Atonal and tonal music

[Karl Henning]

An open fifth quickly becomes a diminished fifth.

Well played!

[Overtones]

Well played!

Pun intended, I guess?

[PotashPie]

All well taken.  But I think of more than one Feldman score, whose pitch content is minimally chromatic (or indeed "white-key") but because of the temporal expansion, the music does not create a tonal impression.

Yes, in other words, the Feldman moves so slowly that you forget what the last note was.

[PotashPie]

Your reasoning is circuitous.

You are a linear thinker, so I just appear to be circuitous to you.

Here is a nice linear chart:
Hanson's Harmonic Materials of Modern Music shows:

p=perfect fifth (or fourth)
m=major third (minor sixth)
n=minor third (major sixth)
s=major second (minor seventh)
d=minor second (major seventh)
t=augmented fourth, diminished fifth

doad (2 notes): p
triad: p2 s
tetrad: p3 n s2
pentad: p4 m n2 s3
hexad: p5 m2 n3 s4 d
heptad: p6 m3 n4 s5 d2 t
octad: p7 m4 n5 s6 d4 t2
nonad: p8 m6 n6 s7 d6 t3
decad: p9 m8 n8 s8 d8 t4
undecad: p10 m10 n10 s10 d10 t5
duodecad (12 notes): p12 m12 n12 s12 d12 t6

Each new progression adds one new interval, plus adding one more to those already present; but beyond seven tones, no new intervals can be added. In addition to this loss of new material, there is also a gradual decrease in the difference of the quantitative formation.

So the sound of a sonority, whether it be harmony or melody, depends on what is present, but also on what is not present. The pentatonic sounds as it does because it contains mainly perfect fifths, and also maj seconds, minor thirds, and one major third, but also because it does not contain the minor second or tritone.

[Karl Henning]

You are a linear thinker

Oh, am I?

[arpeggio]

I notice a recurring feature that occurs in these discussions is a debate on what is atonal music.  I have read so many dissertations concerning the definition of atonal music I have become completely lost.  So what if atonal music does not comply with the definition of atonal music.

In another forum a new thread appeared entitled "Why is classical music often so poorly received by today's audiences?"

I can understand a newbie asking such a question.  But the member who started this thread has been around for many years and should know better.

Well to make a long story short eventually the anti-contemporary music trolls showed up and used the 'atonal' term as a negative to describe all of that modern stuff they hate.

Whether we like it or not of not, or whether the semantics are correct, 'atonal' is used as a pejorative term by many to criticize modern music they consider garbage.  Even if you can convince them that Schoenberg's music is not 'atonal', if they hate his music they will continue to hate it.

[Madiel]

That particular straw man, that "atonal" is used with pejorative intent, has been refuted again and again in this thread but clearly it is falling on deaf ears.

I don't really give a damn whether other people elsewhere are using it with that intent, I'm not, and several other people on this thread have said the same. So within the sample size available here on GMG the assertion is not true. We are not using atonal with pejorative intent. It would be great if everybody stopped claiming that we are.

[Karl Henning]

Whether we like it or not of not, or whether the semantics are correct, 'atonal' is used as a pejorative term by many to criticize modern music they consider garbage.

That particular straw man, that "atonal" is used with pejorative intent, has been refuted again and again in this thread but clearly it is falling on deaf ears.

I don't really give a damn whether other people elsewhere are using it with that intent, I'm not, and several other people on this thread have said the same. So within the sample size available here on GMG the assertion is not true. We are not using atonal with pejorative intent. It would be great if everybody stopped claiming that we are.

Aye, but arpeggio did say many;  he, at least, is not claiming that mere use of the word betokens ill will.

Even if you can convince them that Schoenberg's music is not 'atonal', if they hate his music they will continue to hate it.

Early on in Jimmy's relatively brief tenure with the BSO (even if it was not absolutely greedy overreach on his part to "serve" as music director of both the Metropolitan Opera and the Boston Symphony "simultaneously," given his health issues and workaholism, it was all a train wreck waiting to happen) there were two (two!) seasons whose programming was geared to the theme Two Revolutionaries:  Beethoven and Schoenberg.

Predictably, you had (particularly here in Boston) the population of fans of modern music in general and of Schoenberg in particular;  and you had (as everywhere, as arpeggio notes) the population of regular orchestra patrons who just can't stick Schoenberg at any price.  But you also had (what was, I should think, Jimmy's "target audience") the "non-partisan independent" listener population, for whom it was simply an adventure of discovery.

And this is really the point which runs athwart the short-sighted "bums-in-seats" bureaucrats' dogma:  the audience is not a monolith.  So, yes, you are perhaps alienating, or you are perhaps failing to "evangelize" to the new ears of, a wide swath of potential symphony-goers, if you rely on a steady diet of only the safe-as-milk Classics.

I considered Jimmy's programming and experiment a substantial success (though we may discount my response, as coming from a Schoenberg fan-boy).  If I recall one of the programs correctly (I certainly heard all these works performed in the course of those seasons, I may only be mis-conflating for our illustration here), it began with the (string orchestra arrangement of the) Große Fuge, which sounded harshly un-classical and bafflingly dense;  then Christian Zimmerman played both the LvB and the Schoenberg Violin Concerti;  and then the program closed with a reprise of the Große Fuge, which now sounded tame and playful.  It was both a brilliant lesson in contextual listening, and a perfect example of the benefit to be derived by pairing the two composers.

[some guy]

That particular straw man, that "atonal" is used with pejorative intent, has been refuted again and again in this thread but clearly it is falling on deaf ears.

I don't really give a damn whether other people elsewhere are using it with that intent, I'm not, and several other people on this thread have said the same. So within the sample size available here on GMG the assertion is not true. We are not using atonal with pejorative intent. It would be great if everybody stopped claiming that we are.

Well, no. I don't recall that it's been refuted at all. It's been claimed that "atonal" is not used with pejorative intent, but that's rather different from refutation. (Reminder, an assertion, by itself, is worthless.) Anyway, we have all seen and heard "atonal" used pejoratively, many times. All of us have, I'm pretty sure. How many of you have never seen the phrase "that atonal crap," before? So the deaf ears, in this case, seem to belong to some one other than the "people use atonal pejoratively" crowd.

But that's one topic. Then the topic changes. This has always been a very popular ploy. Now it's not "people, generally, use 'atonal' pejoratively" any more. Now it's "I don't care if that is so. I only care that I don't." But that's not the original claim at all. And since "everybody" has most clearly NOT been claiming that "we" are using atonal with pejorative intent, it does seem off, somehow, to desire that that stop. Once something has started, it's easy want it stopped. But before it's started?

A bunch of people claiming that they never use "atonal" pejoratively means nothing at all. If they truly do not (that is, actually don't as opposed to simply claiming it), so what? The claim that arpeggio has made is that it is commonly used pejoratively. If a few people here and there on GMG claim that they don't, OK. But the claim still stands. It is commonly used pejoratively, and has been so used from its original coining (which was inarguably pejorative) about a hundred years ago. I really find it impossible to believe that that common thing has not been observed by everyone.

[Madiel]

Which is all very well if you completely ignore the entire context of this thread. This thread did not start as an abstract general discussion of what other people, elsewhere, are using the word for.

We've somehow got to the point where you can tell me that my own subjective intent is valueless. That I can be told how I'm using a word based on how other people use it.

Okay then. I've already commented on the considerable use of the word in album liner notes. I continue to be amazed at how THAT usage is ignored in favour of references to fights on Internet forums.

[PotashPie]

Oh, am I?

Well, you said I was circuitous. So there! Hmmph!

[some guy]

Which is all very well if you completely ignore the entire context of this thread. This thread did not start as an abstract general discussion of what other people, elsewhere, are using the word for.

When "atonal" came into the thread, quite early on, it started with Mahlerian asserting that it was meaningless and you asserting that it was not. Pretty general at that point.

We've somehow got to the point where you can tell me that my own subjective intent is valueless. That I can be told how I'm using a word based on how other people use it.

Your subjective intent is valueless as evidence for how "atonal" is used generally. And generally, its uses are so many and so contradictory, that it is difficult to use it and have everyone agree as to what it means.

The usage in liner notes is not ignored. Why, you've brought it up yourself. And you're part of this conversation. But, as others have pointed out, the usage in liner notes (which I don't think is as uniform or consistent as you suggest) is only part of how the word is used. That's been the whole issue all along--that the word has been used too many ways, some of which are contradictory, to be a useful term. That some people think that they can still usefully use it is neither here nor there. Those people will continue to do so, no matter what anyone else says. And the word itself will continue to have various, arbitrary, and contradictory meanings--meaning, at the very least, that anyone using it without carefully defining what they mean by it will come up against the reality that other people use it to mean other things.

Not sure why that concept is so difficult or so contentious. Lots of terms are the same way. You have basically three choices, don't use those terms, use them with detailed explanations of what you mean by them, or use them "cold," thus opening yourself up to censure. I don't see any other options.

[Madiel]

When "atonal" came into the thread, quite early one, it started with Mahlerian asserting that it was meaningless and you asserting that it was not. Pretty general at that point.

This thread was put together by a moderator from conversation that started in a different thread. If you look at the beginning of this thread you are not, in fact, looking at the context of how this started.

Which is fairly clear, from (1) the title of the thread not matching the very first post (did you not notice it was unusual for the term in the title to only appear "fairly early on" rather than at the very beginning, and (2) my strong protests when it initially looked as if I had started the thread.

My protests, which now appear on page 5, were exactly because there was no intention on my part to start some kind of general discussion on the topic. It was entirely about Mahlerian deciding he had a problem with other people using pieces of terminology he didn't like. Here on this forum.

Of which "atonal" was just one. You will see he also didn't like "system" because he decided it connoted automatism. And so here we are, all these pages later, still carrying on because of that.

[Uhor]

Atonal, as I understand, means higly chromatic music containing proportionally many non tertian harmonies, lacking typical or definite root motion or motifs that consistently or strongly emphasise a particular tone for a discernible amount of time.

[Madiel]

I also feel it's worthwhile pointing out, as I did three months ago, that there was plenty of opportunity for someone to go and set up a general discussion about atonality or 12-tone music if they wanted to.

But no. It was just woven into the "thread" that started as Mahlerian's criticism of other people's choice of terminology. So I make no apology for continuing to react to this thread as a criticism of people rather than as an abstract discussion. That is how it started. That is my memory of it.

That memory is not going to be altered by other people coming along and telling me how it's all general and how my personal statements about how I use terminology are of no value whatsoever. That is not the actual context of the thread, and while for some of you this may now have morphed into a general discussion, for me it is coloured by that initial experience.** Read the first few pages of this thread and you will see several people having that same reaction, that we were being told off for using the wrong words.

**Which I realise is quite ironic given that this whole affair seems largely to have been coloured by the personal experiences that were imported from elsewhere.

[Mirror Image]

Like I said before, I don't give two flips that Mahlerian doesn't like the term atonal. There's nothing he can do about it. The word is only 'dirty' if you imbue it with your own negative connotations. From where I'm sitting, there's nothing remotely wrong with using it.

[Ken B]

Like I said before, I don't give two flips that Mahlerian doesn't like the term atonal. There's nothing he can do about it. The word is only 'dirty' if you imbue it with your own negative connotations. From where I'm sitting, there's nothing remotely wrong with using it.

Nothing wrong with it?? When some guy disapproves?? You'll be defending "polyphonic" next you monster.

[Mirror Image]

Nothing wrong with it?? When some guy disapproves?? You'll be defending "polyphonic" next you monster.

We all know that some guy is a part of an ancient counsel of wisemen, so it's best not to challenge his opinion.

[jochanaan]

Atonal, as I understand, means higly chromatic music containing proportionally many non tertian harmonies, lacking typical or definite root motion or motifs that consistently or strongly emphasise a particular tone for a discernible amount of time.

Near, but not in the bullseye. Atonal music may or may not be "highly chromatic." *Atonal* refers specifically to music that consistently and continually avoids having a tonal center.

[Monsieur Croche]

We all know that some guy is a part of an ancient counsel of wisemen, so it's best not to challenge his opinion.

Some Guy is a Shaman who has at his command a replete lexicon of arcane powers. 

I have sent him some hair collected from your comb, and a bit of your earwax. 
Forewarned is forearmed. :-)


Best regards.