Atonal music: a closer look
Have you ever heard Atonal music?
If you are a piano teacher, you have probably studied this style in College, but it might be the case that you never listened to a single piece of the so-called “Atonal Music”.
If you are a piano student, you probably never heard even the name.
But, why? Did you know that this music started in 1911 with the release of the pieces Op. 11 by the composer and theorist Arnold Schoenberg?
So this music has been around more than a century but still never had the success of much older styles, such as Baroque or Classical music.
The reason might be that Atonal music does not comply with the main rule of tonal music: to have a tonal centre, or what we usually feel like a musical gravitational centre.
This music produces in the listener a sense of gravity, of insecurity, or even the feeling to be “at home” tonally speaking might be the reason why this particular style never indeed succeeded if we compare it with others.
They were three prominent composers that propelled Atonal Music:
Arnold Schonberg, Anton Webern and Alban Berg.
The three had very distinctive ways of expressing this technique, being Alban Berg the most “tonal” of the three, Anton Webern the most radical, and Arnold Schonberg, the composer of the first atonal pieces, the Opus 11 in 1911, is the one in the middle of the three.
My best advice…
That might sound obvious is NOT to expect tonality. I believe this is the most common mistake when approaching this style.
People is trying to look to a tonic centre, a tonal key: that will never happen, that is the whole purpose of this music!
On the contrary, pay attention and focus in the texture, in the rhythm, in the melodic contour and the texture; you will quickly see that the music starts to speak to you, sharing their hidden messages.
