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Truong Nguyen 1 Bao Chung Truong Nguyen MUSC 121 – Fall 2013 Professor Aylward Dec 18, 2013 Final paper #1 Atonality in 20th Century Music Genuine classical music appeals to listeners in a way every note is meticulously organized under the rules of tonality. However, early decades of the 20th century have witnesses the widespread break of traditional tonality that results in the new wave named “Contemporary Classical Music”. In this new wave, the hierarchy of pitches that focus on a single central tone is not prioritized, and perfect harmony is no longer the crucial factor. To draw a detailed picture in four pages is probably an impossible act, so I will just focus on some main themes of Atonality by analyzing two pieces: Allan Berg’s Op.2 No.1 “Dem Schmerz sein Recht” and Claude Debussy’s Preludes Livre 2 No.2 “Feuilles Mortes”. They are two examples of the very first movements of Atonality in music composition. Alban Berg stayed in the history of 20th century music as the student of Arnold Schoenber and the developer of his Twelve-tone Technique – one of the main factors that brought the music apart from its authentic tonality attribute. Basically, it’s a method of “ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are sounded as often as one another in a piece of music while preventing the emphasis of any one note” (Perle). The role of the key of one song is therefore greatly neglected. First-time listeners may find themselves in a cloud because the song sounds like a succession of random notes that never resolves to the tonic like it’s supposed to do. Truong Nguyen 2 Berg’s Op.2 No.1 “Dem Schmerz sein Recht”, as well as the four-song collection it belongs to (“4 Gesang”), lies at the boundary between “tonal” and “atonal” attributes of music composition. As Douglas Jarman says in his book The Music of Alban Berg, “the peculiar expressive power of Berg’s music” springs primarily from the fact that it both refuses and encourages tonal interpretation (Jarman 16). Normally, analyzing the chords can help analyzing the song in terms of finding tonal keys, modulations and resolve, but in this particular situation, this method only results in the refusal. His chord usually contains both the natural and sharpened/flattened form of the same note so we cannot define what key that chord belongs to. In addition, for a very few times Dominant or major/minor chords are clearly seen, which means chances that the song resolving to a specific pitch are rare. This weakened tonal direction is achieved mainly “through the use of harmonic and melodic formation based on superimposed fourth or the whole-tone scale” (Jarman 16). Since all tones are the same distance apart, the difference in interval types is no longer valid and there will be no “actual” leading tone. The song, however, still preserves its tonality attribute in the way that some notes got more special treatment than others. For example, in the first section, the C# was at first being the middle note - the “meat” component of the chords throughout the first 10 measures; however, when the climax arrives in in measure 11, it is moved from the middle zone to the bass position of the whole-tone chord (C# G B F). This replacement is important since we all know that a bass note can change the whole meaning of a chord. C# becomes prioritized amongst the other notes, which is against the concept of Twelve Tone technique. Some other aspects of the songs: the structure of the phrase, tension and Truong Nguyen 3 relaxation, the continuity or repetition of one section, are also clearly related to those of earlier music. Unlike Berg who focuses on chromatic-scale notes, Claude Debussy impresses listeners by using dissonant harmonies to evoke the aimed-at moods and images. “Feuilles Mortes” (Dead Leaves) belongs to the second book of Preludes for piano that represents Debussy’s strong interest in the indefinite and esoteric, it is “one of the compositions in which Debussy’s powers of suggestion are at their highest” (Boulanger 174). That power can be seen in the way he frequently inserts dissonant chords but never reveals their resolution; unambiguous harmony arrives only later or in some cases doesn’t arrive at all (the song ends in E# - a non-key tone). Although the key signature implies E major, we can’t see many supporting chords within the song; we can only rely on the appearance of G# in some alien chords to have a sense that E major still exists. Beside using dissonant harmonies, the song also shows another technique of atonal music: “the occurrence of familiar pitch combinations in unfamiliar environments" (Forte 1). These occurrences can be found right in the ostinato of the first movement where the motif of the first three bars sounds really irrelevant to that of the fourth bar. Debussy doesn’t want to harmonize them; he even repeats them together two more times in the songs to better emphasize the contrast. There are also two evidences that Debussy still utilizes the traditional tonality techniques in achieving his goal. First, his choice of form stems directly from the formal ternary design (ABA) of the Classical era. Listeners may have predicted the tonal direction incorrectly, but their expectations of the climax or the return of opening motifs are still true. Second is Debussy’s use of the piano pedal to control how notes are Truong Nguyen 4 sustained and released. Especially in the last three bars, we can see how effective the pedal is in slowing down the progression and conjuring the atmosphere of the falling of dead leaves. Being a master pianist himself, Debussy has contributed a lot to the pedaling technique of Impressionist music since the earliest start. Debussy’s two books of Preludes are great example of how Atonality changes the way music is approached: it forces listeners to reason more actively rather than just positively enjoy the piece. The unusually often appearance of dissonances will certainly, at first, create an inconvenient feeling to those who are used to harmonious, fluent music. However, inconvenience will soon become curiousness and eagerness to decode the message behind that unordinary sound arrangement. They will repeat the song and keep asking questions like “how the awkward-sounded leap from D to B (mm.2) contributes to the melancholic atmosphere of the piece” or “what sense of continuity does Debussy convey when he ends the song with E# instead of E”. Atonal music looks for a more intuitive response from listeners. The composer doesn’t give us the whole picture but its fragments; he expects us to fill in the missing part in our own ways. As Jarman concluded, “the balance between tonal confirmation and tonal denial in music affords a very flexible method of articulating the musical structure” (16), Atonality plays an important role in broadening the area of music composition. It gives chances as well as challenges. Chances are that harmonic formations being less depending on traditional and functional harmonic procedure with numerous counterpoint rules. Challenges are that composers have to make sure they compose a finished and purposeful song instead of a bunch of spontaneous arrangements. Truong Nguyen 5 Work Cited Boulanger, Nadia. Lectures on Modern Music: Lectureship in Music, Jan. 27, 28, and 29, 1925. Houston, TX: Rice University, 1926. Print. Forte, Allen. The Structure of Atonal Music, New Haven: Yale UP, 1973. Print. Jarman, Douglas. The Music of Alban Berg, Berkeley: University of California, 1979. Print. Lansky, Paul, George Perle, and Dave Headlam. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001. Print.