Atonal and tonal music

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Aw, it was a good rant.

As much as I am a highly analytical person, I really don't like analysing music to death. Some of that stuff is definitely useful when playing music, but when listening to it it can get in the way.

It ruins the fun of Haydn's false recapitulations for starters.

I guess that can be true when listening to music, but I think a composer as good as Haydn would never be exactly formulaic across his huge body of works. Always a few surprises even if you know that false recap is coming up.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Ah I see, thank you so much for taking the time to help me understand your frustration; I do appreciate it. ^_^

I hope that I don't come across as someone who wants to talk about music without actually engaging with it....

I do like to see as many different viewpoints about something even if people are disrespectful or misguided about anything. Perhaps those kind of posts don't feel good to read, but what I always hope is that people at least have an interest to learn new things about music. Maybe even become interested in something they've previously not found interesting at all!

[Madiel]

What was misguided in this particular conversation was that a lover of "atonal" music leapt to conclusions about people that use that word, conclusions based entirely on some other conversation elsewhere.

I entirely agree with thatfabulousalien, we're simply talking about different approaches to composition that have different ideas about how to express, and neither of them is "right" or "wrong" because for starters not all music is trying to achieve the exact same thing in the first place. And what appeals to each of us depends on so many factors that any discussion about what ought or ought not to be done is going to run into serious trouble.

[Karl Henning]

[...] Any discussion about what ought or ought not to be done is going to run into serious trouble.

Generally true in the arts, I think.


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[Karl Henning]

Aw, it was a good rant.

As much as I am a highly analytical person, I really don't like analysing music to death. Some of that stuff is definitely useful when playing music, but when listening to it it can get in the way.

It ruins the fun of Haydn's false recapitulations for starters.

In my experience, nothing can ruin that fun 

[millionrainbows]

First, I listened. Then, I found out and clarified in my mind what characteristics make tonal music 'tonal.'

I had to clarify and define 'tonality' first, before I ever tried to understand music based on principles outside of that (i.e. atonal music).

Theory always drags its fat ___ in after the fact.

Bear in mind that the ear hears 'harmonically,' so the principles which make music tonal are audible and sensual phenomena, not just 'theory.'

If music is not structured on principles derived from harmonic considerations, then we will hear that this harmonic structure of tonality and all its relationships are not there, and hear it as 'something other than tonality.'

To what degree of acuity we will be able to do this depends on the person, and their ear/brain connection, and/or intuitive ability to hear.

I think a large part of the problem is that most music, including popular, folk, ethnic, children's songs, etc, is tonal.

[Monsieur Croche]

...regardless of era (medieval to contemporary), classical music analysis' fetishise EVERYTHING.

Way older than you, I have seen a shift in music academia, and it worries me a bit:  the marked propensity for going after, naming, and labeling the minutia of theory.  It strikes me as more than a little obsessive, perhaps with a thought that "If I know every last little thing I will have understanding and power and control over music." -- which of course is something any study of music theory has never been able to realistically offer, ha.

The dwelling on the minutia can be exactly like the adage, "Could not see the forest for the trees."

Like you, when in school, I loved the learning about it, working it, getting the working premises and understanding it affords.  For me, even while in school, I found little or no patience in discussing it at any length.  It is about as interesting as a bunch of carpenters talking only about their saws, drills, hammers, etc.  If you are a carpenter solely in the company of other carpenters... well, okeedoh.

Otherwise, talk about the house you built with the tools, not the tools;  now that is interesting.

[some guy]

I have worked as a carpenter. On a crew of other carpenters.

Mostly we talked about girls. And sports. And music--classical music included as it turned out. (That may have been my fault.)

And about how long it was until lunch.

Speaking of which....

[Monsieur Croche]

I have worked as a carpenter. On a crew of other carpenters.

Mostly we talked about girls. And sports. And music--classical music included as it turned out. (That may have been my fault.)

And about how long it was until lunch.

Speaking of which....

Bon Appetit! -- or whatever they say in whatever part of Europe (Ooohh, ___ I am envious) you are.


Best regards

[some guy]

Buen provecho, but I must say, I never hear that. Mostly it's "bon appetit" everywhere. That's from before English became the lingua franca, as it were. 

Probably "disfruta" would be the thing. Hey, that US trip I was on ended up lasting 8 months. Me he olvidado de todo.

En serio!!

[millionrainbows]

So "You are what you eat" applies to music as well.

Atonality, or music composed outside the boundaries of tonality, is a relatively new phenomenon in the scheme of things. It is a conscious construction, using the 12-note chromatic scale as its starting point. As such, a lot of people have no really deep understanding of it, although they listen to it, and like or dislike it. It exists as a dialectic alternative to tonal music.

Since tonality and tonal music is derived from harmonic relationships, it is naturally assimilated, because our ears hear this way: fundamental tones, with higher harmonics. This is a fact of physics.

"Sound is sound," as well, and we can hear sound as having inherent harmonic qualities. But if, like electronic and non-12-pitched sounds, it is not structured along harmonic hierarchies within octaves, then it is outside the boundaries of "tonality" or "atonality." Thus, it is misleading and absurd to try to fit every type of music into the "tonal/atonal" dialectic.

[Karl Henning]

I refer you here.

[millionrainbows]

"Atonal" is not an inclusive term; it doesn't have to define everything it is not. It simply means "music that is not composed according to tonal principles." I never saw the term as pejorative, because I had seen the books by Rahn and others.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Utonality and otonality

[Karl Henning]

He's all about YouTonality.

[Monsieur Croche]

He's all about YouTonality.

Ubertonality.  Credit cards only, but it'll pick you up, give you a ride, leave you off where you want, and cost 1/3 less than everyday Taxitonality.

[Karl Henning]

"The Gig Tonality"

[bwv 1080]

Why the focus on the abandonment of traditional tonality rather than the obliteration of meter in modernist music?  Where are the arguments that a relatively short repeated pattern of beats is the 'natural' state of music?  I think the lack of a consistent meter in Boulez or Webern is at least as 'disturbing'/'revolutionary' as the note combinations employed.  There is plenty of metal that is sufficiently chromatic as to meet most definitions of atonality, but is set in a syncopated 4/4 meter, which likely gives the music more popular appeal.

https://www.youtube.com/v/gNhN6lT-y5U

[some guy]

I wonder about this, too. There's a perception that "modern" means "dissonant" that seems very very hard to shake.

And rhythmical explorations seem less disturbing to people, or less easy to talk about. Perhaps that's why Le Sacre gets so much more credit for modernity than Petrushka, which to my mind is much more advanced in almost every way. But it is not as dissonant. Perhaps that's why Schoenberg is such a natural target but Varese, um, not so much.

Well, it's a funny world, where perceptions so often don't seem to match up with whatever's being perceived. Like that thread about hearing melody in "atonal" music. "How could you not?" would be my question, but then my perceptions have been pretty consistently questioned by lots and lots of people who don't understand how anyone could actually like modern music and who don't even really believe that anyone who reports as liking it is telling the truth.

Oh well.

[kishnevi]

There may be human psychology at work.

Consider a piece with no set tonality and no set  meter. The lack of tonality can often be noticed immediately, but the lack of  meter takes a bit longer to notice.  It's also much easier for the mind to impose the illusion of a basic meter on music that lacks a set meter than to impose an illusion of tonal center on music that has no such center. (f.i., hear a measure in 3/2 followed by a measure in 4/4 and percieve one measure in 10/4 with subsidiary accents. Even if the listener doesn't fall into that trap, he needs to hear the full second measure before he can perceive it's not the same meter.)

Perhaps the best test is to compose a piece with no set meter, but in a decidedly obvious tonality, and see how people react.

The idea of no set meter is not completely modern.  Louis Couperin wrote a series of unmeasured preludes for harpsichord.