atonality

atonality. / (ˌeɪtəʊˈnælɪtɪ, ˌæ-) / noun. absence of or disregard for an established musical key in a composition. the principles of composition embodying this and providing a radical alternative to the diatonic system.

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: marked by avoidance of traditional musical tonality. especially : organized without reference to key or tonal center and using the tones of the chromatic scale impartially.

Atonality is simply the absence of tonality, tonality being the musical system based on major and minor keys. Now it's true that atonal music often includes lots of harsh dissonance… but so too does tonal music, the music of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven.

An example of atonal music would be Arnold Schoenberg's “Pierrot Lunaire”, which is a song cycle composed in 1912. The work uses a technique called “Sprechstimme” or spoken singing, and the music is atonal, meaning that there is no clear tonal center or key.

In practice, the atonality of a composition is relative, for an atonal work may contain fragmentary passages in which tonal centres seem to exist. Schoenberg's song cycle Pierrot Lunaire (1912) and Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck (1925) are typical examples of atonal works.

Atonality is simply the absence of tonality, tonality being the musical system based on major and minor keys. Now it's true that atonal music often includes lots of harsh dissonance… but so too does tonal music, the music of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven.

Arnold Schoenberg: The father of atonal music who feared the number 13. Criticism rarely got under the skin of Arnold Schoenberg.

: the organization of all the tones and harmonies of a piece of music in relation to a tonic. 3. : the arrangement or interrelation of the tones of a work of visual art.

Twelve-tone music is atonal in that it does not have a tonal center. However, it is still a form of serialism, where notes must appear in a particular order.

Arnold Schoenberg Who invented atonal music? The atonal style of music took off in the early 20th century, with Arnold Schoenberg at the forefront of the genre. Schoenberg advocated '12-tone music', where each of the 12 tones in the chromatic scale are played only in relation to each other, rather than in relation to a set key.

Here are some examples of famous atonal pieces:

• Samuel Barber's Nocturne, Opus 33.
• Arnold Schoenberg's Erwartung.
• Bela Bartok's Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs.
• Franz Liszt's Bagatelle sans tonalité
• Edgard Varese's Arcana.