Atonality
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal centre, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1907 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used as a primary foundation for the work. More narrowly, the term describes music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies which characterized classical European music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Chailly presents the evolution of tonal approaches with his useful diagram describing the emancipation of the dissonance.
More narrowly still, the term is used to describe music that is neither tonal nor serial, especially the pre-twelve-tone music of the Second Viennese School, principally Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and Anton Webern. However, composers such as George Antheil, Béla Bartók, John Cage, Carlos Chávez, Aaron Copland, Roberto Gerhard, Alberto Ginastera, Alois Hába, Josef Matthias Hauer, Paul Hindemith, Charles Ives, Sergei Prokofiev, Carl Ruggles, Luigi Russolo, Roger Sessions, Nikos Skalkottas, Igor Stravinsky, Toru Takemitsu, Edgard Varèse, and others, including jazz artists such as Anthony Braxton, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Cecil Taylor (Radano 1993, 108–109), and Death Metal artists, such as Deicide and Morbid Angel, have written music that is described, in full or in part, as atonal.
See also
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