Please please PLEASE write a massive rant about atonalism
alright you asked for this and yes i did write this just now
Atonalism is one of the many defining genres of the early 20th century. You could define it in various ways, especially considering all the sub-genres within ‘atonalism’, but it can be generally described as music written with no tonal centre. This means that it has no defining key, unlike any other song you might hear on the radio, and therefore is generally very unpleasant to listen to.
Atonalism was an extremely innovative genre in it’s hay-day, however, it received inordinate amounts of criticism for it’s dismissal of popular styles and it’s seeming disregard for creating pleasant, or “good”, music. But to understand why this was the case we need to understand the cultural, political and musical context of the time.
The turn of the 19th century was a very poignant time for both the world around us and the world of music. As the 20th century came into view, music saw a clash between styles of the past, namely romanticism, and future, which delved into more ambiguous chords and interesting ways at looking at tone and harmony, causing what some call a “crisis of tonality”. At the beginning of the 1900s, the romantic era fell to styles like impressionism, expressionism, atonalism and others which sought to rebel against old ideals of music. Atonality was lead most famously by Arnold Schoenberg, who wrote some of the most famous pieces of atonal music.
As time went on, the world was faced with the horrors of both the first and second world war, which greatly affected the atonal music of the time. Atonalism, though it is a very structured genre of music, sounds very messy, chaotic and sometimes confronting to audiences which made it an amazing conduit for expressing the pain that came with such horrible events like the holocaust. Because of these qualities, it was also later utilised after further disasters during the century, though it is almost exclusively known for it’s run during the early 1900s (particularly because of Schoenberg). My personal favourite example of this is Threnody For The Victims of Hiroshima (released in 1992 i think)
Atonalism, as previously stated, is a genre – when only listened to – that exudes a strong sense of chaos and stress, however it is an extremely structured genre of music. One of the best examples of this is ‘Serialism’. Serialism is a form of atonalism which utilises serialist matrixes (big ol’ grids) to create the harmonic sequence of a piece. (Here’s one now!)
(example found on google)
This is an extremely mathematical form of music and requires extreme dedication to learn and play.
Thanks to the lack of tonal centre, atonalist music is very difficult to predict and learn, and even harder to play in ensemble or orchestra. Many forms of atonalism also utilise extremes in expression/expressive devices and uncommon/rarely used techniques like col legno (violin). Which makes it a massive pain in the ass to play.
Atonalism was truly a mile stone in not only modern/20th century music, but also in the innovation of music as an art form. It is a wholly unique form of artistic creation and still remains an important and interesting genre years later.
even though i like impressionism more #BringBackDebussy2k20
List of the songs mentioned:
Pierrot lunaire
Peripetie
A Survivor from Warsaw
Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima

















