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Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality, in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a single, central triad is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale function independently of one another. [1]
Other composers with atonal pieces include Harrison Birtwistle & Peter Maxwell Davies, [54] Jacob Druckman, Barbara Kolb, [55] Henry Cowell, Claude Debussy, Brian Ferneyhough, [56] Alexander Goehr, [57] Lou Harrison, Mårten Hagström, Paul Hindemith, Karel Husa, Charles Ives, György Ligeti, Witold Lutosławski, George Perle, [58] Sergei Prokofiev, David Raksin, [59] Nikolai Roslavets, [60 ...
It does not seem to me, either, that pentatony is inherently "atonal," if by that word you mean music lacking a hierarchical pitch structure and tonal center. It is of course true that a polarity based on the relationship of a major dominant triad to a tonic is impossible with an anhemitonic scale of any sort, since that dominant triad's third ...
Melodies can be based on a diatonic scale and maintain its tonal characteristics but contain many accidentals, up to all twelve tones of the chromatic scale, such as the opening of Henry Purcell's "Thy Hand, Belinda" from Dido and Aeneas (1689) with figured bass), which features eleven of twelve pitches while chromatically descending by half steps, [1] the missing pitch being sung later.
Crook (1998) claims that the introduction, "Carmina Chromatico", has become, "probably the most analyzed piece of Renaissance music by any composer in any genre," [2] since Lowinsky's 1961 discussion of the prelude's "triadic atonality". [3] This can be understood by studying the Prologue to the cycle.
The chromatic scale is a musical scale with twelve pitches, each a semitone, also known as a half-step, above or below its adjacent pitches.As a result, in 12-tone equal temperament (the most common tuning in Western music), the chromatic scale covers all 12 of the available pitches.
Atonality, lack of a key or tonal center; In medicine: Atony, a muscle losing its strength; In linguistics: Atonic or unaccented, a syllable without stress or pitch ...
As the term is commonly understood, outside is not a direct synonym to terms such as free improvisation, polytonality or atonality but a musical phenomenon in its own right. Also, outside concerns tonal tension; it does not involve breaking rhythmic, timbral or stylistic boundaries.