Alterations in atonal music

[neueliteratur]

Hi forum,

when you are composing or transcribing atonal music, how do you determine if you're supposed to write G# or Ab for example?

I've always wondered...

[jancivil]

if it's serial music, the spelling of the pitches that result from manipulation of the row are going to have something to do with the logic of the row and the manipulation of it, if they have any meaning at all.


I have made music that lies outside of tonal gravity, but I made it in the piano roll and/or out of improvisations. the intervals as I work with them is the thing (a minor 6th from C = Ab) but what I call them afterwards doesn't interest me. If I transcribed it I would go for easiest to read.

[jlocri]

I'm not big on serialism, but generally chromatic spelling is done in a way that relates to which way the melodic line is moving.

[Xanakis]

It also depends on what tuning your are using. in some instances a E# is different that an F. In terms of performance, it may need to be changed. Atonal music is hard, so taking the musician into account makes things easier (I think so anyways.) If you write a tuba part, you would want to default to make this mostly flats. but a violin player would like to see sharps. But in regard to your question, it kinda depends on what kind of atonal music it is. If it is highly serialized, you would want to keep the notes what they are. The enharmonic spelling of the notes of the chord could make the piece not make sense to another person, if they were to study your score. But if its just you, and your not really worried about whether it makes sense to others, who cares. When I write atonal music, I default to flats.