Examples Of Tonal And Atonal Music

[aMUSEd]

hated Pierrot Lunaire first couple of times I heard it.
later I found that the performance is so crucial

Absolutely critical - it's very demanding on the singer - this is drama as much as music and being able to alternative fluidly between song and Sprechgesang is hard but vital. Performed well it's just breathtaking.

[jancivil]

Boulez, of my time rather, speaks to me more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUeRfwUU_oE

[aMUSEd]

I've never really got into Boulez. Too cerebral, lacks feeling.

[jancivil]

hated Pierrot Lunaire first couple of times I heard it.
later I found that the performance is so crucial

Absolutely critical - it's very demanding on the singer - this is drama as much as music and being able to alternative fluidly between song and Sprechgesang is hard but vital. Performed well it's just breathtaking.

Indeed. The first 2 or 3 times, I remember feeling nauseated by it. I think it must have been performed poorly or lacking a good conception of what it was doing. Neurotic, where it might be just mind-expanding, a different kind of crazy.

[jancivil]

That's what I like about Boulez, the objectivity.

[harryupbabble]

I guess that's why I created this thread at the Everything Else section. Although, KVR is populated by music-makers (I am presuming), how many really understands complex reasoning behind the music? I try to understand but sometimes it seems a lot like Chinese (if one is not Chinese). Am I typical here or are everybody else capable of deep analysis of music? Or do most music-makers just make music this way: "Oooh, that sounded good, I will keep that."?

I guess one alternative title for this thread could be "This Music Is Tonal, Do You Like Hate It? This Music Is Atonal, Are You Still There?". It wasn't meant to be more complex than that so I guess I must have hastily and subconsciously decided it best belonged at the Everything Else section.

I just like to sometimes lurk here at the Music Theory section reading, hoping that if something doesn't make sense at first, it will make sense later on. Sort of like reading xoxos posts. On the day I read it, most of it I'm like "what is he saying?" and then days or weeks later or even months later I'm like, "Wowee, that does make sense, the guy is some kind of guru.". Or do most people get it right away?

But yeah, I can see that this thread could be taken as an insult or whatever to the regular people that create threads or discuss complex music stuff here at the Music Theory section.

I hope that the Music Theory section stays alive and lively because I am guessing there are really valuable lessons here to absorb, if one is capable of absorbing it. And stuff.

[Bojmir Raj Raj]

I think at this point in history, "tonal" and "atonal" don't really have concrete measurable meanings, unless you're looking at specific periods in the past. But in the past in western music theory, "tonal" was a lot more restrictive than it is today- if you hear Liszt's "atonal" works, they don't sound "atonal" at all to modern ears.

It's a very personal judgment these days, with the only measure really being, can you hear a tonal center? But, some people hear a tonal center in pretty much everything and anything, and some people lose the sense of a tonal center at the drop of a hat. In my experience, "atonal" is most often used in practice as shorthand for "it's not trite and cliched enough for my deep lack of musicality and complete lack of real emotional connection to music".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx_Wolki0dc

[harryupbabble]

In my experience, "atonal" is most often used in practice as shorthand for "it's not trite and cliched enough for my deep lack of musicality and complete lack of real emotional connection to music".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx_Wolki0dc

So, by that logic, any music that brings me to the brink of tears is atonal? Neil Young's Down By The River, for example. I don't know why but something in that song is very emotional to me and I don't think it's atonal at all. Procol Harum's Whiter Shade Of Pale for another example. Even Sinead O'Connor's Nothing Compares To You? Strange, Prince's version doesn't do it.

Okay, so, here's Neil Young's Down By The River song, to me a song about extreme guilt and regret, but I'm still not sure if that's what doing the emotional trigger for me, decide if it's atonal music, methinks not even close:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1gxkRve4Q0

[fmr]

I think at this point in history, "tonal" and "atonal" don't really have concrete measurable meanings, unless you're looking at specific periods in the past. But in the past in western music theory, "tonal" was a lot more restrictive than it is today- if you hear Liszt's "atonal" works, they don't sound "atonal" at all to modern ears.

In my opinion, it's the "tonal" meaning that needs to be redefined. Although late romantic music may be considered tonal to some extent, the tonality there is so fluid, and the changes and dissonances are so many that it's really hard to look at it as tonal amymore (many times the adjective "chromatic is used, instead of tonal, meaning that it may have basically ANY tonality during the course of the music). Look at the work of Mahler, for example. And this already started with the works of Wagner and the late Liszt, indeed. Schoenberg and the Second Vienna School just went further on the exactly same line of thinking.

But music may not be tonal, and although not being atonal either. Many Debussy works can't be classified as tonal, but they are not atonal either. The same applies (to less extent) to Ravel (which even used polytonality - and is polytonality tonal?

And basically ALL the work of Messiaen is not tonal, although very few pieces could be classified as atonal (Mode de Valeurs et d'Intensités is probably the most known "atonal" work, being also considered the firt totally serial music composition), since he explained himself that he followed a different paradigm.

IMO, there isn't really a dichotomy between tonal and atonal, where a piece of music has to be one or the other, and I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up to front yet.

[harryupbabble]

I think I just figured it out. My dog was euthanized. The decision was ultimately mine to have him euthanized. In effect I shot my dog.

I suspect that Neil Young's Down By The River song has nothing to do with dogs or anything like that but to me, maybe all this time, it meant just that, and I didn't know it. Today is the first time I saw that album cover. It has a dog in it. That's not the one in my CD collection though, the one I have is a double CD named Decade. So I think that's how I figured out why that song is so emotional to me. So the point is, there's tons of tonal music that one can be emotional about. And lyrics:

It's so hard for me
staying here all alone
When you could be
taking me for a ride.

During the weekdays, everybody would go to work, go to school, etc, and my dog would be all alone, tied in the backyard. But during the weekends we would hop in the van and go to a wilderness park and go for hikes, etc. My dog really loved that.

[jancivil]

I think at this point in history, "tonal" and "atonal" don't really have concrete measurable meanings, unless you're looking at specific periods in the past.

At this point in history we are still free to look at what already happened.
I did the thing 9, 10 yrs ago, def. dodecaphonic on purpose and the thing was, it sounded good to me.

Also, too, if you're doing 'modal' you aren't doing tonal even with a lot of '1' emphasis.

So that Liszt sheet music (I don't want to bother with hearing the vid) is a lot of dominant of B what doesn't revolve so far. Def. not atonal. Probably tonal but, whatever.

[rp314]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCS5uLX_ecM

[jancivil]

Oh yeah. I saw that. Radical but entertaining

Starless is def. tonal.
at least the 'song' part

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhKJgqxNDD8

[Bojmir Raj Raj]

In my experience, "atonal" is most often used in practice as shorthand for "it's not trite and cliched enough for my deep lack of musicality and complete lack of real emotional connection to music".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx_Wolki0dc

So, by that logic, any music that brings me to the brink of tears is atonal? Neil Young's Down By The River, for example. I don't know why but something in that song is very emotional to me and I don't think it's atonal at all. Procol Harum's Whiter Shade Of Pale for another example. Even Sinead O'Connor's Nothing Compares To You? Strange, Prince's version doesn't do it.

Okay, so, here's Neil Young's Down By The River song, to me a song about extreme guilt and regret, but I'm still not sure if that's what doing the emotional trigger for me, decide if it's atonal music, methinks not even close:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1gxkRve4Q0

No, that's extrapolating way too far on what I said! All I meant was that in my experience, in practice, "atonal" is usually just an insult thrown out by incompetent unmusical people adn doesn't have any real meanign other than that.

[Bojmir Raj Raj]

I think at this point in history, "tonal" and "atonal" don't really have concrete measurable meanings, unless you're looking at specific periods in the past. But in the past in western music theory, "tonal" was a lot more restrictive than it is today- if you hear Liszt's "atonal" works, they don't sound "atonal" at all to modern ears.

In my opinion, it's the "tonal" meaning that needs to be redefined. Although late romantic music may be considered tonal to some extent, the tonality there is so fluid, and the changes and dissonances are so many that it's really hard to look at it as tonal amymore (many times the adjective "chromatic is used, instead of tonal, meaning that it may have basically ANY tonality during the course of the music). Look at the work of Mahler, for example. And this already started with the works of Wagner and the late Liszt, indeed. Schoenberg and the Second Vienna School just went further on the exactly same line of thinking.

But music may not be tonal, and although not being atonal either. Many Debussy works can't be classified as tonal, but they are not atonal either. The same applies (to less extent) to Ravel (which even used polytonality - and is polytonality tonal?

And basically ALL the work of Messiaen is not tonal, although very few pieces could be classified as atonal (Mode de Valeurs et d'Intensités is probably the most known "atonal" work, being also considered the firt totally serial music composition), since he explained himself that he followed a different paradigm.

IMO, there isn't really a dichotomy between tonal and atonal, where a piece of music has to be one or the other, and I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up to front yet.

Yeah, I agree! For me, "tonal" just means, can I hear a "red thread" tone in it, some kind of "tonic" and "dominant"? But I can hear that in almost everything including ambient noise, so there's not much music that I'd personally call "atonal", even though I recognize when it's "atonal" by, say, late 19th century common-practice standards.