Download Truong Nguyen 1 Bao Chung Truong Nguyen MUSC 121 – Fall

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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.