A little history

[Mahlerian]

I am not sure if hierarchies is something a composer working in an atonal style would strive for, at least not if he were aiming for a pure atonal style.  It may be something subconsciously he creates but it would vary from composer to composer.  I don't think it is an attribute of atonal music in the abstract, which ideally would avoid all references to tonality.  Of course a hallmark of extended composition is the architectural/formal problem to be addressed (which is how Total Serialism came to be).  A composer might choose to establish repeating thematic sections and hierarchies, or not, depending upon his aesthetic and artistic goals.  But I don't think that a 12-tone composer who uses formal attributes associated with sonata form is writing a tonal piece of music.

You're assuming that "atonal" composers strive to write "atonal music."  Not only is this incorrect, it is very easily proven incorrect.  Composers of "atonal" music, such as Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Sessions, Carter, Babbitt, and so forth, have been the most vociferously against the term, precisely for the reason that they did not feel it applies to their music in any meaningful way.

Again, I do not assume any such thing as "atonal music in the abstract," and nor should you, given that the existence of any kind of atonality is the point being argued.  You can't argue that "atonal music is thus, therefore atonality exists."

For the tonal works of the 17th-18th century, it can objectively be demonstrated.  It becomes less so during the latter half of the 19th century, and during the 20th the break with tonality is complete (at least in some works).  For someone to hear tonal centers or harmonic hierarchies in a work by Milton Babbitt, e.g., I think would be subjective.  It is true that sometimes a composer who writes primarily in an atonal style will flirt with incorporating tonal elements, as a way of bringing that quality to the music.  But I am separating atonal music as it exists in the real world and atonal music in the abstract.

How is tonality such that it can be objectively demonstrated in some works but not in others?  I find Milton Babbitt's music tends to create quite clear centers, and at the conclusions of his works he asserts them quite strongly.

Furthermore, I use exactly the same musical sensibility and kind of listening to hear these centers as the ones in common practice music, despite the differences in presentation and in the methods used for assertion.

I don't assume it is there or not there, I simply don't listen for it (and find it a distraction if it should appear).  I think tonality has a standard definition, as does atonality.  Because a word is defined as the lack of the defining attribute of another word does not disqualify the word from use.  We accept "amoral", "atypical", and other similar words.

Neither term has a single standard definition.  Didn't you read the earlier discussion, where the New Grove article on Atonality was picked over?  Some definitions of Atonal separate it from Serial, others don't.  Some definitions of Tonal separate it from Modal, others don't.  There is no one standard definition, and furthermore, to assert that there is again begs the question, by simply stating your conclusion as if it were a premise.

Anyway, I don't "listen for" centers, either.  They're simply present in my consciousness here as in all other music.

[aleazk]

I just listen to the music; I don't look for tonal centers or the lack of tonal centers. 

Now you are telling people how they should talk about music.   Are you really that much of a control freak?

I'm just saying that those tonal centers are there. You can care about them or not while listening, but that doesn't change the fact that they exist.

And, what? I'm just pointing out what are the existing terms in case someone wants to refer to that music. Of course, in your room, you can use whatever term you want, but in a public forum deviced to have informed conversations about music, better to stick to the accepted terminology coined by the professionals of music.

Also, can we refrain from ad hominems, please...

[Mahlerian]

Whether they accept the word or not, they each wrote a type of atonal music.  Rufer's Composition with Twelve Notes Related Only to One Anothe is nothing more than an attempt to codify Schoenberg's method of composition for pedagogical purposes.

Again, this argument begs the question.  You really don't seem to understand that a question-begging argument is not only not a particularly persuasive one (unless one already accepts the conclusion), it has no argumentative force whatsoever.

Imagine the following argument (in a hypothetical world where the existence of unicorns is a matter for serious debate):

- All unicorns have horns.

- Therefore this unicorn in my backyard has a horn.

- Therefore there is a unicorn in my backyard.

It's a silly example, but really, this is what you're arguing.

I did not create the concept of atonal music, I also do not have a need to rid a discussion of music of it.

That's not the point.  You are assuming the existence of atonal music in order to demonstrate that atonal music exists.  Furthermore, you call upon composers who disagreed with you for justification of your views, and then brush it off when this disagreement is pointed out.

Because the music of Haydn more clearly demonstrates the harmonic hierarchies of the tonal system of keys then does the music of Scriabin.

Of course.  But we are not talking about the tonal system of keys.  We are talking about centricity.

While it is true that specialists like to argue how many angels can fit on the head of a pin, definitions of both terms appear in a general dictionary.

This is a completely irrelevant example.  Neither of the terms in question is under discussion, nor are their definitions questioned (though perhaps their existence).  Again, you assert something false (that Tonal and Atonal are terms with clear, widely accepted definitions) and then simply ridicule me when it is disproven.

[Mahlerian]

Music does exist which was designed to not exhibit the conventions of tonality.  Textbooks have been written encapsulating the operations of 12-tone composition, explaining the four row forms: Primary, Retrograde, Inverse, Inverse-Retrograde.  Composition students are advised to avoid using triads or diatonic scale segments in their row constructions.  The more the music is alien to tonality the better.  Those students became working composers.

However, if you wish to find a different term for this music be my guest.  But I am satisfied with the term atonality.

The 12-tone method was invented by a composer who did not consider his own music, or any music, atonal.  You can't use its existence to bolster your argument that some music was designed to be atonal.

The way the method is taught is really irrelevant in that regard.

I don't wish to find a different term for "this music," because atonal doesn't designate any kind of music whatsoever.  There is no need for a term for something that is not distinguished from other things in any meaningful way.

No, you are talking about centricity, I am talking about tonality, which consists of a system of keys as opposed to atonality which does not utilize that system.

Modal music also does not use that system of keys, and nor do the other things I've cited in the past.  Are Debussy, The Beatles, Daft Punk, Perotin, and Machaut also atonal, then?

I did not intend to ridicule you with my angels/pin metaphor.  But one can easily find the words Tonality and Atonality in a dictionary which would seem to disprove your allegation that Tonal and Atonal are terms without clear, widely accepted definitions.  After all, dictionaries compile words and define how they are widely used and understood.

As I said, tonal and atonal are variously defined, and the fact that dictionary definitions exist in no way implies that those definitions are clear or that they align with the truth of the matter.  As I cited earlier, the premier resource on music, the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, says that "it remains to be seen whether [atonal] is a useful or relevant category" and defines it merely by the characteristics of the many kinds of music to which it is applied.

[Tulse]

The only person who views the word negatively is you, Mahlerian. Everyone else here on GMG doesn't have a problem with the word and has accepted the term as everyday language or, at least, as this ongoing discussion has indicated thus far.

Rubbish! Reread the thread and please don't speak for me.

[Mahlerian]

It doesn't matter for the sake of this discussion how Schoenberg labeled his own music or any music.  The fact remains that the term atonal has been used to describe music like Schoenberg's, Webern's and others.

Yes, and wrongly, according to them.  The term atonal has also been used to describe Prokofiev, Debussy, Stravinsky, Mahler, Strauss, and Reger.  I assume that you do not think the mere fact that the term has been used to describe something means that it is accurately used.

I've bolded the bit where we disagree: obviously there is music designated as atonal.  Books have been written about it.

Yes, but the music so designated has no specific qualities that separate it from other music.  As far as I am aware, there is no "atonality" such that compositions that have a certain quality are atonal and those that do not are not.  See the following:

This is where I find you disingenuous.  Modal music is labeled modal, not atonal.  Debussy's music uses enough of the elements of tonality, triads and scales, that would keep his music out of the atonal camp.  The Beatles did not write atonal music, not catchy enough.  I haven't listened to Daft Punk, but can say that their music is not atonal since the widely accepted understanding of atonal music is 20th century classical music written in a manner that purposely avoids the conventions of tonality and can include 12-tone music, serialism, and other music composition methodologies developed to create such music.

It's not disingenuous.  You said that atonality was defined by not using a specific system of keys and an associated hierarchy of harmonies based on the dominant-tonic relationship.  None of the things I mentioned use that system of keys, and in fact they avoid the conventions of that system, presumably intentionally in the case of those that came after the dominance of that system.

Provide a new definition of atonal, if you do not want to include those things.  Don't use ad hoc exeptions, especially as triads and diatonicism aren't nearly as uncommon in 12-tone music as you seem to imagine.

I know you've said all that, more than once.   You can find my responses earlier in the thread.

Your dismissals do not count as responses.  All of your arguments can be boiled down to "atonal music exists, therefore atonal music exists."

[aleazk]

Rubbish! Reread the thread and please don't speak for me.

Hey, maybe I'm not a person... 

[Mahlerian]

Hey, maybe I'm not a person... 

Well, as Scarpia said earlier, you're not a "normal" person.  You may simply be hearing deficient.  As a color-blind person lacks the ability to identify certain colors, you seem to have the inability to hear past tonal centers to the non-existence of tonal centers in certain pieces.

[Florestan]

We next went to the school of languages, where three professors sat in consultation upon improving that of their own country.

The first project was, to shorten discourse, by cutting polysyllables into one, and leaving out verbs and participles, because, in reality, all things imaginable are but norms.

The other project was, a scheme for entirely abolishing all words whatsoever; and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health, as well as brevity. For it is plain, that every word we speak is, in some degree, a diminution of our lunge by corrosion, and, consequently, contributes to the shortening of our lives. An expedient was therefore offered, "that since words are only names for things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry about them such things as were necessary to express a particular business they are to discourse on." And this invention would certainly have taken place, to the great ease as well as health of the subject, if the women, in conjunction with the vulgar and illiterate, had not threatened to raise a rebellion unless they might be allowed the liberty to speak with their tongues, after the manner of their forefathers; such constant irreconcilable enemies to science are the common people.

[Mahlerian]

I know of scholarly books about the atonal music of Webern and Schoenberg, but not books for which the title is something like "The atonal music of ..." Prokofiev, Debussy, Stravinsky, Mahler, Strauss, and Reger.  If someone somewhere sometime used the term atonal to describe their music, they used it inappropriately unless they were describing a short passage in a larger work.

The term was invented to describe music like that of Debussy, Strauss, and Mahler!

As for Stravinsky, the book by Allan Forte, cited earlier, The Structure of Atonal Music, spends a lot of time on The Rite of Spring.

We've already been around this bush: atonal music is that which is written to avoid the conventions of tonality - that is its special quality that separates it from tonal music.

Except as above and below where we are discussing music that is written to avoid the conventions of tonality, which you yourself defined as a system of keys based on the hierarchical harmonic relationships of dominant and tonic.  You do not see that music as atonal.

Just as modal music uses triads, all of which are also used in tonality, and often with the same function - atonal music doesn't as a rule, and only rarely uses diatonic triads and never with the same purpose.  Just because somewhere in Debussy's music he avoids tonal relationships it does not make his music atonal.  There is a distinction between music which occasionally avoids tonal relationships and atonality, which is an system of composition with the intention for the total avoidance of tonality.

Not somewhere, everywhere.  Debussy's entire style is based on the subversion of traditional harmonic hierarchies.  Triads are not really pertinent.

There's that "intention" again.  We already went over the fact that the most prominent of "atonal" composers repeatedly and strongly emphasized that their music was in no way atonal, that it was an outgrowth of prior practices and not a rejection of them.

If we can speak of intention in regards to the Second Viennese School, it is not the intention to write atonal music.

There is no need for a new definition.  As I've said some 12-tone composers purposely include tonal elements but this does not mean that there are other composers who avoid even the hint of tonality.

I don't consider a triad a tonal element any more than the letter A is an English element as opposed to a French one.

You wish to undermine the term atonality based on some exceptions while I recognize the many examples of atonal music which are not exceptional.

No, I don't wish to undermine anything.  I have yet to find a single work of music that I can define as atonal, based on the definition of atonality you provide, or even one that is not tonal, based on the definition of tonality you use.

[Florestan]

The term was invented to describe music like that of Debussy, Strauss, and Mahler!

Who invented it? Where and when did it first appear in print, and in what context?

Clear and documented answers, not speculation and hearsay, please!

[Mahlerian]

Who invented it? Where and when did it first appear in print, and in what context?

Clear and documented answers, not speculation and hearsay, please!

I'll let you answer that.

The "19-th century" "petty pedant teutonic" "twit" "grad student" was actually the 26-year old Joseph Marx (an Austrian) working in 1907-09 on his philosophy doctoral dissertation. And far from being a detractor of Scriabin, he was in fact his admirer (as he was of Debussy) and his own music is influenced by the two.

You can note that in 1907 when the first version of the thesis was written, Schonberg had not yet written any music without key signatures.

As for the early application to Debussy, Strauss, and Mahler, I can find this citation, which refers to a study by Reti:

Changing perceptions.  After a musical style has been in existence for a time, the perception of it changes—first for a few individual listeners and later for the general listening public.  Chopin's music was once characterized as "a motley surface of ranting hyperbole and excruciating cacaphony,"9 but we don't hear it that way today.  Nor do we regard Strauss, Reger, Mahler, and Debussy as atonal composers, although the term was originally applied to their music.10

http://www.thinkingapplied.com/tonality_folder/tonality.htm#.WfYrn2hSzIU

I will say, pace the author cited above, that Debussy is still cited as atonal in some sources, such as Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonality

[Florestan]

I'll let you answer that.

Thanks. Can we then agree that a doctoral dissertation is hardly the place where a pejorative term is employed?

As for the early application to Debussy, Strauss, and Mahler, I can find this citation, which refers to a study by Reti:

http://www.thinkingapplied.com/tonality_folder/tonality.htm#.WfYrn2hSzIU

Have you read that study? According to my sources, Joseph Marx's music was heavily influenced by Scriabin and Debussy, and he was good friends with Strauss. Can we then agree one more time that "pejorative" was the last thing Marx had in mind?

[Alek Hidell]

I am uninterested in arguments about what "atonality" is or isn't. I do agree with Mahlerian that it's far too loosely used. But the technical arguments here are (a) beyond my ken and (b) only tangentially related to the original post.

I know the kind of music some guy likes (well, one kind he likes): it's composers/performers like Ferrari and Dhomont and Oliveros (et al.). Their music is probably closer to true "atonality" than Schoenberg or Webern. (At least, to my ears it is - I lack the technical knowledge of music to know it for sure.) I know the sound-world because I am a fan of avant-garde jazz/free improvisation, with which there is often considerable overlap. And there you have music with no "melody" or "rhythm" in the sense usually associated with those terms.

I can't speak for some guy, of course, but I get my hackles up when people speak of (so-called) "atonal" music as garbage, unlistenable, noise, This Is Why Trump Won, etc. - and further imply that not only do they not like it, I shouldn't either.

THAT is the sticking point for me.

And even if I say I like it, they say I don't really, I'm just claiming I do so that I can appear more "scholarly" and oh-so-hip. And then they point to sales figures, how audiences in the concert hall shrink when modern works are programmed, say this is why classical music is so unpopular today, and so on.

For whatever reason, it isn't enough for them that they think the music is no good - they want it to be objectively true, so that no one "should" like it.

I am sure that some guy hears/reads this a lot. He genuinely enjoys this music, and gets very tired of hearing how "no one" listens to it, it's garbage, it's noise for noise's sake, it has no artistic value, etc. And he wants to push back - vain though the effort will be (sorry, some guy ) - against the notion that the style of "modern music" is to "blame" for the decline of classical music's popularity, is a sign of the decline of the West, or whatever. (some guy, please correct me if I'm wrong here. I don't want to presume to speak for you.)

[Mahlerian]

Thanks. Can we then agree that a doctoral dissertation is hardly the place where a pejorative term is employed?

Students can be quite acerbic.  I've read entire papers trying to take down this or that piece of music as being inherently nonsensical.

Have you read that study?

I may have at some point.  Do you think there is good reason to believe it is mis-cited?

According to my sources, Joseph Marx's music was heavily influenced by Scriabin and Debussy, and he was good friends with Strauss. Can we then agree one more time that "pejorative" was the last thing Marx had in mind?

Is his music Atonal like theirs, though?  I don't know, I'm not familiar with it, unlike, say, Schmidt, who was friends with Schoenberg, incidentally.  As a composer, I've been critical of some things that I can still be influenced by.

[Florestan]

Students can be quite acerbic.  I've read entire papers trying to take down this or that piece of music as being inherently nonsensical.

Were they written in Austria in the first decade of the 20th century?

Do you think there is good reason to believe it is mis-cited?

No. I would just like to see the context out of which that citation was taken.

Is his music Atonal like theirs, though?  I don't know, I'm not familiar with it, unlike, say, Schmidt, who was friends with Schoenberg, incidentally.  As a composer, I've been critical of some things that I can still be influenced by.

"Critical of" is one thing. "Pejorative" is quite another. I'll take your own example: you have been critical of some things; did you ridicule them by using pejorative terms? If not, what makes you think Marx did exactly that?

[Monsieur Croche]

I am uninterested in arguments about what "atonality" is or isn't. I do agree with Mahlerian that it's far too loosely used. But the technical arguments here are (a) beyond my ken and (b) only tangentially related to the original post.

I know the kind of music some guy likes (well, one kind he likes): it's composers/performers like Ferrari and Dhomont and Oliveros (et al.). Their music is probably closer to true "atonality" than Schoenberg or Webern. (At least, to my ears it is - I lack the technical knowledge of music to know it for sure.) I know the sound-world because I am a fan of avant-garde jazz/free improvisation, with which there is often considerable overlap. And there you have music with no "melody" or "rhythm" in the sense usually associated with those terms.

I can't speak for some guy, of course, but I get my hackles up when people speak of (so-called) "atonal" music as garbage, unlistenable, noise, This Is Why Trump Won, etc. - and further imply that not only do they not like it, I shouldn't either.

THAT is the sticking point for me.

And even if I say I like it, they say I don't really, I'm just claiming I do so that I can appear more "scholarly" and oh-so-hip. And then they point to sales figures, how audiences in the concert hall shrink when modern works are programmed, say this is why classical music is so unpopular today, and so on.

For whatever reason, it isn't enough for them that they think the music is no good - they want it to be objectively true, so that no one "should" like it.

I am sure that some guy hears/reads this a lot. He genuinely enjoys this music, and gets very tired of hearing how "no one" listens to it, it's garbage, it's noise for noise's sake, it has no artistic value, etc. And he wants to push back - vain though the effort will be (sorry, some guy ) - against the notion that the style of "modern music" is to "blame" for the decline of classical music's popularity, is a sign of the decline of the West, or whatever. (some guy, please correct me if I'm wrong here. I don't want to presume to speak for you.)

You have most eloquently, and without insult to any, completely nailed near to 100% of the underlying personal dynamics of what I see in just about every thread on Atonal, "Atonal vs. Tonal" (like a race or a boxing match <g>), and any variant thereof.

+1... or as we used to say, Bravo!

[mc ukrneal]

I am uninterested in arguments about what "atonality" is or isn't. I do agree with Mahlerian that it's far too loosely used. But the technical arguments here are (a) beyond my ken and (b) only tangentially related to the original post.

I know the kind of music some guy likes (well, one kind he likes): it's composers/performers like Ferrari and Dhomont and Oliveros (et al.). Their music is probably closer to true "atonality" than Schoenberg or Webern. (At least, to my ears it is - I lack the technical knowledge of music to know it for sure.) I know the sound-world because I am a fan of avant-garde jazz/free improvisation, with which there is often considerable overlap. And there you have music with no "melody" or "rhythm" in the sense usually associated with those terms.

I can't speak for some guy, of course, but I get my hackles up when people speak of (so-called) "atonal" music as garbage, unlistenable, noise, This Is Why Trump Won, etc. - and further imply that not only do they not like it, I shouldn't either.

THAT is the sticking point for me.

And even if I say I like it, they say I don't really, I'm just claiming I do so that I can appear more "scholarly" and oh-so-hip. And then they point to sales figures, how audiences in the concert hall shrink when modern works are programmed, say this is why classical music is so unpopular today, and so on.

For whatever reason, it isn't enough for them that they think the music is no good - they want it to be objectively true, so that no one "should" like it.

I am sure that some guy hears/reads this a lot. He genuinely enjoys this music, and gets very tired of hearing how "no one" listens to it, it's garbage, it's noise for noise's sake, it has no artistic value, etc. And he wants to push back - vain though the effort will be (sorry, some guy ) - against the notion that the style of "modern music" is to "blame" for the decline of classical music's popularity, is a sign of the decline of the West, or whatever. (some guy, please correct me if I'm wrong here. I don't want to presume to speak for you.)

What then is the cause of the decline (in popularity) of classical music?

[Pat B]

I am uninterested in arguments about what "atonality" is or isn't. I do agree with Mahlerian that it's far too loosely used. But the technical arguments here are (a) beyond my ken and (b) only tangentially related to the original post.

I know the kind of music some guy likes (well, one kind he likes): it's composers/performers like Ferrari and Dhomont and Oliveros (et al.). Their music is probably closer to true "atonality" than Schoenberg or Webern. (At least, to my ears it is - I lack the technical knowledge of music to know it for sure.) I know the sound-world because I am a fan of avant-garde jazz/free improvisation, with which there is often considerable overlap. And there you have music with no "melody" or "rhythm" in the sense usually associated with those terms.

I can't speak for some guy, of course, but I get my hackles up when people speak of (so-called) "atonal" music as garbage, unlistenable, noise, This Is Why Trump Won, etc. - and further imply that not only do they not like it, I shouldn't either.

THAT is the sticking point for me.

And even if I say I like it, they say I don't really, I'm just claiming I do so that I can appear more "scholarly" and oh-so-hip. And then they point to sales figures, how audiences in the concert hall shrink when modern works are programmed, say this is why classical music is so unpopular today, and so on.

For whatever reason, it isn't enough for them that they think the music is no good - they want it to be objectively true, so that no one "should" like it.

I am sure that some guy hears/reads this a lot. He genuinely enjoys this music, and gets very tired of hearing how "no one" listens to it, it's garbage, it's noise for noise's sake, it has no artistic value, etc. And he wants to push back - vain though the effort will be (sorry, some guy ) - against the notion that the style of "modern music" is to "blame" for the decline of classical music's popularity, is a sign of the decline of the West, or whatever. (some guy, please correct me if I'm wrong here. I don't want to presume to speak for you.)

Has any poster on good-music-guide.com written that you (or anyone else) shouldn't enjoy "atonal" (using any definition of the term) music?

[Alek Hidell]

What then is the cause of the decline (in popularity) of classical music?

I can't claim that the emergence of "atonal"/serial/dodecaphonic/what-have-you music played no part, but I think a much bigger cause is what I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread: the emergence, at almost the same time, of the recording industry and various genres of music. This gave people a much broader variety of music from which to choose.

Think about it: prior to the 20th century, classical music was just about the only game in town. There was folk/dance music, and religious music, but these were not (AFAIK) thought of in artistic terms, certainly not in the same way that classical music was. There were no concerts of folk music. If you wanted to hear religious music, you went to a church service.

But in the early 20th century, the blues developed. Jazz developed. Later, country and rock developed. And with these, the availability of recordings (or performances on the radio and, later, on TV) brought these new musics to the mass audience. Too, a scholarly tradition grew up among these other genres and they began to be thought of in the same aesthetic terms as classical music. You could study jazz in college. You could go to a concert of folk music.

So classical music had to suffer. I mean, even the most "mainstream" classical recordings today hardly sell anything compared to what's in the Billboard Top 40. Surely, if classical music lost popularity only because of its "modern" developments, the old standbys (Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, etc.) should continue to be as popular as they used to be, right?

And, for all I know, maybe they are. How many people in centuries past really studied/listened to/liked classical music? It's not like they had very many opportunities even to hear it. How "popular" was it, really? I don't know if there's really a way to quantify it and make any kind of meaningful comparison to what's "popular" now.

The very same thing happened in jazz. It, too, lost its "popularity" as its avant-garde movements got underway around 1960 (Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Coltrane's late period, etc.) and some claim that these "atonal" developments killed the music. Again, I can't claim that these developments had no effect, but I don't think it's a coincidence that jazz's loss of (relative) popularity came at the same time that rock & roll was beginning to gain mass acceptance, especially with the coming of the Beatles.