Free vs. Serial Atonality

[@agk0604]

finally someone said that Scriabin's music is atonal. Congrats fam ! Good content

[@josed.vargas3961]

I have this idea I like to call "super-tonality" it's basically the name I use to reference when music is still using traditional major and minor triads but abandons functional harmony and a key center, and has a constantly shifting tonal center. It's basically tonality on steroids. An example would be like "Four, for Tango" by Astor Piazzolla.

[@ClassicalNerd]

You're described much of my personal compositional style, especially in many of the pieces I have more recently written. It's honestly the best of both worlds!

[@Michail_Chatziasemidis]

I thought that was called Chromaticism.

[@cornicello]

A few misconceptions here: 1. Serialism (the techniques of assembling and deploying tone rows) is not the same thing as a musical style. Pointillism, for example is a style. One does not need to use serialism to produce a pointillist work, and serialism, by itself, does not produce pointillism. 2. I don't think many serial composers were really concerned about how 'the music looked on the page.' I'm not sure what you mean by that. Maybe Milton Babbitt, but that's about it. I don't recall Donald Martino or Charles Wuorinen ever talking about that aspect of the music, in either written notes or personal conversations. Same with Boulez and Stockhausen (although I had only one conversation with Boulez, none with Stockhausen). They were all concerned about how the music would sound, and hopefully that it could be played how they intended it to go. And, yes, most of those composers could at least 'hear' it.

[@ClassicHolic]

That's absolutely right, I agree.

[@danb2622]

Yes you’re correct on these points. Important correction here.

[@sarahaprincesa]

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[@johnappleseed8369]

So Thomas, what are your thoughts on Stockhausen and Boulez? I'm quite fascinated. I personally love many of their works for the music solely, but I see them getting bashed quite often.

[@ClassicalNerd]

There are certain works of theirs that I really enjoy-Boulez's Dérive 1 and Stockhausen's Gruppen, to name a few-but I can't help but feel that the strictness of their methods was needlessly limiting their genius. In a word, they come across as dogmatic; Boulez was so strict about the twelve-tone method that he considered octave doublings-very common in orchestration-to be a violation of serialist methodology. (Both of them were also uniquely self-absorbed characters as well, but that's unrelated to their music.) I don't want to come across as putting my own opinion on things-let alone bashing-when I refer to serialism as "strict" or a "dead end" in a video; I legitimately feel as if that view has been borne out by history. There's nothing more mentally stimulating than analyzing a piece written in such a style, but few (if any) composers working today are serialists, as serial music never had the opportunity to evolve further, as tonal music could. It's much harder to establish yourself in the context of-or do something unique with-a system that, to a certain extent, writes the music on your behalf. I greatly admire the small group of composers who managed to make it their own (Boulez, Stockhausen, Copland, Stravinsky, Dallapiccola), but that represents a fraction of the composers who adopted the style. Working with a serialist style has its benefits to the modern composer as a tool-I've used it to order chord progressions within a piece and have applied it to a quarter-tone tone row-but more or less I feel like the new possibilities it offered have already been thoroughly exploited. I'd even go so far as to guess that there are more neo-Baroque composers working today than there are neo-Serialists. (Relatedly-Stockhausen and Boulez videos have been in the works for quite a while, but there is so much information to wade through that it's quite the challenge; I'd like to have both of them up before the end of the year, but no guarantees.)

[@TheMatrixxandRhodesShow]

I personally don't consider Debussy as atonal at all. I guess during his time you could. Schoenberg is the Godfather of atonality with his 12 tone row.

[@fictionmusictv]

Debussy's superstructure chords are resolved unto themselves so aren't at all dissonant to today's ears. Maybe back then they were and as far as that goes I think you are right. But the fact he totally eschewed the Tonic, Subdominant, Dominant process that is the underpinning of tonality is where the atonal aspects of his music lies.