Keep it quiet in atonal music

Keep it quiet in atonal music

Album Of The Week

norman lebrecht

September 21, 2024

From the Lebrecht Album  of the Week:

Music of the Second Vienna School was condemned as noise on first reception. How deaf is that? The greatest asset of these revolutionary works is their quietude. The arresting opus 1 sonata of Alban Berg achieves a 12-minute span of introspection without an obvious atonal tantrum. …

 

Read on here.

And here.

Comments

  • Herr Doktor says:

    I much prefer quiet atonal music – with the volume control set to zero.

  • Eric Neil Koenig says:

    I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Berg’s Sonata Op. 1 qualifies as “atonal.” It’s heading in that direction, but his break with tonality doesn’t come until the last of the 4 Songs Op. 2.

  • John Borstlap says:

    Schönberg’s opus 11 is a great work, in all its miniaturism, anxiously feeling around the limits of coherence, like a bad dream full of anticipation:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeTFxbsVGrI

    This still pre-12-tone music. A kind of ‘psychic impressionism’, and what does it ‘say’? Something awful, frightening, nihilistic, it represents something falling apart, something nearing darkness, something that is decomposing. As a reflection of the times: early 20th century, it is very accurate: the desintegration of a civilisation and with it, its great art.

    No wonder Viennese audiences protested against it. They HEARD.

  • vadis says:

    A lot of noise is quiet, but it isn’t music.

    A lot of music is quiet, but it isn’t atonal.

    “Atonal” music is a misnomer, it limits itself entirely to 12 tones, of all the possible frequencies and combinations of frequencies of tones allowed by physics, and these 12 tones are not random, they are identical to the tones of the traditional Western scale.

    Atonal music, quiet or loud, is not revolutionary, it’s just bad.

    • Robert says:

      Let’s call it a failed revolution.

      They blew everything up and it turned out… hardly anyone wanted everything blown up.

      Not after they heard what was getting built instead.

  • Gerald Brennan says:

    ‘Atonal’ means without tone. Not a good word.

  • Pianofortissimo says:

    “Dystonal” music can be a useful tool in opera. Just tThink of Electra when she became completely mad. And can you conceive an Erwartung in C major?

    (Of course, I prefer Così fan tutte and Don Giovanni, don’t you?)

  • George says:

    Berg, Schoenberg and Webern were without doubt amongst the greatest twentieth century composers.

    The problem, if there is a problem, is much of what came after……

    • John Borstlap says:

      The Viennese three and the ‘movement’ they invoked only formed a very small, marginal phenomenon in music life till, after WW II, it was picked-up by new generations of would-be composers who wanted to leave the musical tradition behind and begin from scratch: on the assumption that Webern showed that you could indeed begin with nothing. Before the war, Webern was almost entirely unknown, but after the war he became the patron saint of the avantgarde. That Webern had been an ardent nazi enthusiast was, of course, hushed-up. Nazism was related to the musical tradition because Hitler loved Wagner and Bruckner and Léhar, so the opposite must be on the moral right side of history. Etc. etc… lots of nonsense in the wake of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, for which they were not responsible.

      • Robert says:

        “… it was picked-up by new generations of would-be composers who wanted to leave the musical tradition behind…”

        This is a charitable reframing of “didn’t have the chops for the musical tradition…”

        • John Borstlap says:

          But the existing musical tradition was VERY difficult to master. And the last great talents were Bartok, Prokofiev, Britten, Shostakovich – how to avoid imitating them? So, they took a shortcut.

  • Karden says:

    Atonal reminds me of a variation (or flip side) of the “too many notes” critique supposedly said to Mozart by one of his sponsors, Emperor Joseph II.

    Atonal is also a variation of rap music, which has become quite popular over the past 25-plus years.

    Atonal also makes me think of people who enjoy polka or Mexican-banda music.

    Beauty (and pleasure) is altogether in the eye (or ear) of the beholder.

    • John Borstlap says:

      That last remark is not true.

      For humans, ‘beauty’ is rooted in the psyche, and related to mathematics, as scientific research has shown. Interpretation and tastes are often influenced by cultural consensus, but also these are related to mathematics. This is a result of evolution: we are part and product of nature, which itself is saturated with mathematics. This means that beauty is essentially something objective, and interpretations (which may differ) can be subjective.

      Truly atonal music (without references to tonal relationships) is something literal, an attempt to impose artificially-devised mathematical systems on sound material that in itself is by its nature tonal (the harmonic series that are embedded in every tone). Therefore it is often quite ugly, objectively so.

      “The Neuroscience of Beauty: how does the brain appreciate art?”, Steven Brown and Xiaoqing Gao, The Scientific American
      https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-neuroscience-of-beauty/

      “Mathematical Beauty Activates Same Brain Region as Great Art or Music”, Geometry Matters
      https://geometrymatters.com/mathematical-beauty-activates-same-brain-region-as-great-art-or-music/

      “What the brain draws from: Art and Neuroscience”, CNN Health
      https://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/15/health/art-brain-mind/index.html.

      All of this is a strong indication that basic universal aesthetic laws do apply, and that they play a role in our appreciation of art. This means that although there are subjective interpretations of art, what they interpret is existing universal aesthetic laws, embedded in human nature.

      • Karden says:

        I really can’t figure out what goes on in the brains (or ears, eyes) of various people whose sense of pleasure and enjoyment are so different from mine. I listen to a few minutes of, as one example, pounding, snarling-type rap music (lots of F bombs), and I go, segments of the human species are very, very different.

  • MOST READ TODAY: