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Who was the first composer to significantly work with atonal music? What reception did those works receive?

 

What did Beethoven do differently in terms of music theory in order to create such unprecedented emotionally engaging music?

 

It's interesting to read that you find there to be no precedents to emotional engagement in music prior to Beethoven. I'd argue strongly against this viewpoint.

Can you please tell me what engages you the most about his music? Alternatively, I could provide an overview of some composititional techniques that Beethoven used to create tension and interest.

 

That would be cool. I had always been drawn to the tension and drama in his symphonies.

 

Atonal music has no discernible "home" key. This means that the concepts of functional tonality are thrown out the window, no sense of modality can be pinned down, and even that sustained notes that suggest a tonal centre are generally not present.

No single fertile mind gave birth to atonality and its foetal development certainly wasn't in a cultural or musical vacuum. A traditionally fundamental principal of music is the balance between the expected and unexpected. Over time audiences become accustomed to certain musical cliches and subconsciously recognised "rules". To stop things from becoming boring and predictable composers push these boundaries with new devices, to surprise and please the ear. For instance (and from memory) the exceedingly conventional dominant seventh chord started life as a passing note that Monteverdi audaciously moved to occur simultaneously with the dominant chord.

"Art" music grew more and more adventurous as the romantic period of the nineteenth century blossomed: Unexpected key changes, changes to unexpected keys, all this juxtaposed with motifs and melodies that kept you guessing. As a side note, there were also more conservative elements that had a thriving life at this time.

Along come composers like Liszt and Wagner. They work within the "rules" of functional tonality, but push its borders out as a aggressively as the Third Reich or Roman Empire. Conventional tonality could be pushed little further and was at the point of breaking down in many of their works. In this context, Liszt wrote an atonal work as early as the 1880s (as well as exploring unconventional scales, such as the whole tone scale).

Audience's ears had become calloused and there was little else that could be done within the current style to shock or provide novelty. So, what is a composer to do?

In a round about way, @Merrick, I've finally come to the point of answer your question. I believe that the distinction of being the first composer to extensively use atonality belongs to Arnold Schoenberg and his acolytes. Whilst initially working in the late romantic idiom, this posse of musicians, the "Second Viennese School", developed free atonality and then twelve tone serialism, which has its own set of extreme rules. Here are a couple of them: 1. Don't repeat a note of the chromatic scale in a particular line until you have used all other eleven first, 2. Avoid any suggestion of an arpeggiated triad in a line.

Of course, we don't know what music was like before the written record. Perhaps there were some melodies created millennia ago that imitated bird calls and could be best described as atonal.

 

This used to be considered ''almost atonal'' not too long ago, 150 years or so.

 

Hey All, I'd be happy to answer theory/history/musicology related questions as well. Also have some non-western classical knowledge.

source: currently a student in a music conservatory.

 

I always imagined that like a great big greenhouse with musicians growing in rows! Is it anything like that?

@MoatsArt --- a really great idea for a thread. Thanks to you, @ThePianoMan, and any other students ofmusic, formal, professional or otherwise, who can contribute answers.

It is one of those subjects that I hardly know enough to ask stuff --- but I'm certainly going to be reading

 

Hahaha, if only! Although I always thought the string sections looked like little cornrows bobbing in sync.

I thought it was super cool of MoatsArt to start this thread - I've always found it humorous how musicians have an aura of mystery to audiophiles, and vice-versa. I wonder if documenting a conservatory student's life from an audiophile perspective might be interesting to anyone.

 

What separates the Classical and Romantic periods, from a technical/music theory perspective? I've always kinda seen it as "Mozart died, so we said it's a new period," but surely there's something else to it.

 

Cross-cultural musical fertilisation has long and rich history. Here are a few examples.

1. In the middle ages English "art" music tended to sound subjectively richer than continental music at the same time. By richer, I mean that it contained more harmonic thirds and sixths, rather than the restrictive perfect intervals (octaves, fourths and fifths) of music on the continent at the same time. There is a theory that this harmonic difference can be accounted for by the influence of Viking folk music, as these piratical (how CS!) marauders settled this island and eventually dominated the north.

2. The ubiquitous renaissance lute began life as the ancestor of the current day "oud", played in the middle east. There's even an obvious linguisitc relationship between "lute" and "oud": Just say the two words out loud. This instrumental plagiarism occurred at the time of the crusades.

3. Classical composers often borrowed, although somewhat loosely, Turkish military music

4. Music from the far east, such as the Balinese Gameleon, had a significant influence on musical impressionism, represented by composers such as Ravel

The greater the degree or rate of cultural interaction, the greater the potential for two way musical influence. Jazz music, for instance, is the product of Western and African music colliding. "World" music is a whole genre now and includes influences from many cultures. How many samples have you heard in electronic music that originated in some exotic location?

Hope this partially addresses your question, @shipsupt

 

Signal is through the roof here. Nice one @MoatsArt.

 

I haven't forgotten about your question, Michael. I've not really been sure how to approach it as the answer could become quite technical.

Rather than trace the development of Beethoven's personal style, I thought I'd concentrate on just one musical work, embed a recording of it and refer to multiple examples of compositional techniques within this by indicating the time marks where they occur. Given that @Deep Funk has recently found a place in his library for the mighty "Eroica" (the nickname given to Beethoven's third symphony) I might choose this. This could take me a while to put together. Please stay tuned.

 

Thanks Nate, I have enjoyed the Eroica since I was a child and I would love to learn about it.

 

In all aspects of art and culture, there are forces of action and reaction. The move from classical music to 19th century romanticism belongs firmly in the camp of gradual development, rather than a reaction to what preceded. It is evolutionary, not revolutionary. As such, it's kind of hard to draw a line and say "this is it! This is the moment where the change occurred!" Mozart died in 1791. By the time good old Wolfgang was my age he'd been dead for seven years. Beethoven continued where Mozart left off, but pushed further forward.

To understand this slow musical creep we need to understand classical music. The concept was slightly retro, really. It sought to emulate the ideas of the "classical" world, ancient Rome, ancient Greece. Given that there are no extant written musical examples, composers looked to literature and architecture. Balance, symmetry and relative simplicity were well thought of.

So, you have dudes like Haydn working with the symphony and turning rounded binary form into sonata form. Instrumentally, the orchestra as we know it today was being established, thanks largely to rich benefactors such as at the court of Mannheim. The complex counterpoint of the Baroque, such as Bach's Fugues and Inventions, was still around. It was used much more sparingly, though, in favour of a more "melody vs accompaniment" texture.

"The times, they are a-changing", said some gentlemen (and women) in the early nineteenth century. Tonally, this involved more surprising key changes, such as to the flattened submediant. Harmonically, you get entirely unexpected and exciting dissonance (there's a corker example in Beethoven's "Eroica"). As far as form is concerned, you have more "through composed" stuff (it has less repetition) such as tone poems and programmatic music. Sonata form continued, but became vastly more complex.

Non-musical (or rather, "extra-musical") ideas such as Nationalism became more important. During the nineteenth century various states found cohesion (Italy?) while others sought independence (some Nordic countries). Musically, many cultures found their own champions and elder-statesmen, who forged new national musical dialects. Taking the lead from poets, nature also became a popular musical theme.

In summary, the romantic period began with classical music, but used development and diversification to create something new and beautiful. If you've read through to this point, you're a brave soul.