whats your opinion of atonal compositions? Such as works done by Schoenberg, Alban Berg?

Question

why do some people react like its the worst music they have ever heard?

wow! this is the best group of answers I have ever received on Y answers forum. very very informing. I will have a hard time choosing a best answer. I am not a musician but i study harmonics and Pythagorean ism and the mathematics and geometric concepts that underly harmonics. And the Schonberg system is really really interesting.

Answer 1

My opinion starts with a statement that will cause a great deal of argument --

There is no such thing as atonal music. The ear cannot help but attribute tonal qualities to what it hears.

Schoenberg objected to the term "atonal", preferring to call his music "pantonal" -- all of the tones in the tone row had equal weight. In my opinion he never achieved that ideal.

Note durations suggest tonality. Certain intervals suggest tonality. A preponderance of same pitches or pitch classes (unavoidable) suggest tonality.

So, we have to discard the concept of atonality if we are going to evaluate or form an opinion about the music of Berg, Webern, Schoenberg, Babbit, and the other serialists (a better term than "atonal composers", I think) and weigh them on their musical merits, alongside the works of Beethoven, Bartok, Mozart, Stravinsky -- you see my point I think.

The composers you mentioned had radically different styles. Schoenberg followed his own rules strictly. Berg fudged a bit in the interest of the line and the form. He unabashedly wrote tonal music using the tone row -- the Violin Concerto is a great example -- a beautiful work. He did not strictly adhere to the row, sometimes reintroducing tones out of sequence.

Schoenberg wrote music exhibiting arches of sound -- he was tame when it came to the shape of the line -- not as angular, without the huge leaps and changes of register that marked many that came after him. The result is music that is surprisingly listenable and enjoyable, if a little odd to ears used to Western Common Practice.

My favorite composer from the second Viennese School is Webern, the colorist. His orchestral music exhibits an almost pointilistic approach, passing the line from insturment to instrument and register to register. Very interesting stuff, and I think he achieved a rare individuality and beauty with his music.

Answer 2

Knowing how the so called non-tonal concept came into its present form sometimes helps to understand why the music exists, why it was an important experiment and why the genre has all but been reabsorbed into 21st century harmonic language.

Beginning with the 1830's harmonic language became more and more "complex" by simply adding notes in thirds, for example. C-E-G. To which was added Bb, then D and finally F. It didn’t take long (Wagner’s era) to understand that this kind of "enrichment" was really a dead end.

Here’s why; if you stack thirds you eventually wind up with only two chords each of which act as dominant to the other.
Try it. C-E-G-Bb-D-F-A and the other chord is C# -E#- G#-B-D#-A#. So you are stuck with something called stasis. It’s boring and goes no where.

So some ways around this are to build scales in whole tones or modally, or to play in more then one clearly defined key at one time. All well and good but the methodology for constructing discreet harmonic theory around those notions is a little vague.

Let's discuss how Schoenberg saw the problem. He perceived that the stasis issue arose as a result of stacking thirds.

His idea was to stack 4ths. Implementation of this idea occurred in Schonberg’s chamber symphony #1, op9 for 15 solo instruments dating from 1905-06.
In this piece the French horn plays a series of 4ths that set the piece in motion.

Play a series of 4ths and notice how striking different this is than staking thirds.
Fourths: C-F-Bb-Eb-Ab-Db-Gb-B-E-A-D-G and finally C. Notice that no one tone is repeated until all tones have been sounded.

The circle of 4ths is a kind of tone row in which, because no tone is more important than any other tone, there exists a feeling that there is no tonal center hence the sound is said to be atonal.

Millions of other tone rows with the same democratic treatment of notes are possible.

Paul Hindemith pointed out, however, that all of that elegant arithmetic didn’t make much difference to the human ear which continued to hear the sounds in a traditional tonal sense just with a lot of suspensions and anticipations.

Other composers, among them Berg and Stravinsky adopted "tone row" technology but their music written in this style inures to the benefit of Hindemith's argument.

I find the music interesing but not compelling. And it was said of Schoneberg, he was a composer who was respected, but not loved.

Answer 3

Glinzek makes some very valid points. Speaking of serial music from the listeners standpoint, I have to say that it is certainly an acquired taste. I would go as far as to say that one has to listen to a fair amount to develop any kind of appreciation at all. Having said that, it can be highly evocative and convey the sides of humanity that is not so easily accessed thorough conventional tonality and harmony.
To many people it is shocking and tough to listen to. I doubt whether it will ever be the mainstream and I feel it is a branch of the musical tree that really leads nowhere, because the next stop is pure unstructured sound or noise. Cage was one innovator that actually took the extension that far. At some point it ceases to be music.
I actually like Schoenberg's solo piano music, as well as the Piano Concerto, but I had to try very hard. Aesthetically, this kind of music is difficult to understand and some of it is plain horrible, some of it you have to be a musician to have any appreciation for it at all. In the Romantic period, atonality became a useful tool for composers and was used to its best effect, by the likes of Chopin and Liszt, sparingly. You might say it adds a little piquancy, but used in excess it becomes less palatable.

Answer 4

I think that atonal compositions are just as import musically as "tonal" works. Until Schoenberg pioneered the genre, it was essentially nonexistent.