameworks.
Nonlinear time: Music that evokes a sense of nonlinear time seems to stand still or evolve very slowly.

Western musicians first became aware of nonlinear time during the late 19th century. Debussy's encounter with Javanese gamelan music at the 1889 Paris Exhibition was a seminal event.

Moment Form: broken down connections between musical events in order to create a series of more or less discrete moments. Certain works of Stravinsky, Webern, Messiaen, and Stockhausen exemplify this approach.

Vertical Time: At the other extreme of the nonlinear continuum is music that maximizes consistency and minimizes articulation. Vertical time means that whatever structure that is in the music exists between simultaneous layers of sound, not between successive gestures. A virtually static moment is expanded to encompass an entire piece. A vertical piece does not exhibit large-scale closure. It does not begin, but merely starts. It does not build to a climax, does not set up internal expectations, does not seek to fulfill any expectations that might arise accidentally, does not build or release tension, and does not end, but simply ceases.
Minimalism exemplifies vertical time, but instead of absolute stasis, it generates constant motion. The sense of movement is so evenly paced, and the goals are so vague, that we usually lose our sense of perspective.[/INDENT]

If there is "tonality" in Messiaen, it is in the stacked chords and sonorities he uses.

With 12-tone Schoenberg, harmonies which result are derived from rows and linear statements, and are too chromatic to adhere with any consistency to any "harmonic" schema. Being a totally chromatic music with all 12 notes in circulation at every turn, the result is going to always be more dissonant than a reduced "harmonic" schema.

Plus, Messiaen's "Modes of Limited Transposition" are more like tonal scales than they are like tone-rows. They still have "pitch identity," i.e., they are constructed as relations of pitches, not intervals, on certain "roots" which relate one stack to another. In this way, Messiaen creates "progressions" of these chord sonorities, which is definitely a "tonal" device.