Atonal music is crap

[pianoman53]

Crap like "the maiden's prayer" and balladen pour Adelaide is at least as crappy as atonal crap.

[thalbergmad]

this is because what you are writing about it omits to address the salient point as to whether or not what the cat did could reasonably be construed as "playing" in the sense of a conscious replication of pre-existing music or even a conscious improvisation

Much atonal music does not require a conscious effort. Just the ability to aimlessly fling notes on a sheet of paper or randomly press keys on a piano.

I expect an octopus could do as well as the cat given the opportunity.

Thal

[outin]

It is extremely generous of you to use the word "music" in association with "atonal" in the same sentence.

I am even less sure how to define music.

[lazyfingers]

I am even less sure how to define music.

The old chestnut! Troubling though it may be to define, that does not mean that everything is music. I don't subscribe to Cage's view that there is no noise, only sound. And then move from there to say that all sound is music. Or in the case of his most famous composition (or non-composition), even "no sound" of precisely 4 mins and 33 seconds is also music!

[ahinton]

Much atonal music does not require a conscious effort.

Some music of various kinds requires less effort on the part of its composers and performers than some other music, undoubtedly, but that's the same for tonal music as it is for atonal (neither of which you have defined in the specific terms in which you understand them).

Just the ability to aimlessly fling notes on a sheet of paper or randomly press keys on a piano.

Doing either of those things would indeed be expected, as a rule, to require less effort than thinking a work through, putting it together and preparing and giving a performance of it, but such "random" activity cannot necessarily be guaranteed to produce only atonal results.

I expect an octopus could do as well as the cat given the opportunity.

Never having witnessed an octopus trying to play an instrument, let alone compose, I will have to give you the benefit of the doubt on that.

Best,

Alistair

[kakeithewolf]

Much atonal music does not require a conscious effort. Just the ability to aimlessly fling notes on a sheet of paper or randomly press keys on a piano.

I expect an octopus could do as well as the cat given the opportunity.

Thal

To make poor quality atonal music, I agree that that takes no conscious effort. However, the same can be said for poor quality tonal music. It too does not require effort. But when you are aiming to make good music, tonal or atonal, it requires conscious effort. For atonal music far more so than for tonal music.

As has been stated earlier in this thread, atonality has its own set of rules. When someone/something is just randomly slamming keys, they aren't making music, tonal or atonal. Music of any kind requires structure, form, and has a sense of grammar just like any spoken language. Consider atonality and tonality to both be their own languages, but with different rules for their grammar and form.

[nitros]

I had my first encounter with atonal music last year, I attended a free concert at the conservatory where I was taking a summer course, I had no idea what I was getting into, one of my teachers was really into atonal music, he kept talking about how revolutionary it was or something like that, and because of him I had some interest in hearing some of it.

The place was full, I went with a friend and we barely got seats, and then, it started.
Never in my life I had felt such sorrow, such sadness, I was almost at the point of crying, simple put, it was the most horrifying thing that I have ever experienced related to music, I almost give up altogether in music.

Had the beautiful music that I kept hearing and playing, really devolved into that...? I felt hopeless.

At the beginning I really thought it was a joke, at any moment now the pianist is going to stop and we will all have a laugh and then the concert will really start, but it didn't and instead it got worse as the pianist stood up and started scratching the strings of the piano while the flautist kept spiting at his instrument and the cellist kept murdering his with the bow.

And for me, the worst thing was the end, as the composer got on the stage, he got an standing ovation from the public as if they had truly enjoyed his crap.

I know that tonal music must have its crap too and that atonal music can have good music if used the right way, but more often than not, I find atonal music to be crap and I also think that people in the years to come will laugh at it.

[outin]

Never in my life I had felt such sorrow, such sadness, I was almost at the point of crying,

Isn't that much better than being just bored? The music clearly had an impact on you. That may have been one of the composers intentions. One could argue that art has not only the purpose to make you happy, but also make you feel sad

[nitros]

Yes I thought about it for a while back then, that It may have been the composer intention, but I just can't see how a composer would set out to make something that makes people that hears his music feel that music has lost its way and has devolved into that.

What I felt was, if this is the kind of music that is expected of us now, then I don't want anything to do with music because this is not the music that I love, this is garbage.

You see, if at the end everybody had just left the hall with nothing more to it, it would had meant nothing, but the realization that they had actually enjoyed that was what truly terrified me, that gave it value, I couldn't just ignore it and consider it just an experiment of some crazed composer.

And I'm almost sure that it was not the composer intention as I am sure it would had happened with any other atonal composer and any other atonal piece.

[outin]

Yes I thought about it for a while back then, that It may have been the composer intention, but I just can't see how a composer would set out to make something that makes people that hears his music feel that music has lost its way and has devolved into that.

What I felt was, if this is the kind of music that is expected of us now, then I don't want anything to do with music because this is not the music that I love, this is garbage.

But aren't those more opinions than feelings?

Many pieces that are clearly more atonal than tonal make me feel quite happy and I think they are absolutely beautiful. Maybe that's because I have never had a set preference for a certain type of music or tonality. My opinions are formed only while I listen. That's when I make up my mind about whether the music is worth listening or not.

[nitros]

You said "The music clearly had an impact on you. That may have been one of the composers intentions." so I thought we were talking about me specifically, as you said, those may be more opinions than feeling but those opinions were what fueled my feelings, if that makes sense.

[ted]

My opinions are formed only while I listen. That's when I make up my mind about whether the music is worth listening or not.

Same here; nothing matters except the effect of the music on my brain.

[outin]

You said "The music clearly had an impact on you. That may have been one of the composers intentions." so I thought we were talking about me specifically, as you said, those may be more opinions than feeling but those opinions were what fueled my feelings, if that makes sense.

Yes, that makes sense. I think what wanted to say is that sometimes the opinions or the seed for them exist before the listening experience and sometimes they are only induced by the feelings created by the listening experience. I did not have any opinion about Mozart's music when I first heard it. I simply listened to it and felt negative about it. Repeated the experiment many times and then had formed my opinion (not that it's crap but it has nothing positive to offer me). If you feel the same way about the work you went to listen to, I understand.

[falala]

Don't worry, you're in very good company.

Atonal music is music where there is no sense of a particular pitch as the tonal centre, exerting a sense of gravity over the others. The confusion arises because people often use the term erroniously to refer to modern music that doesn't use "common practice harmony" but is actually most definitely tonal.

Bartok, Prokofiev and Philip Glass are tonal.

Later Schoenberg, Webern and Boulez are atonal.

[falala]

I'm curious about this:

Crap should not be taught nor be required repertoire to be played in music conservatories.  If you are a music student and are required to play this crap, tell the piano faculty that you refuse to play crap.

Are there conservatories that actually require students to play atonal music? That's a surprise to me.

The most I would think would be that they require people to include a "20th century" piece or a "contemporary piece" in some programs. But those categories do of course include plenty of tonal music.

[j_menz]

Later Schoenberg, Webern and Boulez are atonal.

Schoenberg himself said he wasn't.

[kakeithewolf]

Schoenberg himself said he wasn't.

What one says is not necessarily what one is.

[faulty_damper]

What one says is not necessarily what one is.

True. Chopin didn't consider himself a "romantic."

[j_menz]

True. Chopin didn't consider himself a "romantic."

And on a number of definitions, he wasn't.

What one says is not necessarily what one is.

No, but since Schoenberg is one of the inventors of serialism, and twelve tone serialism at that, which is often the sine qua nonof most peoples thinking about atonality, his views perhaps carry more weight than they otherwise might. I merely suggest that it makes the definition particularly difficult.

[outin]

Interesting...

Bartok, Prokofiev and Philip Glass are tonal.

Don't really like those.

Later Schoenberg, Webern and Boulez are atonal.

Do enjoy those...

So obviously atonality is not all crap

EDIT: And then I am again confused by Jmenz 

[j_menz]

EDIT: And then I am again confused by Jmenz 

Howso?

[outin]

Howso?

The Schoenberg thing...Need to find the tonality now...

But anyway...What about the fact that the most crappy music ever is tonal? The computer generated robot performed pop music of today.

[falala]

Outin -

Schoenberg was the inventor of the 12-tone technique, which is generally considered the first way of writing truly atonally. Some of the rules of it were devised specifically in order to prevent any one pitch from dominating - such as having to state the tone row completely each time; avoiding octave doubling etc.

I'm not sure what he meant if he described his music as not atonal. There is certainly a way of composing with a 12-tone row that incorporates a sense of tonality. Berg did that a lot, and some composers picked up on it after the war like Benjamin Frankel and Richard Rodney Bennett. There is a bit of that in some of Schoenberg's late works, but not in the ones when he'd first invented the technique.

[ahinton]

Schoenberg was the inventor of the 12-tone technique, which is generally considered the first way of writing truly atonally. Some of the rules of it were devised specifically in order to prevent any one pitch from dominating - such as having to state the tone row completely each time; avoiding octave doubling etc.

That's not quite the whole story, actually. Schönberg was only one of a number of composers who engaged in theorising about some form of pitch serialism at various times during the first quarter of the last century, Joseph Matthias Hauer, Alexander Scriabin and Nikolai Roslavets being just three others who, to one degree or another, considered something along these lines as a possibility; Schönberg just happened to go farther than any of the others in formalising it as a compositional technique. Even Liszt's as yet undiscovered (I think) Prélude Omnitonique from the 1880s might well have been an even earlier experiment in this kind of approach.

Even those "rules of it [that] were devised specifically in order to prevent any one pitch from dominating" didn't and indeed couldn't always be guaranteed to function in practice as apparently intended because, ultimately, their results are inevitably to some degree dependent upon the subjective and experientially based responses of individual listeners - which is what I mean when I suggest that atonality and perceptions thereof are a matter of degree rather than something fixed that applies equally to all listeners.

More importantly still, especially in Schönberg's case even before his so-called free atonal" period (which was more or less from the Op. 11 piano pieces up to the Serenade op. 24), the most notable characteristic of the loosening of tonal bonds in what was nevertheless still tonal music (such as his D minor Quartet Op. 7 and E major Chamber Symphony Op. 9) was the prevention of any one tonality from dominating at any given time and the sense of constant tonal flux arising from this kind of approach; this was a far more potent disturbance of traditional tonal progression than, say, the kind of "progressive tonality" found in Nielsen, Mahler and others' symphonic works that begin in one key and end in another not necessarily closely related one, although a sense of expanded tonality still pervaded.

I'm not sure what he meant if he described his music as not atonal. There is certainly a way of composing with a 12-tone row that incorporates a sense of tonality. Berg did that a lot, and some composers picked up on it after the war like Benjamin Frankel and Richard Rodney Bennett. There is a bit of that in some of Schoenberg's late works, but not in the ones when he'd first invented the technique.

You are right about much of this but I cannot personally agree with your final premise here because - to my ears, at least - such works as the Serenade and Suite for piano are full of tonal references and implications; they just don't have defined tonal centres. As I've suggested before, it's usually less a question of whether a particular passage is tonal or atonal but to what extent it might be perceived as one or the other by different listeners.

As has rightly been pointed out already, 12-note serial writing and atonality are not in any case synonymous. Furthermore, the use of a 12-note row does not of itself necessarily have to imply its serial treatment; I have myself used several 12-note rows in my writing but never treated them serially.

Best,

Alistair

[lateromantic]

Even Liszt's as yet undiscovered (I think) Prélude Omnitonique from the 1980s might well have been an even earlier experiment in this kind of approach.

I'm wondering two things:  First, how did Liszt manage to write a piece so long after dying?  And second, if it as "as yet undiscovered," how could anyone know about it?

Anyway, Wikipedia indicates that the piece has been found.

[ahinton]

I'm wondering two things:  First, how did Liszt manage to write a piece so long after dying?  And second, if it as "as yet undiscovered," how could anyone know about it?

A typo for "1880s", of course (now corrected), for which apologies - but its existence was written about in a number of sources before discovery.

Best,

Alistair

[rachmaninoff_forever]

AHAHAHAHA just because it's atonal doesn't mean that it sounds bad.  I mean, Debussy is considered an atonal composer.  But he doesn't sound like Sorabji or Ligeti.

ANYWAYS...

Atonal sounds bad in western standards.

What about freaking other cultures?  Some cultures wouldn't even consider Beethoven or Chopin composers who wrote music.  To them they suck.

But what do they embrace?  ATONAL music!  Like for example...  Javanese Gamelan music!  Well of course their music is atonal by our western standards.  And they think that our Beethoven and Chopin are atonal as well.

So this whole atonal sounding like crap thing is stupid. 

To YOUR ears it may sound like crap, but to someone elses ears, it's not crap.  You also didn't define what you meant by atonal.  You mean Ravel and Debussy atonal, or like Cage atonal?

[thalbergmad]

I mean, Debussy is considered an atonal composer. 

By who??

[j_menz]

By who??

"By whom?", surely. 

Parks, Richard S. 1985. "Tonal Analogues as Atonal Resources and Their Relation to form in Debussy's Chromatic Etude". Journal of Music Theory 29, no. 1 (Spring): 33–60.

[thalbergmad]

"By whom?", surely. 

I think Hinty has two accounts.

Thal

[rachmaninoff_forever]

By who??

Late 19th- and early 20th-century composers such as Alexander Scriabin, Claude Debussy, Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, and Edgard Varčse have written music that has been described, in full or in part, as atonal (Baker 1980, 1986; Bertram 2000; Griffiths 2001; Kohlhase 1983; Lansky and Perle 2001; Obert 2004; Orvis 1974; Parks 1985; Rülke 2000; Teboul 1995–96; Zimmerman 2002).

Wikipedia

[ahinton]

Late 19th- and early 20th-century composers such as Alexander Scriabin, Claude Debussy, Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, and Edgard Varčse have written music that has been described, in full or in part, as atonal (Baker 1980, 1986; Bertram 2000; Griffiths 2001; Kohlhase 1983; Lansky and Perle 2001; Obert 2004; Orvis 1974; Parks 1985; Rülke 2000; Teboul 1995–96; Zimmerman 2002).

Mere published description as such don't actually make such music atonal, though, do they? I can call to mind no examples of atonal music from Debussy and indeed few from any other the other composers mentioned, except Varčse; moreover, such descriptions do not identify any particular atonal music as "crap" merely by virtue of being atonal either.

Best,

Alistair

[falala]

Late 19th- and early 20th-century composers such as Alexander Scriabin, Claude Debussy, Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, and Edgard Varčse have written music that has been described, in full or in part, as atonal (Baker 1980, 1986; Bertram 2000; Griffiths 2001; Kohlhase 1983; Lansky and Perle 2001; Obert 2004; Orvis 1974; Parks 1985; Rülke 2000; Teboul 1995–96; Zimmerman 2002).

Debussy wrote one prelude based on a whole tone scale, which as far as I can tell is the only piece in his entire oevre that could be considered atonal. There is a world of difference between saying he "has written music that could be described, in full or in part, as atonal", and calling him "an atonal composer". The latter claim (which you made originally) is just ignorant and wrong.

[falala]

Atonal sounds bad in western standards.

What about freaking other cultures?  Some cultures wouldn't even consider Beethoven or Chopin composers who wrote music.  To them they suck.

But what do they embrace?  ATONAL music!  Like for example...  Javanese Gamelan music!  Well of course their music is atonal by our western standards.  And they think that our Beethoven and Chopin are atonal as well.

And that is even more ignorant, and more wrong. Javanese gamelan music is not atonal, not by a mile. It's the opposite in fact. There is a limited, unchanging scale with a definite tonal centre and that centre is felt constantly without fail through each piece. The fact that the scale is tuned differently to western temperament doesn't make it atonal. You are just ignorant of the basic concepts here.

In actual fact, atonality is almost entirely a western art music invention. Actually functional harmony is almost entirely a western art music invention, as modulation is too. The music of pretty much every other culture relies on a very basic, static sense of tonal centre - although what happens melodically and texturally over it can be very complex.

And I'd be interested to see your evidence that Javanese people in general consider Beethoven and Chopin to be atonal composers (particularly since most of those people wouldn't even have a concept of atonality within which to frame such a judgment). I suspect you're just making that up, and/or you're confusing the concept of "atonality" with that of "unfamiliarity".

[j_menz]

I suspect you're ... confusing the concept of "atonality" with that of "unfamiliarity".

If he is, it would appear he is by no means alone amongst contributors to this thread (and I don't mean you, btw).

[rachmaninoff_forever]

The fact that the scale is tuned differently to western temperament doesn't make it atonal.

In actual fact, atonality is almost entirely a western art music invention.

Exactly!

If you have something that's in like...

Freaking C 3/4 sharp major, it's atonal according to western standards because it doesn't fall into your traditional 12 tone scale.

[j_menz]

Freaking C 3/4 sharp major, it's atonal according to western standards because it doesn't fall into your traditional 12 tone scale.

Unless "freaking" is some modality I am unaware of, a C 3/4 sharp major scale would be entirely tonal, being a C major scale raised 3/4 of a tone and maintaining the intervallic relationships of a major scale.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

And I'd be interested to see your evidence that Javanese people in general consider Beethoven and Chopin to be atonal composers (particularly since most of those people wouldn't even have a concept of atonality within which to frame such a judgment). I suspect you're just making that up, and/or you're confusing the concept of "atonality" with that of "unfamiliarity".

That thing about Javanese people not liking Beethoven or Chopin was an accident sorry.  I actually don't know whether or not they like western classical music.  I had two things to say but combined them by accident whoops.

I'm not confusing atonality with unfamiliarity, there actually are people who don't consider Beethoven or Chopin musicians.

FOR EXAMPLE...

There's this group of people in Brazil I forgot what they're called.  I think like Suya or something.  Anyways, they believe that humans don't make music, you can only get music from like animals or plants.

IT'S AN ACTUAL THING!

[ahinton]

I'm not confusing atonality with unfamiliarity

But confusion nevertheless abounds (and I' not referring specifically to you).

One salient characteristic of tonal music is its recourse to scale passages and triads - major / minor / augmented / diminished (and seventh, ninth &c. harmonies built upon them). Thus the Debussy example, for instance, falls down on the grounds that music written within a whole tone scale is not only scale based by definition but also likely at some point to state or suggest augmented triads; likewise, whilst Liszt's frequent recourse to successions of diminished seventh harmonies can seem to have the effect of destabilising tonality (because a diminished seventh harmony can be made to "resolve" in any one of four different ways or indeed be left unresolved), destabilising it is very different to abandoning it altogether.

So where lies the confusion of which I write? In some people's apparent mistaken assumption that tonality and diatonicism are synonymous whereas, in reality, they can often coexist but are not interdependent - in other words, tonal passages do not always have to be diatonically based.

Best,

Alistair

[falala]

Exactly!

If you have something that's in like...

Freaking C 3/4 sharp major, it's atonal according to western standards because it doesn't fall into your traditional 12 tone scale.

No, it really isn't.

You appear here to be referring not even to scale/temperament, but just to the absolute pitch the keynote of the scale is tuned. There's absolutely no requirement for that to accord with the current convention of A=440, to be "tonal". Indeed, many early music specialist ensembles do tune to lower temperaments, and many of them would play some pieces in something like "freaking C 3/4 sharp major" (ie, D major a quarter-note below A440). That doesn't make Tallis or Monteverdi atonal when they play it.

[kakeithewolf]

Some food for thought is that Grout actually proposed that atonality may very well be impossible, saying that all combinations of sounds have a fundamental root, and that atonality was merely the human inability of the person defining a piece as atonal to hear that fundamental root.

[falala]

Some food for thought is that Grout actually proposed that atonality may very well be impossible, saying that all combinations of sounds have a fundamental root, and that atonality was merely the human inability of the person defining a piece as atonal to hear that fundamental root.

Noise doesn't have a fundamental root, only pitched sound can by definition. So noise-based pieces like musique concrete etc. would still be atonal. That's a whole other area of atonality quite separate from Schoenberg's technique.

He may have a point about music using pitched sounds though.

[j_menz]

Noise doesn't have a fundamental root, only pitched sound can by definition.

Aren't most noises pitched?

[falala]

Aren't most noises pitched?

No. There is a specific and technical difference between noise and pitched sound. Pitch is the experience of regularity in the vibration of a sound - if you look at the waveform of a pitched sound in a computer, you can literally see the regularity of the up-down movement of the wave.

Noise is what we hear when there is no such regularity present.

[j_menz]

So why is there a consensus that toilets flush in Eb?

[falala]

Because Beethoven wrote the Eroica Symphony while taking a dump?

[j_menz]

Because Beethoven wrote the Eroica Symphony while taking a dump?

He well may have, having a lifetime history of diarrhoea, but it wouldn't have been a flush toilet, none being in continental Europe before 1859.