Editing Atonality (section)

== History ==
While music without a tonal center had been previously written, for example [[Franz Liszt]]'s ''[[Bagatelle sans tonalité]]'' of 1885, it is with the coming of the twentieth century that the term ''atonality'' began to be applied to pieces, particularly those written by Arnold Schoenberg and The Second Viennese School. The term "atonality" was coined in 1907 by [[Joseph Marx]] in a scholarly study of tonality, which was later expanded into his doctoral thesis.{{sfn|Haydin and Esser|2009}}

Their music arose from what was described as the "crisis of tonality" between the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in [[classical music]]. This situation had arisen over the course of the nineteenth century due to the increasing use of <blockquote>ambiguous [[chord (music)|chords]], improbable [[harmony|harmonic]] inflections, and more unusual melodic and rhythmic inflections than what was possible within the styles of tonal music. The distinction between the exceptional and the normal became more and more blurred. As a result, there was a "concomitant loosening" of the synthetic bonds through which tones and harmonies had been related to one another. The connections between harmonies were uncertain even on the lowest chord-to-chord level. On higher levels, long-range harmonic relationships and implications became so tenuous, that they hardly functioned at all. At best, the felt probabilities of the style system had become obscure. At worst, they were approaching a uniformity, which provided few guides for either composition or listening.{{sfn|Meyer|1967|loc=241}}</blockquote>
The first phase, known as "free atonality" or "free chromaticism", involved a conscious attempt to avoid traditional [[Diatonic scale|diatonic]] harmony. Works of this period include the opera ''[[Wozzeck]]'' (1917–1922) by Alban Berg and ''[[Pierrot lunaire]]'' (1912) by Schoenberg.

The second phase, begun after [[World War I]], was exemplified by attempts to create a systematic means of composing without tonality, most famously the method of composing with 12 tones or the twelve-tone technique. This period included Berg's ''[[Lulu (opera)|Lulu]]'' and ''[[Lyric Suite (Berg)|Lyric Suite]]'', Schoenberg's ''[[Piano Concerto (Schoenberg)|Piano Concerto]]'', his oratorio ''[[Die Jakobsleiter]]'' and numerous smaller pieces, as well as his last two string quartets. Schoenberg was the major innovator of the system. His student, Anton Webern, however, is anecdotally claimed to have begun linking dynamics and tone color to the primary row, making rows not only of pitches but of other aspects of music as well.{{sfn|Du Noyer|2003|p=272}} However, actual analysis of Webern's twelve-tone works has so far failed to demonstrate the truth of this assertion. One analyst concluded, following a minute examination of the Piano Variations, op. 27, that <blockquote>while the texture of this music may superficially resemble that of some serial music&nbsp;... its structure does not. None of the patterns within separate nonpitch characteristics makes audible (or even numerical) sense ''in itself''. The point is that these characteristics are still playing their traditional role of differentiation.{{sfn|Westergaard|1963|p=109}}</blockquote> Twelve-tone technique, combined with the parametrization (separate organization of four [[aspects of music]]: pitch, attack character, intensity, and duration) of [[Olivier Messiaen]], would be taken as the inspiration for serialism.{{sfn|Du Noyer|2003|p=272}}

Atonality emerged as a pejorative term to condemn music in which chords were organized seemingly with no apparent coherence. In [[Nazi Germany]], atonal music was attacked as "[[Bolshevik]]" and labeled as [[Degenerate art|degenerate]] (''Entartete Musik'') along with other music produced by enemies of the Nazi regime. Many composers had their works banned by the regime, not to be played until after its collapse at the end of [[World War II]].

After Schoenberg's death, Igor Stravinsky used the twelve-tone technique.{{sfn|Du Noyer|2003|p=271}} [[Iannis Xenakis]] generated pitch sets from mathematical formulae, and also saw the expansion of tonal possibilities as part of a synthesis between the hierarchical principle and the theory of numbers, principles which have dominated music since at least the time of [[Parmenides]].{{sfn|Xenakis|1971|loc=204}}

===Free atonality===
The twelve-tone technique was preceded by Schoenberg's freely atonal pieces of 1908 to 1923, which, though free, often have as an "integrative element...a minute intervallic [[cell (music)|cell]]" that in addition to expansion may be transformed as with a tone row, and in which individual notes may "function as pivotal elements, to permit overlapping statements of a basic cell or the linking of two or more basic cells".{{sfn|Perle|1977|p=2}} The decay of the sense of tonality and the subsequent distribution into individual elements brought three concepts into play:  1. Musical elements that had since been secondary to tonal form groups now became autonomous.  2. The absence of tonal coherence prompted the search for a unity that could connect the disjointed musical language in an alternative way.  3. Due to the replacement of diatonic principles, new concepts of form arose.<ref>{{Cite book |last=De Leeuw |first=Ton |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n27q |title=Music of the Twentieth Century: A Study of Its Elements and Structure |date=2005 |publisher=Amsterdam University Press |isbn=978-90-5356-765-4 |jstor=j.ctt46n27q }}</ref>

The twelve-tone technique was also preceded by nondodecaphonic serial composition used independently in the works of Alexander Scriabin, Igor Stravinsky, [[Béla Bartók]], [[Carl Ruggles]], and others.{{sfn|Perle|1977|p=37}} "Essentially, Schoenberg and Hauer systematized and defined for their own dodecaphonic purposes a pervasive technical feature of 'modern' musical practice, the [[ostinato]]."{{sfn|Perle|1977|p=37}}