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I don't get it. What am I missing?

Look for colour rather than melody. For three flavours, try late Scriabin, Berg and Boulez. Scriabin's sonatas starting with no. 6, Berg's violin concerto, and Boulez's Derive I and Sur Incises are all good picks.


Approach it in a similar way as tonal music, in that there are climaxes and intense development of small motifs. However, melody and harmony, particularly in serialized works, don't play as much of a role, where the composer may be interested in more colourful effects. However, some composers do other things, like Takemitsu, where regular counterpoint and flow are instead exchanged for a 'soundscape', colouristic effects and sound objects.

Very simple:



....and as per what Kuanpiano said, have you taken a whiff of this ....

Joel: It took me about 1000 years to start really getting it.
OK, maybe about 2.
Something that helped: Pieces that bridge the gap within themselves.
The first one that brought me toward something was Schoenberg's 2nd String Quartet, most of which is a bit like Brahms with pepper poured on it and with some excursions further into the new universe (and then back).

In my book atonal music doesn't limit itself to the 8 notes in a fixed key ... by taking in the extra 4 notes, giving a palette of 12, Schoenberg and co., were able to
get some "Brahms with pepper poured on it" (thanks Mark).

I treasure my "Survivor from Warsaw" ... such stark reality ... not for the faint hearted

"I cannot remember everything. I must have been unconscious most of the time.

I remember only the grandiose moment when they all started to sing, as if prearranged, the old prayer they had neglected for so many years - the forgotten creed!

But I have no recollection how I got underground to live in the sewers of Warsaw for so long a time. The day began as usual: Reveille when it still was dark. "Get out!" Whether you slept or whether worries kept you awake the whole night. You had been separated from your children, from your wife, from your parents. You don't know what happened to them... How could you sleep?

The trumpets again - "Get out! The sergeant will be furious!" They came out; some very slowly, the old ones, the sick ones; some with nervous agility. They fear the sergeant. They hurry as much as they can. In vain! Much too much noise, much too much commotion! And not fast enough! The Feldwebel shouts: "Achtung! Stilljestanden! Na wird's mal! Oder soll ich mit dem Jewehrkolben nachhelfen? Na jut; wenn ihrs durchaus haben wollt!" ("Attention! Stand still! How about it, or should I help you along with the butt of my rifle? Oh well, if you really want to have it!")

The sergeant and his subordinates hit (everyone): young or old, (strong or sick), quiet, guilty or innocent ...

It was painful to hear them groaning and moaning.

I heard it though I had been hit very hard, so hard that I could not help falling down. We all on the (ground) who could not stand up were (then) beaten over the head...

I must have been unconscious. The next thing I heard was a soldier saying: "They are all dead!"

Whereupon the sergeant ordered to do away with us.

There I lay aside half conscious. It had become very still - fear and pain. Then I heard the sergeant shouting: „Abzählen!“ ("Count off!")

They start slowly and irregularly: one, two, three, four - "Achtung!" The sergeant shouted again, "Rascher! Nochmals von vorn anfange! In einer Minute will ich wissen, wieviele ich zur Gaskammer abliefere! Abzählen!“ ("Faster! Once more, start from the beginning! In one minute I want to know how many I am going to send off to the gas chamber! Count off!")

They began again, first slowly: one, two, three, four, became faster and faster, so fast that it finally sounded like a stampede of wild horses, and (all) of a sudden, in the middle of it, they began singing the Shema Yisroel."

btb: I know that piece too, and mostly for the same reason I know the quartet: from a course on Schoenberg. (Actually "Bartok, Schoenberg, & Stravinsky" but who's counting.)

And you sort of misspelled one of those words a little! It's more like:



It's a remarkable piece.

The first thing that you ARE "missing" is the fact that actually most contemporary music is not atonal, but plenty of other things. The term 'atonal' is generally used for dissonant contemporary music, but that doesn't mean other than the fact that the user of the term has not done his research! sorry...

I will confess that I don't enjoy Boulez or Stockhausen too much... I do semi-understand what's going on, but I'm used to other styles of music. But it's not that I don't get it. I just don't enjoy it...

You need to check out various works, from various composers and see what's out there in order to try and "educate" yourself further. Little by little you may come to appreciate various things you thought would be impossible to like.

Take a couple of suggestions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0qoue0JbbU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k40HVQJZYLM (listen to this whole work... Try to see where he takes the various themes)...

__________________________

The idea is that tonality is too "small" or "confining them" for some composers, so they had to break free. Some used systems (Schoenberg) some others took various systems to the extreme (Boulez) while others just decided to do whatever the heck they decided (Schnittke for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vyCc_jFidw An awesome concerto in my book).

I always take a stiff brandy before having the guts to listen to the piece again ... I'm fortunate to have the score to go with the music.

Again i come up with the trite saying ...
"man's inhumanity to man" ... as the Bard says
"the evil that men do, lives after them,
the good is oft interred with their bones"

PS The OP Joel will never get it about atonal music ... much too young and dizzy.

For me flute music did the trick. I was suddenly fascinated by atonal music.

There is a reason for why I used the word 'atonal' and not 'contemporary'. I know what atonal music is, Nik.

Ok. Count my post then as an impulsive reply to what I thought was clear...

Still though... Can you provide an example of an 'atonal' piece? Cause I'm not sure I can. I can provide plenty of twelvetone, or serial works, works based on quartal harmony, neo-classical and whatever in between but "officially" atonal works, I'm not sure there are too many around...

Nikolas: I think you're getting too involved in the definition. Joel knows what he meant and we do too!
(Do you really not?)

Also it seems you have a narrower concept of the term than the usual understood meaning -- but it shouldn't keep you from knowing what people are talking about when they use the term this way.

I thought we were going to start using avocados instead of dirt socks.

I will listen to that quartet. Don't know if I'll like it, but I'll listen. I've heard some things about Schoenberg. haha

Quick question:

I know you're a Chopin junky (like me). I assume you get really pumped up by his larger works as do I. Do you ever find yourself feeling that same way when listening to atonal music? The way you feel when listening to (or playing) the more intense parts of the 4th ballade and such...

I'm not sure thus my question and my misguided post before that...

I'm honestly not trying to play a 'know it all' guy or anything like that. I started talking about various works of music with plenty of dissonance in, but after joels' comment I came back to realize that perhaps my post was wrong... that's all...

No.
But I get things from 'atonal' music that I don't get from Chopin -- it's different kinds of things. And similarly, I need to be in completely different kinds of moods to want to work on one or the other kind of music.
('quotes' around atonal for Nikolas's benefit)


.....speaking of which, the coda of that ballade (the first half of it) points a bit toward atonal music.

True, but thankfully it resolves into something with a hummable bass-line.

I love to hum bass-lines.

No biggie, Nikolas! Your knowledge of theory far surpasses mine and likely many members here on PW. You can't be blamed for the confusion. Communication error, that's all.

One thing that is helpful is to remember that atonality evolved from late Romanticism. Romanticsm had stretched & expanded tonality, though hyper-chromaticism, to the point that it was barely recognizable as tonality. Think late Wagner, Richard Strauss, Reger, Scriabin, etc.

Viewed in this way, atonality really was the, or perhaps I should say a, next logical step. In fact (as I recall - haven't studied it in years), early Schoenberg (before 12 tone) was in much the same vein as late Wagner.

For these purposes, I think of atonality as the lack of a functional  key center and the system that implies: tonic, dominant, subdominant, etc. I agree with Nikolas that atonality and dissonance are not the same thing. I think it would be very difficult to have truly atonal music that is not dissonant, to at least some degree. I'm willing to be proved wrong on that.

By the early 20th century, tonality had been stretched so far, it had ceased to function. You either had to jump off the cliff (atonality), or retreat from it and find something else to explore (Stravinsky, Bartok, Hindemith, etc.).

Personally, it took quite some time of deliberate study before I could begin to appreciate the beauty of atonality on its own terms. I knew I had gotten there when I began to have atonal earworms! 

Good morning. I'm not sure what the usual undertood meaning is. When Joel says "atonal music" I don't see what he means, what music he is thinking of.

Joel, can you explain what you mean, what music you are thinking of ?

Yo Joel, I think Glenn Gould's one of the best ambassadors of this music. While, as with everything, his opinions are singular, his enthusiasm is pretty contagious. There's a good amount of discussion of Schönberg, Berg and Webern in the documentary, "The Alchemist." Aside from that, he wrote a bunch on the topic, again, very interestingly. Find that stuff in "The Glenn Gould Reader." Also, I'd get a translated copy of Schönberg's writings. There's a bunch of art and visual stuff that can help you get into an "atonal" sound world.

A piece for un-pitched percussion would fill the bill, probably. Can't think of any examples off the top of my head, but I'm sure they are out there.