taking a very broad view, it's music that doesn't have a set key, or any key at all. It's not really a good word for describing it though... maybe non-tonal would be better.

So.. it is noteacrobatics?

nice word!

Shucks,
I'll add it to my list right now!

Kitten's got it right. It's music without the traditional ideas of harmony (as in, forget do re mi, and definitely forget the idea that you should end with a nice-sounding chord) Most tonal music, as most people think of it, is based on a major or minor scale, but atonality is pretty much whatever the composer feels like writing. It winds up being very strange.

12 tone is still atonality, but it is a system set up by shoenberg to try and bring some order to atonality, because it is very unstructured.

Now I have to get back to studying for my music history test. On post WWII music, funnily enough.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You kids with your long hair and Baroque music...

*cough* bag of cats *cough*

<SLAP>

Maybe I'm alone but I find it difficult to think of 'atonality' and 'music' as having any common ground.

'Atonality' and 'noise' do share some mutual ground, as I hear it.

Must...resist....urge...to....lecture...on...20th...century....music....

Not that anyone really listens to atonal music on the radio or anything. Just know that Sweeney Todd doesn't have any true atonal music, and that atonal music might not sound good to you, but it has its merits.

There, I stuck up for atonal music. I'm going to go apply for my merit badge from Dr. Taylor now.

Plus, Sweeney Todd has that awesome song about all the different kinds of people they'll serve in their pies, which is full of brilliant puns!

*shrug* I stand by my right not to like or enjoy something. I'm not saying it's "bad" or "crap". I'm simply saying it's definitely not to my taste. I don't really care how clever it is.

Discordant music (which I suppose is as good a term as any) sets my teeth on edge. I accept that it's very clever and all of that. I'm probably too plebean to appreciate its subtleties. But life is too short to listen to something that has the same effect on you as nails scratching down a blackboard!

I shall wait for the DVD, watch it with the sound off and admire Mr. Depp and the dark and creepy ambience!!! ;)

How are you with bagpipes?

(Not braised ands served in a chocolate sauce, of course)

Actually grand - Oileann pipes are fine too - provided they're played properly!

Well, I didn't say that atonal music DOESN'T sound like a bag of cats. Just that Sondheim isn't atonal. I have studied it, and had to compose some, but I still don't like it.

I love "Have a little priest"!

Still no trailer....

EEEK, I lied, I just checked right after that last post, and there is a trailer.

[www.sweeneytoddmovie.com]

Aargh, I'm tutoring right now and can't watch it because it will make noise! I hate having to wait!

I have a t-shirt from my uni days reading "Hooked on dodecaphonics worked for me". It's not the easiest music to listen to, but I really enjoyed the analysis and the mathematical possibilities behind drafting matrices for composition. It's a lot more fun to play on a prepared piano, but the school wasn't always happy about students merrily attaching paper clips and erasers to the strings just to see what the resultant percussive sounds would be, since it led to a lot of re-tuning jobs.

Back to Sondheim -- anyone here an "Into the Woods" fan? Seems like the right group -- what happens after happily ever after, and what happens when a whole group of fairy tale characters run into one another? (And the main theme would be a fitting candidate for the Ear Worm thread.)

I've always wanted to see Into the Woods! The closest I've gotten is helping a student with part of the score. *is sad* But I've heard some of the music and it's absolutely wonderful.

I can honestly say that I've never heard of dodecaphonics. All I found with google were sites for Vanderbilt's and Dartmouth's men's choirs. Both named the dodecaphonics. hmmmm, perhaps we'll get to dodecaphonics later this semester in my 20th cent. music course.

Dodecaphonics = fancy way of saying twelve-tone music.

You can get Into the Woods Original Broadway Cast and Sunday in the Park with George (also worth a listen) on DVD -- both with Bernadette Peters. No One Is Alone (from Into the Woods) is probably the best-known song, but I'm really partial to the melancholy and resignation of No More -- beautiful.

(Dodecaphonics is the same as 12 tone music, only in latin)

Hanns Eisler wrote a number of songs to poems by Bert Brecht using 12 tone. They are suprisingly catchy. His explanation for that is something that a lot of modern composers should take to their heart:

He now wanted to show also on the instance of vocal compositions...that you can "make music with the 12 tone technique in a way that is simple, easy to understand and logic...To prove this was in particular essential since at large, works that are written in the 12 tone system are factured in such an overly complex way that one has to ask: Is this method of composing inevitably combined with such a complicated diction, or would this method allow for a simple style, suitable also for the broad masses?"

The songs are the first (1938) version of the three elegies "To those who come after (An die Nachgeborenen)", and one from the children's songs "Kleines Bettellied (Singt noch einmal ein Lied)" which I haven't found a translated title for. If you can get hold of them, try them out!

Edit: I found one source naming the poem "Little begging song". Its text seems to have been translated in Bertolt Brecht: Poems 1913-1956, but I know of no english song version.

Edit2: You shouldn't give links you have not tried out yourself. I just gave a link to a sound sample of the song, but then I found out it is the version by Paul Dessau, not the one by Eisler.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/09/2007 12:32AM by PrinzHilde.