Views concerning atonal music

[stevel]

I think it's actually VERY difficult to compose effective atonal music.

Yes. Just as difficult as it is to compose effective tonal music. People think you can compose tonal music by putting an alberti bass under a ii-V-I progression and follow all their part writing rules. That produces no more an effective work than selecting a tone row and performing all the possible operations on it.

You are right that under the brolly of "atonal" people can slap anything down and call it music.

Let's be careful here. The same thing is happeing with all these cats that are composing "Symphonies" today. They slap down a bunch of over-romaticized cliches and then go on about how modern tonalists or some other such garbage. And pop music - talk about slapping down anything!

Yes, absolutely some people "hide behind" atonality. They do the same with "tonality" or "fugue" or "modern" or "eclectic". But why do that with atonality because it already has so many strikes against it! If you have a lack of skill, while it might be easier to hide in atonal stylistic cliches, no one's still gonna listen to it because of the prejudices out there!

But I think that music composed with good craftsmanship will be listenable, atonal or not.

100 Percent!!!!

Adn the rest is all agreed with :-)

Steve

[stevel]

I'm not that you should generalize and stuff "atonal" music into a box like you have already done. Afterall, there is a huge amount of vastly different music that can be considered "atonal."

Thank you!

Steve

[stevel]

The problem with atonal music is that it is accessable to few.

Why? Aren't fugues just as inaccessible? I know plenty of people who "don't get" them. In fact, most people don't even get the cyclical nature of Beethoven's 5th Symphony's head motive. I know people who don't like opera because they don't understand the lyrics - talk about inaccessible. Hell, my mother in law says any "classical music" "makes me nervous". What makes atonality, tonality, modality, jazz, country, etc. inaccessible is prejudice plain and simple.

I guess only those listeners who take the time to listen again and again, analyze, finding patterns, form and direction are able to eventually derive any kind of pleasurable experience from atonal music.

Not true. There is atonal music that one listens to for the sheer glory of the sound - just like the opening of Das Rhinegold - it doesn't have any "patterns" to listen for, it just sits and shimmers. And by strict definition, that opening is not tonal. There is tonal music like Fugue that also take the same sort of mental investment to really understand what's going on. Only listeners who invest in that are going to gain pleasure from it, even though tonal. So basically, it's not tonality or atonality that's at issue, it's whether or not the listener wants to invest any thought into the music, or if thye simply want it to be wallpaper.

Now, I'll say the success of things like Beethoven is becuase it is both wallpaper and thought-provoking such that all listeners can find something in it. The problem with wallpaper music is that those who want more out of their art aren't getting it, and with thought-provking music, those who want less out of their music don't want to be bothered. The problem with Atonality is, there are those who are prejudiced into thinking it is ONLY music to invest thought in, which is not true.

The greater majority of listeners are not interested in that kind of involvement in the music, they merely want to be entertained and have instant gratification. Because of generations of exposure to tonal, diatonic music in the West, most listeners simply don't know what to make of antonal music.

With that I'll agree (which I already basically did!). But again, I'd like to point out that involving oneself is also true of tonal music - many people won't listen to a string 4tet because they can't dance to it.

I think, as a composer, one has to decide what course one wants to take. Write tonal music, and chances are that your audience will be considerably larger than it would ever be than when you stick to purly atonal music.

I have to disagree - writing tonal music may gurantee a larger audience, but it also ABSOLUTELY GURANTEES a PREJUDICED audience. You're liable to be castrated if you put a quartal harmony in there! So I think you should write what you need to write to express yourself without any of the trappings of tonality or atonality. I'm going out on a linb here, but, I would relate it to religion - are you X religion because you CHOSE it? Or are you X religion because your parents are, or your community is, or your country is? Or are you X religion to spite your parents, community, or country? I think either case is a bad reason. You should choose tonality because you are able to express YOUR artistic visions, not those decided for you by previous generations. Likewise, I don't think you should choose Atonality just to spite the tonalists, or just because you think it makes you "contemporary". You should choose atonality if if suits your artistic goals. Furthermore, in this day and age, you should choose your tonality on a piece by piece, or even section by section basis if that's what your artistic vision demands.

My opinion is probably also not very popular amongst atonal composers, because in my very humble opinion, atonal music is in some ways much easier to compose than having to compose within the established frame of tonal music.

Again, I'll counter this. Tonal music is just as hard to compose WELL. Ok, I'll admit that if you want to write a Canon and keep to traditional style, it can be more difficult to do when you're free to do whatever you want. If you are concerned with consonance and dissonance, a form like Canon is miuch harder to control them in than if you're not concerned with C/D (like most atonal styles). But there are elements in Atonal music that make it MUCH harder to compose - for instance - in tonal music you have a deceptive cadence. It works because we understand tonal music. But how does an atonal composer pull off something like this?


Steve

[stevel]

Originally Posted by Ron Ofir

That said, at the moment I prefer listening to different kinds of music like Arabic, Indian, Sufi (sp?) and African than listen to atonal music.

Umm, all of that is atonal :-). And many people can't stand that stuff either.

Steve

[chckn8r]

Wow Steve, you've been a busy boy! As always, well thought out and informative opinions!

Personally, I can't imagine being a composer in this day and age without being open to and considerate of any style of music - tonal or atonal. There are so many gold nuggets out there to take advantage of and explore!

I can't realistically listen to a miniscule fraction of what's out there and don't even pretend to, but there are so many things to learn, absorb and apply to your own music.

Sure, I have preferences and types of music that I gravitate to, but my music collection is a potpourri of works from different cultures, times and styles - I don't see any advantage in looking down upon or discrediting a piece of music because it might sound "harsh" or chaotic to my ears. I'd rather look for what's interesting and unique about that piece, attempt to understand it and tuck that nugget away to help me out down the road...

Cheers, D

[Ron Ofir]

Aha, it all seems to make more sense now, as always.

Umm, all of that is atonal . And many people can't stand that stuff either.

Well, I meant I prefer listening to those new (new as in new to me) things than contemporary western atonal music.

[stevel]

Personally, I can't imagine being a composer in this day and age without being open to and considerate of any style of music - tonal or atonal. There are so many gold nuggets out there to take advantage of and explore!

I have to strongly agree. I mean, why limit oneself? I think it's OK to try something out and if it's not working for you to ditch it - but composers are always talking about "finding their voice" - who knows - one's voice might be something other than Alberti Bass and a melody made by arpeggiating the harmony!

I can't realistically listen to a miniscule fraction of what's out there and don't even pretend to, but there are so many things to learn, absorb and apply to your own music.

Again, I strongly agree. For instance, one may not like integral serialism but there are ideas you can take from it to use in your own way. But if you never experience, you're selling yourself short.

Best,
Steve

[stevel]

Originally Posted by Ron Ofir

Aha, it all seems to make more sense now, as always.


Well, I meant I prefer listening to those new (new as in new to me) things than contemporary western atonal music.

I'll add Ron that, I tend to like music most that I keep finding new things to listen to in. For instance, some very well-known to me works such as Beethoven's 5th (or 3rd, or 7th (my absolute favorite) or 6th, etc) - I'm always finding new things in them even after the 100th listen. I can say the same thing about pop music like Led Zep, or Jazz like George Benson.

I also find that "new to me" music also has a certain appeal in its freshness (whether the music be old or new). However, after the freshness wears off, if there's nothing substantial that keeps engaging me, I get tired of it much more quickly.

My ultimate goal as a composer is to create music that engages people after the 100th or 1000th listen. I don't know if I'm capable of doing that, but man, that's what I aspire to.

Best,
Steve

[Student]

Steve:
I agree with most of what you're saying. There is good to be found in all musical styles, from atonal 21st century, Baroque or even hip-hop, but you're definition of tonal and atonal is screwing with my head.

For me "tonal" defines anything with a tonic center, so early church modality, Greek modality, African, Indian, Native American and Indonesian gamelon are all tonal. By this definition atonal (although Schöenberg hated the term and preferred pantonal, encompassing all tones) music is a relatively new invention, unless you consider music that is purely percussive without any pitches, in which case it is older than recorded history.

What you seem to be calling tonal is anything bound by common practice period rules. Debussy ignores those rules and uses whole-tone scales, octatonic scales, pentatonic scales and more, but because of the clear center in his works I feel that he is tonal.

Similarly Messiaen almost always comes back to his center and I believe him to be tonal, but to me he requires a lot more attention than Webern who is relatively easy to hear (but notoriously difficult to understand).

Terminology in music is really lousy sometimes, it means different things to different people so we really don't understand each other.

[Thorolf]

Myself listen to lots of music that people would consider “atonal”, namely various sub-genres of electronica. But most “atonal” music building on the classical traditions, I can respect and value, but only seldom love, and then also just in a few select settings.

Which sums up my relationship with the classical genres in general. There are exceptions, but the bulk of it just doesn’t interrest me (for listening pleasure) (as with all genres)

Regards