Happy Atonality Day!
Over at his blog, Alex Ross has declared December 17 to be Worldwide Atonality Day, pointing out that a draft of a song entitled “Ich darf nicht dankend” from Schoenberg’s Zwei Lieder für Gesang und Klavier op. 14 was completed a hundred years ago today, “music in which conventional tonal harmonies grow exceedingly scarce”.
Debate over the use of the word “atonal” aside, this is an important occasion, as it marks a moment in which serious music took a final dramatic shift from an established harmonic structure that had dominated music for hundreds of years. After Schoenberg, composers of art music had a choice to make: would they follow Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School and try and create a new aural landscape which seemed to offer so much promise to those willing to do the work, or would they continue along the well-established path made by all the Romantics and their forebears, or even retreat a little? Obviously this is was a bid decision, and some composers–Stravinsky, for instance–tried a variety of styles.
As much as I know understanding of, and repeated exposure to atonal music rewards listeners, there is no doubt that Webern was profoundly wrong in his prediction that everyone would be whistling 12-tone pieces in the streets by the end of the 20th Century. That day, I predict, will never come, for the simple reason that people like big tunes. As I listen today to Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, which is beautiful in its own way, I wonder, has any tone-row ever compared in popularity to this work from 1924:
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No. Wozzeck, premiered just a year later, is the better piece, but it is clear to me that, in the end, tonality has won, and always will win with audiences.
Filed under: Music, Musings, Special Occasions on December 17th, 2007
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