OBSERVATIONS ON ATONALITY
THE DISEMANCIPATION OF MELODY
When Arnold Schoenberg started to write atonal music in the early years of the 20 th century,
he saw the development of this new style as evolutionary, not revolutionary. And while there is a
compelling case to be made that Schoenberg's inventions were not intended to destroy or
reconstruct the Western tradition, but to continue it and indeed to save it from the corrosive effects
of popular culture, it does not seem entirely unnatural to consider the developments of atonality and
tonality as separate historical entities, especially in the light of the later occupation of the style by
more radical Webernians.
There are some striking parallels between the development of Western tonal music 1 and its
atonal successors, though the history of atonality has progressed much faster. A period in which
harmony is poorly understood and therefore sparse or non-existent, and in which unrestrained,
melismatic melody consequently dominates (the era of plainchant and organum in tonality, the
Second Viennese School's free atonal period in atonality) is followed by extreme and somewhat
arbitrary formalization and systematization intended to compensate for the continued absence of a
solid and unifying system of harmony and counterpoint (the era of ars nova and ars subtilior in
tonality, dodecaphony and serialism in atonality). Seen in this light, art music's recent near-complete
return to tonality (though it is a tonality far more simplistic than the common-practice variety)
would be akin to the Flemish contrapuntalists of the early Renaissance deciding to return to the
lyres and monophony of ancient Greece.
Atonality, then, is still awaiting its Renaissance. Its development so far has been very
incomplete and brief, containing no parallel to the early modern era's discovery of triads, complex
and standardized counterpoint, major and minor keys, and equal temperament, and the recent
backlash against it is the main cause of this delay. This is not to say that the technique's 2 stagnation
can not also be partially blamed on its progenitors. Schoenberg conceived of atonality as chiefly
melodic, and indeed characterized his invention not just as the emancipation of the dissonance, but
also the emancipation of melody from harmony. Desiring to take the motivic style of Brahms and
Beethoven to its logical extreme, he envisioned a music in which horizontal motivic melodies
completely dictated the rules of each piece, with harmony, counterpoint and rhythm obeying only
the injunctions of motive. And while this emancipation of melody was useful as a starting point for
the development of atonality, we must recognize that melody should now once again be made
subordinate to harmony, much as tonal melody was during the development of homophony. Here, I
intend to sketch out my thoughts about how a reinvigorated and resystematized atonality might
work, and demonstrate that most of the critiques of atonal music are, in fact, critiques of the
perfectly surmountable limits it thus far has imposed on itself.
ATONALITY AND ITS COROLLARIES
Defined as simply and succinctly as possible, atonality is the absence of tonality. From this
definition, there arises an obvious question: what is tonality? In non-specialist terms, we may say
that a tonal texture is one in which a certain pitch or collection of pitches is perceived as a point of
respite, so much so that the music feels fully closed and finished when it comes to rest on it.
Therefore, an atonal texture is one in which no pitch offers such a respite. This obviously creates
several problems for the composer. How can one satisfactorily end a phrase, a theme, or a piece of
music if there are no points of rest or tension from which to make cadences? How can one create
contrast or write emotional or evocative melodies? Some respond to these questions with the claim
that atonal music is simply incapable of these things, and therefore intrinsically inferior to tonal
music. And while there might be a grain of truth in this, it seems unacceptably incurious to simply
1
2
Here, the term “tonal” is used in its broadest sense, encompassing all music with a tonal center rather than just that
which uses major and minor keys.
It is important to note that atonality is a technique, not a style; therefore, the claim that it is now outmoded because it
belonged exclusively to modernism is clearly faulty.
deny the value of atonality on such grounds alone.
To understand why, we must understand that the inexpressivity of much of the atonal music
so far composed is not strictly a result of this music's atonality, but rather of its modernism. The
disjunct melodies, rhythmic complexity, non-standard orchestration (both on the micro level
through the use of things like klangfarbenmelodie and on the macro level through pieces for
unusual ensembles), and expression of chiefly anguish or insanity found in most atonal music is not
a consequence of this music's atonality, but a corollary of it. There is no reason to believe that
abandoning the modernist effort to consciously effort to break with convention entails abandoning
atonality itself.
PITCH MATERIAL
One frequently discussed problem of atonality is its lack of a system of pitch-related contrast
equivalent to the major and minor keys of tonality. Schoenberg attempted to solve this by allowing
different transpositions of rows in dodecaphonic music, which were to function somewhat like
different keys do in tonal music, but this did not solve the problem. If, as most composers and
theorists have assumed, atonality requires the near-constant use of the total chromatic, the result
very quickly becomes undifferentiated, monotonous, and dull. But happily, another option is
available. Much as it is possible to write music that is simultaneously highly chromatic and highly
tonal (either functionally, as in parts of Mozart's 40 th symphony, or non-functionally, as in the
mature works of Hindemith), it is possible to write atonal music which does not utilize all twelve
pitches in its polyphonic whole or its individual parts. One way to accomplish this is through the
use of synthetic scales, as in this short octatonic theme:
Fig. 1: Octatonic theme
Thus, tonally-inflected variety can enter an unrelentingly atonal texture through alternation
between different scales or pitch class sets. Additionally, scalar identity can be retained within total
chromaticism by restricting instruments or registers to particular pitches or intervals, as is often
done in the music of Elliott Carter. One method (not utilized by Carter) of making the music more
familiar to listeners is to use pitch class sets that coincide with familiar scales. In this example, the
piano's left hand is largely limited to the whole-tone scale on C# while the right is limited to the
equivalent scale on C, giving a distinct scalar profile to atonal and completely chromatic music:
Fig. 2: Bi-whole tone theme
DISSONANCE AND DISCORD
If we define a dissonance as a vertical pitch-class set demanding resolution, there exists two
general sorts of dissonance in music: contextual and non-contextual. Non-contextual dissonances
(or discords) contain intervals related to one another by a complex ratio, thereby demanding
resolution even if sounded alone, unpreceded and unsucceeded by other musical sounds. For
example, if I hear a major seventh sounded on a piano I will expect it to resolve to an octave even if
nothing has been played before it. Like all dissonances, non-contextual ones create tension through
discontinuity – in their case discontinuity with pure Pythagorean ratios embedded in nature and in
the human consciousness. A contextual dissonance, on the other hand, creates tension through
discontinuity with the sounds that preceded it. For instance, a tritone will sound dissonant if
preceded by a fifth, but relatively consonant if preceded by a semitone. With some important
exceptions (such as that of the tritone), the harmony of common-practice tonal music relies mostly
on non-contextual dissonance.
When Schoenberg emancipated the dissonance, it ceased to be dissonant not only on paper,
but also in the mind of the listener. In music that harmonically favors traditionally dissonant
intervals, dissonance eventually becomes consonance. A tritone or second in a piano sonata by
Boulez sounds as relatively consonant as a third or a fifth in a sonata by Mozart; conversely, the
meaning of a traditionally consonant chord or interval is reversed in a largely dissonant work, as in
this modified version of the opening to Anton Webern's Variations for Piano:
Fig. 3: With apologies to Herr Webern
Here, the major chord is so discontinuous as to be a harmonic non sequiteur, jarring in the
ear of listener just as much as would, say, a tone cluster in the middle of a Haydn symphony, and
demanding resolution just as strongly as does a traditional dissonance in a tonal work.
A practical application of the reversed concept of dissonance appears in Charles Seeger's
system of dissonant counterpoint. The system has been explained elsewhere, so I shall not
summarize it here. All I will say about it is this: while I disagree with some of Seeger's rules 3, I
think his system is an excellent one which, with some development, could expose valuable
unplowed plots in the atonal landscape.
COUNTERPOINT AND TRIADS
It is often claimed that we understand tonality better than atonality, but this claim is dubious.
We do not understand tonality, but are merely accustomed to it, and it is not tonality itself to which
we are accustomed, but triadic tonality. Pre-triadic tonal music, such as that of Machaut, is liable to
sound as strange to us as anything thought up by the most wild-eyed of 20 th-century modernists, and
post-tonal modern music is almost as forbidding to the ears of ordinary listeners as its atonal
siblings.
Why do we understand triadic tonality so well? Apart from the easy familiarity imprinted by
centuries of popular and art music, there is the the regularity provided by the triad. Atonality, with
its compound harmonies, currently has no equivalent chord. Triads also have other advantages: for
one, the development of a standard type of chord gave impetus to the creation of homophony and
instrumental music unsupported by words, and the demands created by a new and stricter form of
harmonic rhythm aided the emergence of metrical beats. We have good reason to hope, therefore,
3
For instance, I find no reason to exclude dissonance resolution by step or the ban on parallel fifths from the system;
indeed, it is my view that a proper dissonant counterpoint would include a complete ban on all parallel motion.
that there exists a chord that can function in dissonant counterpoint as the minor or major triad does
in consonant, tonal counterpoint. Does such a chord exist?
Let us examine the triad. One important aspect of the triad is that it is
consonant; indeed, the only completely consonant three-tone pitch
class set. Another is that it is composed by stacking only one type of
interval – the third. An ideal atonal triad, therefore, would have to be
Fig. 4: First-inversion
completely dissonant and composed of only one sort of interval. Such a
atonal triad on C
triad exists: it is the trichord {0,1,2} – two minor seconds stacked on
top of one another. The atonal triad is the only wholly dissonant trichord – indeed, the only wholly
dissonant chord with more than two pitches. It seems to me that the atonal triad could play the same
role in the development of atonality as did the major and minor triads in the development of
functional tonality, and that it could act as a point of rest within a texture of dissonant counterpoint.
Atonal triads can be spread out across three voices4, strung together in chord progressions, altered
through the use of major seconds – yielding an atonal equivalent of the augmented and diminished
triads –, and augmented through the addition of more seconds – yielding an atonal equivalent of
seventh, ninth, and eleventh chords.
This brief and humble essay suggests broader questions that are too large to deal with at
length here. Can atonality completely supersede tonality? It seems clear that it can not; the
musicologists and musicians who still believe Schoenberg's prophecy that twelve-tone music will
one day be whistled by paperboys and waltzed to in ballrooms are as few as they are credulous.
Should atonality supersede tonality? I should say not. The sort of musical Hegelianism one finds in
the writings of René Leibowitz, which holds that atonality was a historical necessity, is mercifully
out of fashion, and so is the notion that everything has been said that can be said tonally; as Roger
Scruton reminds us, fine and fresh-sounding tonal music was being written by composers like
Janáček even as atonality conquered the world, and is still being written today. Atonality has its
uses, and they are, as I have tried to demonstrate, probably more fecund and numerous than we
suppose. But atonality is not the be-all and end-all of music. At bottom, it is just another technique –
a means rather than an end in itself.
4
The atonal triad, unlike its tonal equivalent, does not suit itself to a four-voice texture; such a texture must
neccessarily contain a non-contextually consonant octave or unison doubling, making the chord contextually
unstable within the rules of dissonant counterpoint.