Is atonal music dead?

In an effort to lift the discussions under this thread away from the trivial questions that seem to characterise it (ie What is the 2nd greatest sonata written by a left-handed female composer?), I pose the following question.
Is atonal music dead: has it passed on; has it's used-by-date long gone; is it a dead-end and a waste of time?Does it offer nothing for the future of classical music?
Obviously my opinion is yes otherwise I would not have posed the question in this form.
You could consider this fact. The earliest atonal pieces were written in the early 1900's. A century has passed since then. This is longer than the entire Classical or Romantic periods. If you consider, as I do, that atonality is essentially a style of music, then stylistically it has run its course and has nothing new to offer. Over the period of a hundred years it has failed miserably to find a significant audience. Now it is a worn-out style without an audience. Obviously, this does not mean you cannot as a composer use atonality. The issue is more about what composers should do to create an audience for new classical music. Atonality clearly will not do this. It's record of failure in this area is indisputable.

Atonal music has a big audience. Go to festivals like Donaueschingen, but buy your tickets half a year in advance, because it will be booked out very quickly. I've been to much smaller and less popular concerts/festivals than that and have often had a hard time getting a seat, and that in large concert halls. And I assure you, you won't find any traditionally tonal music in Donaueschingen.

And if a composer like Hans-Werner Henze (a serialist, mind you, even though a "moderate" one) premieres a new opera, there are sold-out opera houses and standing ovations. (Check out the reviews for Phaedra.)

The audience only seems so small because we are comparing it with the audiences other kinds of music have. But keep in mind that people have never listened so much to music as in the 20th/21th centuries. Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were (somewhat) successful, but their audiences weren't huge by today's standards.

There are quite a few "atonal" composers of today who easily have an audience as large as those composers of the past had in their lifetime.

I don't like the term "atonal" too much though, as there's no good way to define it and there are many so-called "atonal" works that certainly have a clear tonality, just not 19th century one made of major and minor keys etc.

But it's almost ridiculous to think the music you probably call atonal has "nothing more to offer". Non-tonality is the general case, CPP tonality is a specific system. Saying that -not- using a very specific method (in contrast to the more general case) is worn out, is saying that CPP tonality is the ultimate and perfect system, the epitome of art with which nothing can possibly compete. Sounds quite narrow-minded to me. Art is always changing, eveloping, branching out. It's natural that at some point you reach something that can no longer be described with the musical terms of the European 19th century. It doesn't matter if this new thing sounds like Schönberg or completely different. But I find the thought quite terrifying that we might have found a "solution" in music, a "perfect system" in which we can happily stay for all eternity. Again, atonality (a bit depending on your definitions of course) is no style or system, simply the absence of a system.

No, what you call "atonality" isn't dead.

i dislike avant-garde. i dont think it is music. that is just my opinion though. other people may find structure in it. but i dont think that nonchalant whistling while driving a car recorded in a stunt drive facility is music. Seriously. Sound effects are sound effects. music is music.

now in regards to atonal. no its not dead.

Originally Posted by goodridge_winners

i dislike avant-garde. i dont think it is music. that is just my opinion though. other people may find structure in it. but i dont think that nonchalant whistling while driving a car recorded in a stunt drive facility is music. Seriously. Sound effects are sound effects. music is music.

now in regards to atonal. no its not dead.

Avant-garde is a relative term, there's nothing concrete about it at all. Rite of Spring was avant-garde when it premiered, then Boulez was, then Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Avant-garde has no meaning, as does "atonal". I agree with Gardener, I hate that word.

atonal is a very strict term, and I don't think I know a lot of pieces strictly atonal. Gardener is talking about a serialist composer, not an atonalist!

But, exactly like Gardener, if by atonal you mean dissonance, lack of major/minor, weird harmonies, not based in triads, etc, then no by all means it's not dead at all! If you actually mean the early forms of atonality then the world has probably moved on.

I could also argue that in some parts of the world (London for example), serialism never caught on and moved on, as well as musique concrete (except Birmingham). While, as Gardener points out (yes, I'll stop refering to him at some point! ) in other places you need t obook 6 months in advance! So...

Originally posted by ablyth
You could consider this fact. The earliest atonal pieces were written in the early 1900's. A century has passed since then. This is longer than the entire Classical or Romantic periods. If you consider, as I do, that atonality is essentially a style of music, then stylistically it has run its course and has nothing new to offer.

I find this comment very interesting, ablyth, because we regularly discuss neo-classical, neo-romantic, and even neo-baroque music. These styles have been around much longer that serialism or atonality, yet they still have possibilities to be explored. A lot of these possibilities include fusions of styles, mixing past with present. Furthermore, the styles and "rules" of atonality are constantly changing as well. An example in another style would be Adams's Short Ride in a Fast Machine. This piece is a lot more active and "interesting" than some of the more strictly minimalist pieces by Glass (esp. the earlier works). I do believe there is life for atonality and serialism, just like any other style.

Absolutely not, unless you take "atonality" to mean serialism, which is most decidedly dead as a style.

Many, perhaps most, living composers of serious concert music work within a style that is more or less wholly atonal. Including those who only partially incorporate atonality into their works, that's almost certainly a majority. Granted, many of these are old-guard modernists like Milton Babbitt or Pierre Boulez, but many are also not.

As for the future, I think tonality and atonality will continue to coexist as they do today, at least as far as art music is concerned. Atonality is a technique rather than a style, and is no more a period in itself than is tonality or modality. Therefore, it will not go out of style simply because it has been in use for a century, although specific atonal styles undoubtedly will (think about the decline of twelve-tone music in the last thirty years, for instance).

And goodridge_winners, atonal music doesn't necessarily need to be avant-garde. Many composers (Ralph Shapey and Shulamit Ran spring to mind) have combined essentially non-tonal languages with very conservative forms and styles. And isn't it a little arrogant to claim that something "isn't music" simply because it doesn't appeal to you? There are many composers and individual pieces I can't stand, but I've never believed them to be non-music simply because of my dislike for them.

True, absolute atonalism I never found appealing. And I don't think it had very much "life" to begin with. But the problem is is that very few pieces are true atonal. Most modern music isn't "atonal" so much as "unconventionally tonal". So it we're talking about the latter rather than the former than yes, I think there is still a lot of room to explore. I myself am always trying to push the bounds of what I can pull off while still remaining tonal. I don't believe in limiting one's music to diatonic scales. I believe that approach to music is boring. But at the same time, I don't see the point in rejecting those rules outright just to be non-comfortist.

Anyway, yes. I still think there is much to be discovered in music and we'll never discover these things until we can get past the simple "tonal" "atonal" labels.

If this is contradictory to anything I've said in the forum previously, I apologize. This subject comes up quite a lot on YC and some of the posts I've read have swayed my opinion quite a bit.

When I hear the word "atonal" I immediately think twelve-tone. Given that, I think it's a dead end as a foundation for composition but not as a compositional tool. There is a very definite effect, to me, that is possible with tone rows that doesn't need to be tossed out but I don't see how you can build entire pieces out of this technique and not have them all sound pretty similar. I remember listening to Lulu and thinking that it was interesting and created a sort of horror movie effect but I still could never become attached to anything that was going on. My favorite parts of music in this style are always the sections where tone rows and regular tonality get mixed together.

If by atonal you mean anything besides twelve-tone music.. well, I'm not knowledgeable enough about that to have a good opinion.

Atonality is no more a style than tonality is. I'd say it's more like a palette. Then by definition atonality is a very limited palette, whereas tonality makes up the rest.