Reactionary Series #1: Is the atonal music revolution of the last century really just another change that could eventually be absorbed and accepted by most listeners, or is it qualitatively different

Additionally, you have to bear in mind that much of the difficulty in music like Schoenberg and Elliott Carter is simply density/complexity of music. Music that isn't tonal but also has a little more breathing room is much more likely to be accepted.

Having said all that, there is very little truly atonal music that has become popular. The music that has had the most success has often been music with plenty of tonal references (eg the Berg Violin Concerto) or music where pitch/harmony is pretty much irrelevant (percussion pieces and so forth).

Ultimately, I think the barrier with much of this music is figuring out exactly what makes it tick, and what you're supposed to be listening to. If all that a piece has holding it together is something beyond the realm of usual listening (inverted retrogrades of unhummable melodies, eg) then it'll never work. If the piece persuasively justifies its own harmonic language, or persuasively lets us know that the harmony isn't the important part, then atonality isn't troublesome.

I don't know about that. Schoenberg only made the break because his and other composers' music was so close to being atonal already.

Like eddie is suggesting there is a sonic harshness (one which you've suggested that you might not like) in certain strains of hip-hop and I'd add ragga dancehall, jungle/d n'b.

However, the notion of atonal music is interesting. I wonder if it was the first time in music wherein a choice was made to move away from sounds that were "pleasing" to most people. There have been lots of harmonic innovations and variances throughout classical music history - Debussy's radical use of harmony only years before the birth of "atonal" music is one example, and he was a very popular composer - but I can't think of many examples of composers actively trying to make music that eschewed basic aesthetic ideas of harmony. Furthermore, it seems music suffered a worse public fate than, say, visual art, where very abstract expression did seep into the mainstream. Why is Picasso a household (as in common households, not just art nerds) name and Schoenberg is not?

Maybe that's why cage is prob more known than maybe schoenberg, and not just bcz of 4'33'', his ideas did feed into visual and installation art.

This leads me to suspect that atonal music was altering something far more fundamental to music than modernist art like Picasso's was doing with visual art. There were always many examples of art around the world which were not representational and realistic in the exceptional way that developed in Europe, and that had become the tradition there. But as "weird" as music from around the world sounds, I haven't heard any traditional music from other cultures that sounds like atonal music.

A quick thought about hip-hop: even if it were to make use of snippets of atonal music (and maybe it has already), if it did the usual thing of looping them over and over again, the effect would be very different from an actual atonal piece of music.

Julio, I have to admit that I'm not sure I do know atonal music when I hear it, but I suspect I can guess reasonably well (based on having my guess confirmed).

Also, while I probably have been moving away from liking the more sonically harsh end of things, it would be way too sweeping to say that I don't like anything that's sonically harsh in any way.

It's possible that if the serialists had adopted one arbitrary series and produced a lot of music based on it, we'd have got used to that novelty, the way we got used to Debussy or the extended harmonic world of jazz.

Hmmm ... maybe jazz is a good comparison. I find a lot of sophisticated jazz harmonies rather tuneless and grating. Yet they often turn up in jazz / soul / funk influenced pop.

I think 12-tone was, like tim said, something that was being arrived at, in the tradition. Just bcz oriental music doesn't have anything like it doesn't mean it was an unatural development. I think darmstadt (and I guess serialism) wz set up to revive the kind of music that was being suppressed by the nazis.

'A quick thought about hip-hop: even if it were to make use of snippets of atonal music (and maybe it has already), if it did the usual thing of looping them over and over again, the effect would be very different from an actual atonal piece of music.'

snipets of all kinds of music appear in hip-hop etc. and the looping means it will have a diff effect but to production of this is the point.

The avant-garde, which I guess is what this discussion is really about, is tough to evaluate. These artists are voluntarily doing things that will almost certainly fall on deaf ears, at least in the near future, and be criticized for that very reason, as being irrelevant, self-indulgent, etc etc, especially in the context of pop/rock. It's a strange time to be a musician, because despite the fact that there are infinitely more avenues to produce and make music available, the likelihood of having it achieve any kind of popular success seems extremely small. Perhaps it was small in the first place, but it took people like Schoenberg to create the stigma for experimental/non-traditional music.

The alternative to this line of thinking is to believe our culture's version of "art" is just different than Schoenberg's or Stravinsky's (someone who walked the line between the avant-garde and popular eclecticism) - and that's not too hard to accept.

When did ppl ever accept anything outside the 'normal' harmonies, melodies and so on?

Decontextualization is risky. Schoenberg orchestrated his pieces as any other well-trained composer would, influenced by all the great symphonic composers - but he removed the obligation to adhere to traditional ideas of what a melody was supposed to sound like, and how our ears are trained to follow chord progressions. The problem is, when you remove the familiarity with basic elements of music, you expose the possiblity that music doesn't have to depend on listeners to exist/matter/evolve. That's admirable and kind of cooly subversive, but in a way is also pretty damn rude.

But maybe industrialization and urban environments with clubs and different music for those, the return of improvisation via jazz and electronic sound etc etc. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's problably far more to it than just that the music got too difficult for people to follow.

It is interesting to ponder what might have happened had the phonograph been postponed for 50 years. What happens to jazz, popular song, rock and roll...?

It is interesting that the use of 'noise' sounds seems much more accessible than the use of traditional instrumental sounds without a traditional harmonic underpinning.

much of the difficulty in music like Schoenberg and Elliott Carter is simply density/complexity of music. Music that isn't tonal but also has a little more breathing room is much more likely to be accepted.

This is an interesting point. For example, I and even my Dad found Berio's "Brin" (which I think is atonal but very sparse and soft) much more attractive and immediately accessible.

Another interesting piece to consider is Smith-Brindle's "El Polifemo de Oro", which apparently does use a tone row and serialist procedure but sometimes sets the results to Gershwin-like rhythms (4th mvt especially) or uses a 'droning' ostinato bass from outside the row to give a cohesiveness. Also, the 1st and 3rd movements are quite soft and spacious. It's a very appealing and accessible (I thought anyway) piece.

When talking about Cage, it's worth keeping in mind that he did write a lot of music that was very tuneful in a traditional sense, a lot that was quite consistently rhythmic, and a lot of music using pentatonics (a scale where there is hardly any dissonance). I don't know that he is as obscure as dleone suggests.

What Hendrix do you consider atonal, Dadaismus?

I haven't been listening to any of these but they did come to mind - would any of these be atonal at parts?:

"Revolution #9"
some of the spacy breaks on In the Court of the Crimson King
the bowed guitar and vocal improv in the middle of the How the West Was Won version of "Dazed and Confused"
drum solos

I was thinking primarily of 12-tone/serialist music, or music that sounds a lot like it to me. Again, with my lack of music theory, it's hard for me to talk about this with any precision.

I guess you are right that "noise" is kind of popular.

I didn't say it in the original question, but as I think about it, I am looking for cases where there isn't some sort of drone or beat to make it more paltable. (So it's beginning to sound more and more like I just mean serialism.) But I am up for reading discussion about how putting something atonal over a drone or regular rhythm could, and probabl does, make it easier for most people to enjoy.

60s Free Jazz.How many copies did Ascension sell? Quite a lot, I think. Does that count as popular?

Phil Jones is probably right about serialism. If you were going to establish a new harmonic series (wrong term , but whatever) wouldn't you need the thousands of years that the current western one had to get used to it. Not one piece.

Sampling/Music concrete/Plunderphonics. If you take musical and non--musical sounds and collage them together, isn't that atonal? And the first at least is enormously popular. Mind you, in most hip-hop the voice, even if it only hits one or two notes is usually in key with the backing.

A lot of popular music has abandoned traditional harmonic progression anyway, in that it'll just be a load of major (bar)chords. I mean, what key is, say 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' in? (I'm rubbish at musical theory, so shoot me down on that one, but you know what I mean?)

And one last thing. You know that two note thing that kids do in the playground 'nah nah'? Kids in every culture they've ever studied do that and the interval between those two notes is the same. Weird.

I don't agree that they sound atonal on first listen. They sound different, weird, maybe dissonant at times; but they have never sounded to me like atonal music. (At this point I am some distance from "first listen," but I don't remember them ever sounding as alien as atonal classical music.)

RS - you're right. Lots of music with non-western intervals sounds pretty good on first listening.

Sundar - I was reading someone (who?) the other day saying about how you could do what the hell you liked as long ss there was a steady pulse underneath it, and that that was where free jazz lost its audience.

This is an important/interesting point too, especially if you discount compositions, say, as background for film. Is Samuel Barber any better known/loved than Cage or Schoenberg among the mass audience? Taking this into consideration along with Jamie's point, quoted below, (and going a little off-topic) is it true at all that the only mainstream music that actually sticks to classical rules of functional harmony with any faithfulness is adult contemporary/ballad pop (maybe defined to include both "My Immortal" and "My Heart Will Go On")? Also, are modern composers the true reactionaries possibly, by sticking to ideas (composer, composition, etc) that have long ago fallen out of favour with the public?

A lot of popular music has abandoned traditional harmonic progression anyway, in that it'll just be a load of major (bar)chords. I mean, what key is, say 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' in? (I'm rubbish at musical theory, so shoot me down on that one, but you know what I mean?)

Is SLTS major chords or power chords? If the former, it might be hard to analyze. If the latter, couldn't you read it as I-IV-iii-vi in Fm? (Unless I'm getting the riff totally wrong - isn't it F-Bb-Ab-Db in power chords?) It's still not functional harmony, esp with all those parallel 5ths, but there is definitely a tonal centre and sense of key. (If In C is, you know, in C, this can't be too much of a stretch.) But you're right that esp in harder rock, it's mostly just about creating a tonal centre repeating simple riffs maybe organized around the simplest progressions without regard for principles of functional harmony.

I think people get hung up on harmony. We aren't in the 17th century anymore; harmony isn't there to tell people which chord progressions are acceptable. You can use harmonic principles to describe what's happening; you can use them to conceive harmonic transitions based on logical criteria (and not just I-IV-V kind of logic). But outside of freshman theory, most composers aren't using it to say a particular chord progression "doesn't work".

1. in a sense it's correct to look at schoenberg as nothing more than the next logical step [after wagner, debussy, scriabin & mahler] of a process that begins with medieval pentatonic music getting gradually more accepting of discordant sounds. but there is a fundamental difference between the modernist technique and the premoderns, a difference of intent. debussy's additions to the composer's toolbox were clever or daring innovations worked out at the piano, or hearing music in his head, pushing the limits of what was acceptable because he had a taste for the exotic and super-long melodies and so on. schoenberg quite clearly wanted to make a sweeping change. that came first, before hearing any music in his head that sounded serial. in this he is a modernist [i.e. an early 20th cent. artist]. like gertrude stein and "finnegan's wake" it so happens that his particular revolutionary re-conception of his field has had only oblique influence on artists & culture today - but that influence is of course pervasive in some ways, again just like stein's.

one can imagine an alternate history where the process of questioning the strict rules of harmony piece by piece continued in its leisurely fashion, and a doppelschoenberg would've tried very hard to use his immense musical talents to make very very memorable pieces of music that were, here and there, dipping into bits of melody and harmony that break all the rules. in fact that's a fair description of one aspect of bartok's mission. but schoenberg simply realized he could leave the platonic cave and look directly at all the possibilities of the world, rather than sitting in the cave with the others working on perfecting better and better techniques for figuring out the flickering shadows on the cave wall.
or so he thought, or thought he might try to do.

2. mozart & beethoven wouldn't have been able to innovate [harmonically, sonically, thematically, size-wise] if they hadn't first been popular/successful. the same went for pre-romantic writers & painters, mathematicians & generals. as the romantic era gained mass [bourgeois] audiences, this was starting to change. there were new avenues opening - new appreciations for shock, diversity, idea over practicality, etc. music, like art & poetry, was becoming less direct in its appeal, more aware of its own history and less sure of its own claim to truth. thus a musical work by a modern composer need not be appealing, be musically harmonious, be beautiful, be embraced & enjoyed & swooned over.

3. there would be little argument about who the greatest ["classical"] composer of the 2nd half of the 20th century is: stockhausen... though he isn't hardly anyone's favorite, he's probably in everyone's top 10, and he seems to embody the age. it's quite possible of course that in future he will be regarded as a charlatan or whatever, nevertheless, his music seems to synthesize [at various times, to various degrees] cage, schoenberg, weill, and stravinsky. what, exactly, has he taken from schoenberg? he doesn't use straight serialism anymore. serialism is famously a technique a young composer flirts with and rejects, like lesbianism in college. however, the freedom to at any moment chose harmonically free expression - this is a gift of schoenberg's, to everyone. stockhausen uses this all the time. the freedom to compose in order to illustrate a systematic re-structuring of harmonic rules, to test its strength and usefulness - this is a gift of schoenberg's.

4. furthermore - if before i was talking about a history of music in terms of gradual movement towards a schoenbergian freedom from harmonic stricture, there was a parallel movement towards composing from the idea first, and then sitting down and composing the music. this is also schoenbergian [and satie-esque, ravel-esque, cage-esque, partch-esque, etc. it is also gertrude stein-esque, apollonaire-esque, duchamp-esque etc. i.e. modernist].

5. if you try schoenberg & don't like it, try hindemith [especially if you can enjoy stravinsky's later, neoclassical stuff].

Obviously, human ears can't hear all these, though they can hear the first few, listening closely, say, striking a low note at a piano. Notice how for a while, the series outlines a C major chord, with a flatted 7th. Then it adds a 9th, then an 11th (or 4th) and so forth, and becomes more dissonant. Again, people can't really hear this in normal settings - but it is cool to see how there is built-in dissonance in the natural world. (but still not necessarily "atonality")

what im trying to point out by this is that, while there is a dissonance, there is a definite tonality. Arent some of the intervals not exactly semi-tones also? that is, they dont match up quite right with equal tempered tuning... that kind of opens things up further.

so, basically, i mean that while this harmonic series includes some dissonance and notes outside of the western tonal scales, there is a tonality ivolved - which seems to me that a shift to complete atonality is a signifigant change in musical language. it seems much more the product of man's mind than, say, the invention of equal tempered tuning.

However, ecclessiastical modes (which were monophonic) lasted for a long while, since even probably before the Greeks to the 1500s. My theory is that this long lifespan is due to this kind of music's compatibility with the voice and text which were the principal focus (esp. at churches) at the time---music was merely a sort of monotonous accompaniment. It wasn't harmonious with the voice, it was just executed to produce certain effects. This music didn't have a tonal "center"---or rather, a tension (sub-dominant / dominant / tonic). There really wasn't much of an option but to absorb it, really. It really had different purposes. Mostly an exposition of the texts. Polyphonic music wasn't an option yet---it didn't exist.

So what would it mean for pop music to absorb this influence? My guess is that it would mean making music that is not based on a tonal structure, by which I mean primarily the V-I type chord resolution. While this structure is still the bread and butter of most pop, there are examples of pop that don't use it. One notable example is hip hop that is structured around repeated samples that have no discernible tonal center.

In this, I do think jazz has been in the forefront. When I learned some of the tricks of the trade for jazz players (I play piano and bass), I saw how you can extend harmonies almost forever and still imply the basic structure. And again, I think hip-hop has done this to some degree, although it's become somewhat simplistic over time. I often wonder how people's musical tastes would be altered, or it they would (thinking about some Chomsky-esque "universal grammar" of music here) if kids were exposed to atonality, polytonality, at an early age. Would their ears learn to accept it? This gets back to Frankfurt School stuff, the tyranny of mass culture, suppressing innovation in capitalist societies, and all that, which is to the point, I'd posit.

Which is exactly how the Nazis described Schoenberg's music ... rather unfortunately for the minimalists.