Atonality explained in 7 minutes

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[baloothedrummer]

Man I can’t believe how great your videos are, I love how you tackle really deep subjects with ease, and explain them in a really comprenhensive manner

[octavethpianist]

Take a shot every single time he blinks

[saczikom]

Have these people never heard of tics? It's very rude to point them out in such obnoxious fashion. When you see a person doing tics in public do you also point your finger at them and say something stupid? Sad to see that such well-made educational video has so many of its comments saying absolutely nothing about the actual subject and just behaving like middle school children. It's more common than you may think, especially when speaking in public or recording a video. I'm saying this as someone who also has tics and I just got very annoyed that people in this comment section are so immature that they make such a big deal of them as they are not that noticeable and don't get in the way of the lesson at all.

[LudmillaTSF]

I don’t care about the blinking AND that is a HELL of a good music lesson!

[OrchestrationOnline]

I would define the opening examples as "non-tonal" rather than "atonal." Otherwise, nice concise explanation. I usually define atonality as the lack of a key centre and its associated common practice harmonic strategies. I think we shouldn't apply too rigorous definitions past that, for fear that we replace inspiration with quibbling.

[FernieCanto]

That was a brilliant video. Also, kudos for mentioning the "obsession" with harmony in detriment of other aspects. There are a lot of YouTube channels about music theory, but almost all of them talk *exclusively* about harmony, and when I say "harmony", I mean *functional harmony* as if it's the only possible kind. This is getting really absurd.

[bassoonistfromhell]

Really makes my day when i see a new video of yours come up in the subscription feed

[machida]

I like this definition.
to avoid or undermine listener’s tonal schemata.

[jeffjones]

Since discovering your postings on Youtube, I have been tremendously delighted with your information. Have subscribed and everything. I have my PhD in musicology, and wrote my dissertation on Zappa's "Civilization", and despite that, find remarkably little to quibble with.
But here, I have one. You use the term "pitch" a couple of times, and this is good, because the term refers to the actual frequencies of the notes. And "note" is a good one. at least in the equal-temperament universe, because we all can agree that., yep, that's a C, and that's a F#. But "tone" is when the note, or pitch, has a harmonic function. All those now-ancient scores of "magnificat sur le deuxieme toni" or whatnot are named for their fundamental pitch, known as the "tonic", which of course is the adjectival version of "tone". This is why when Schoenberg complained about calling his younger atonal ventures "atonal", because he said that they a have tones in them, he was confusing the notes with their function in, if not tonal, one could say harmonically coherent music. So my gripe is that a note is a tone when it has harmonic significance, and when it does not have this, it is better to refer to them as notes or pitches.
At any rate, I dig your stuff immensely. Your take on Stravinsky's late music was fabulous, as was your analysis of "Pierrot Lunaire" And as for the two-hour interviews with Art Tripp and Jeff Cotten - pure gold, my undying gratitude

[pablov]

"Atonal" is used as a synonymous for "amusical" piece. For me, that is a nonsense, a lot of works that I love, fall in the category of "atonal" music. I remember as it was today, the way in which Lutoslawski "Livre pour orchestre" blows my mind, I was 16 yrs old, and I never said "oh, I'm listening atonal music", no! just enjoy with that masterpiece and almost every Lutoslawski's works.

[beefling]

Your blinking is triggering my blinking

[helloguy]

It's good to see such a misused term narrowed, because I think it can be useful to very specifically describe a deliberate obfuscation of perceived pitch hierarchy. The danger of the term is that there really is a pretty wide range in clarity in perceived pitch hierarchy between, say, early 18th century tonal harmony and a random pitch generator where most music called atonal lives. I also don't really perceive serial music in the same way--it certainly shifts importance away from specific pitch classes, but it creates a hyper focus on sequences of intervals. Really appreciate your analysis videos on 20th century music, by the way.

[felixdevilliers]

I had a very good professor of music in Germany and he denied that the music of Schoenberg and friends was atonal. I still think of Schoenberg, Webern and others as atonal. It is a useful label for music that tries to find a way out of the formal patterns that Classical music established. I cannot ignore the sociological aspect of alienation from the norms. Already the Romantics felt it and were inspired by the critical way in which Beethoven and others treated their norms. Wordsworth lamented the loss of nature which led preciselyy to a romanticised.worship of nature. The effect of alienation bcomes evident in writers like Kafka and Beckett, who dispenses completely of social normality. - I think of Webern and friends as atonal in their middle period and as tweve tone composers later.- One could go on with examples like the Romantic poet Eichendorff who instinctively banned all representations of social norms from his poetry and Shelley but I would have to write a whole essay.

[zacharyspencer]

Thanks for the educated overview. I used this video as a ‘expert opinion’ source when I got into a disagreement regarding atonality, when a stranger on Facebook asked for suggestions for atonal piano pieces to play.


As a pianist, my thoughts immediately went towards the fact that a piano is basically a fixed-tone instrument, where even a glissando is simply a chromatic scale, and not truly atonal, let alone microtonal.


My initial response was that “A piano can actually never be purely atonal. Even a detuning gives you a limited number of tones, which cannot be easily altered during a performance. One cannot simply 'bend' a note to get a microtonal interval. The best you can do is 'mis-tune' the notes that have two or three strings each.”


Another stranger complained that I “knew what she MEANT [emphasis mine] - just recommend some pieces”.


I replied that “If she's looking for piano pieces that eschew tonality, that's different from 'atonality'. Just as pieces for "prepared" piano are different.”



I continued by citing some of the previously given suggestions: “For instance, one of the suggestions is the Berg Piano Sonata, which is a lot of chromaticism, whole-tone scales, and wandering key centers, giving the tonality a very unstable feel, which only resolves in the final few bars. It's not 'atonal'.


“Someone else suggested Josef Matthias Hauer's 1946 work "Zwölftonspiel per pianoforte", which certainly explores 12-tone, the lack of a tonal center, all manner of motion, and constantly shifting four-tone chords. It's a 12-tone piece, and certainly not atonal.

“Another person suggested Messiaen's "Vingt Regards". Also not atonal. At best it's 'non-tonal'.

“And THAT's the real problem here, is that she's asking for 'atonal' piano music, when she's actually looking for piano music that is 'non-tonal", or without a tonal center.

“Pianos have a limited number of strings that are hard tuned. Unlike a wind instrument or violin or timpani or a voice (or a cat), it cannot play any old microtone at whim. It CAN play microtones, but only SPECIFIC ones, ones that cannot change without retuning.

“GRANTED, there's a lot of people who misuse the term 'atonality', making it a nebulous 'garbage' word. The word is inaccurately used broadly to describe music that lacks a tonal center, or key, or, even more narrowly, the term atonality describes music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies that characterized classical European music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.

“But pure atonality is the use of ALL tones or frequencies in our range of hearing, which can only be described as 'atonality', making the use of microtonality in search of a better descriptive. You know, all those frequencies heard during a glissando on a violin, or a double bass, or a police siren. THAT's atonality.”

I felt that HER inaccurate and vague use of the word "atonal" was the source of the argument.

Tonality vs. non-tonality vs. microtonality vs. atonality. There’s a difference.

True atonal music cannot be legitimately be transcribed for piano.

I'm merely a professional accompanist (for well over 50 years) with a pretty good understanding of musical styles, genres, terminology, performance practice, conducting, music analysis, and whatnot. Especially "terminology". Using words incorrectly leads to unnecessary misunderstandings. Don't use vague words, or poorly defined words when one could be specific.

Care to weigh in on whether a piano piece can be atonal?

[marichristian]

I've been putting off listening carefully to Schoenberg compositions. But I've decided to listen while following the score, better to understand the twelve tone method of composition for which Schoenberg was an innovator. Webern is another composer for whom listening with a score truly helps to dispel the impression of randomness.

[riseagainsttheunion]

affirmed my intuition and gave me a reason as to why i have been finding myself having such a difficult time attempting to apply classical harmony to my compositions whilst trying to freely express, utilizing emotion and rhetoric as the driving force.

[forlife]

Holy cow this guy blinks like 3 times a second :O

[whycantiremainanonymous]

But "atonal" is an adjective for music I *do* like!

[vishmonster]

Andreyev is the closest we'll get to 'Dial-an-Epiphany.'

[luismanuel]

Thank you for upload this video. Very interesting ...