and wind instruments. In Dixieland jazz, for example, musicians take turns
playing the lead melody on their instruments while the others improvise
countermelodies.The one predictable element of a piece of jazz music — with the exclusion of
free jazz — is the rhythm. All jazz, with the exception of free jazz, uses clear
regular meter and strongly-pulsed rhythms that can be heard through the
music.Atonal Music .................................................................................................
To the uninitiated listener, atonal music can sound like chaotic, random noise.
However, once you realize the amount of knowledge, skill, and technical
expertise required to compose it or perform it, your tune may change, so
to speak.Actually, very little music is completely tonal in nature, and most atonal music
arrives at and departs from tonality from time to time during its course.
Atonality is a condition of music in which the constructs of the music do not
live within the confines of a particular key signature or scale (other than the
chromatic scale). No particular modes are employed.When talking about atonal music, composition instructor Mike Bogle likes to
jokingly refer to the “88 major modes of the chromatic scale.” You would be
hard pressed to label most atonal music “major” or “minor.” These terms are
confined to the realm of tonality.In tonal music, one tone functions as a sort of center of gravity, and the other
tones in the chromatic scale are “attracted” to it in varying degrees of strength.
Not so in atonal music. There is no gravity. You are allowed to use any of the
twelve tones in the chromatic scale in any way you feel like. But how do you
wrap a sense of form around that amount of freedom?Atonality and form .............................................................................
In 1908, pianist Arnold Schoenberg became the first known composer to write
a purely atonal composition. “Du lehnest wider eine Silberweide”(“You lean
against a silver-willow”) was the 13th song in his musical collection entitled
Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten(The Book of the Hanging Gardens), op. 15. It
was during this time that he first defined a 12-tone system of composition to
replace tonality as an organizational tool. Atonality is one of the most impor-
tant movements in 20th century music.Chapter 13: Musical Forms 155