Atonality

Atonality is a musical approach that avoids establishing a central pitch or key as the organizing basis for harmony and melody. It encompasses works with varied methods of organizing pitch.

Pitch-class set theory: An analytical method that studies collections of pitch classes and their transformations, especially in twentieth-century music. It describes recurring pitch collections without treating them as chords in a key.
Late Romantic music: European concert music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, marked by expanded harmony and orchestral scale. Its chromatic language pushed tonal relationships toward increasing ambiguity.
Alban Berg: An Austrian composer and Schoenberg pupil whose works combine modernist techniques with expressive lyricism. His operas show how atonal language can sustain dramatic and vocal expression.
Tonal music: Music organized around a central tonic and functional relationships among pitches and chords. Its hierarchical key structure is the organizing basis atonality avoids.
Pierrot Lunaire: Arnold Schoenberg’s 1912 melodrama for voice and chamber ensemble, composed using free atonality. It is a landmark work that brings atonal writing together with Sprechstimme and chamber forces.
Twelve-tone technique: A compositional method that orders all twelve chromatic pitch classes into a row before reusing them in structured transformations. It is a systematic way to organize pitches while avoiding tonal hierarchy.
Arnold Schoenberg: An Austrian composer and theorist who developed atonal and twelve-tone approaches to composition. His early twentieth-century works became central examples of freely atonal music.
Anton Webern: An Austrian composer whose concise works use sparse textures, precise timbres, and highly organized pitch materials. His music offers a concentrated, distinctive approach to atonal composition.
Modal music: Music organized around a mode, a characteristic scale and its central pitch. Modal music has a pitch center without relying on major-minor tonality.
Wozzeck: Alban Berg’s opera, premiered in 1925, using varied modernist techniques including atonal passages and formal structures. It shows atonal language integrated into a large-scale opera.

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