[1] Atonality, in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a single, central triad is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale function independently of one another.
[3] However, "as a categorical label, 'atonal' generally means only that the piece is in the Western tradition and is not 'tonal'",[5] although there are longer periods, e.g., medieval, renaissance, and modern modal music to which this definition does not apply.
[6] Late 19th- and early 20th-century composers such as Alexander Scriabin,[7][8] Claude Debussy,[9] Paul Hindemith,[10][11] Béla Bartók,[12] Sergei Prokofiev,[13][14] Igor Stravinsky,[15][16] and Edgard Varèse,[17] have written music that has been described, in full or in part, as atonal.
The term "atonality" was coined in 1907 by Joseph Marx in a scholarly study of tonality, which was later expanded into his doctoral thesis.
This period included Berg's Lulu and Lyric Suite, Schoenberg's Piano Concerto, his oratorio Die Jakobsleiter and numerous smaller pieces, as well as his last two string quartets.
[21] Twelve-tone technique, combined with the parametrization (separate organization of four aspects of music: pitch, attack character, intensity, and duration) of Olivier Messiaen, would be taken as the inspiration for serialism.
[20] Atonality emerged as a pejorative term to condemn music in which chords were organized seemingly with no apparent coherence.
The absence of tonal coherence prompted the search for a unity that could connect the disjointed musical language in an alternative way.
[25] The twelve-tone technique was also preceded by nondodecaphonic serial composition used independently in the works of Alexander Scriabin, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Carl Ruggles, and others.
[26] "Essentially, Schoenberg and Hauer systematized and defined for their own dodecaphonic purposes a pervasive technical feature of 'modern' musical practice, the ostinato.
Additionally George Perle explains that, "the 'free' atonality that preceded dodecaphony precludes by definition the possibility of self-consistent, generally applicable compositional procedures".
A cell "may operate as a kind of microcosmic set of fixed intervallic content, statable either as a chord or as a melodic figure or as a combination of both.
[35] Regarding the post-tonal music of Perle, one theorist wrote: "While ... montages of discrete-seeming elements tend to accumulate global rhythms other than those of tonal progressions and their rhythms, there is a similarity between the two sorts of accumulates spatial and temporal relationships: a similarity consisting of generalized arching tone-centers linked together by shared background referential materials".
In all generosity, 'atonal' may have been intended as a mildly analytically derived term to suggest 'atonic' or to signify 'a-triadic tonality', but, even so there were infinitely many things the music was not".
Attempts to solve these problems by using terms such as "pan-tonal", "non-tonal", "multi-tonal", "free-tonal" and "without tonal center" instead of "atonal" have not gained broad acceptance.
[41] Donald Jay Grout similarly doubted whether atonality is really possible, because "any combination of sounds can be referred to a fundamental root".
That is, centricity may be established through the repetition of a central pitch or from emphasis by means of instrumentation, register, rhythmic elongation, or metric accent.
Ansermet argued that a tone system can only lead to a uniform perception of music if it is deduced from just a single interval.
The work uses a technique called "Sprechstimme" or spoken singing, and the music is atonal, meaning that there is no clear tonal center or key.
Instead, the notes of the chromatic scale function independently of each other, and the harmonies do not follow the traditional tonal hierarchy found in classical music.