The Death of Tonality in Classical Music — Finale: Modern/ Contemporary Era
The century of unparalleled developments has arrived. Lined with death and destruction in the form of two world wars, this new era destroyed what little security humanity had left within it. Yet even with this loss of hope, there were still those who sought to march on; Two composers would ultimately spearhead musical development in the 20th century acting as polar opposites to one another.
The Duel of Tonality
Shoenberg and Stravinsky would both rise out of the 20th-century crisis as bitter rivals; Even with this antagonism, they still sought to achieve the same thing: reviving the slowly dying western classical music tradition.
The Harbinger of Atonality
Hoping to revitalize the Germanic tradition of western classical music, Shoenberg freely embraced atonality and utilized a system that would come to be known as serialism (since it used all 12 tones in a series in the opening tone row). To see what this all means, let’s take a look at the second part of this 33rd opus (33b).
Following the rules of serialism, this composition opens with a tone row, where every single note of the chromatic scale (in any octave) is played exactly once. It is followed by a tone row that has undergone an inversion, where the notes look like they are mirrored. After the first four bars are done, the tone row undergoes a retrograde (to step backward), where the notes appear backward, going from the last note of the tone row to the first note.
There are some other parameters and bits of jargon, but what I just explained to you is really the most you have to know about serial music. It codified atonality, and Shoenberg even said that this style would allow the Germanic musical tradition to persist for another century (it clearly didn’t).
Although it does have its own lost and slightly expressive bits, this piece is largely an avante-garde demonstration of the triumph of chromaticism and the nonessential nature of tonality. All notes are treated equally, and the only order is seen in the actual serial form and technique and not in diatonicism.
The Devious Genius
On the flip side, Stravinsky arose as a devious tonalist who butted heads with Shoenberg’s atonal methods. Instead of using serialism — he did have a serialist period in the later stages of his life — Stravinsky used syntactic techniques such as polytonality and polyrhythm to fashion atonality derived from the interactions of differing tonal centers and metric rhythms.
Moreover, he subsumed a wide variety of music, ranging from the Indian Raag to bebop jazz. Through these varying cultural influences, Stravinsky revitalized classical music through an eclecticism that had never been truly seen before in western classical music. Although many would lambast his somewhat crude attempts at composing traditional music and others critiqued his use of “inferior” music, the fusion of these musical methods and his sharp wit created a rich and revitalized form of classical music.
I usually like to look at piano pieces, but my absolute adoration of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” has brought me out of this routine. Based on Russian Folk traditions, the Rite of Spring is a bombastic and jarring piece that uses the aforementioned techniques of polyrhythms and polytonality to invoke a more primitive and primordial display of humanity’s relationship with the earth and tradition.
In the second section of the piece, “Augurs of Spring,” the harsh mixture of two tonal chords in the strings section provides a raucous texture that is accentuated by the random accents which are coupled with two tonal chords from the horns section.
The atonalism that arises is not from the absence of tonality seen in serialism, but it is created through the overabundance of tonality. Looking at the repeated chords of the strings, chords that bark the keys of E-flat and E (F-flat) major are juxtaposed against one another. Being only a semitone apart, the minor difference is noticeable and it leads to a conflict of what key we actually belong in.
To put this idea into an analogy, imagine having multiple mayors for a single city. Although there isn’t pure anarchy, there is still an ambiguousness to the “true” authority as each mayor has their own claims to govern the city, leading to a disorderly state that is only just above pure anarchy.
In the next section, the “Ritual of Abduction” polyrhythms come to play a primary role in invoking the unorderly nature of the ritual. I’ll just summarize the shifts in the rhythm below (if you want to see the score, go to page 32 of the pdf), and keep in mind that all of these shifts happen over the course of only 80ish seconds.
9/8→4/8→5/8→9/8→12/8 and 4/4→9/8(4/8+5/8)→9/8 (5/8+4/8)→6/8→7/8→3/4→6/8→2/4→6/8→3/4→9/8→3/8→5/8→4/8→5/8→6/8→5/8→2/8→6/8→3/4→6/8→2/8→6/8→ 4/6(2/4)→6/8→3/4→4/8(2/4)→3/4→4/4
With these rapid changes happening almost every second, the feeling of unpredictability pushes forward the true abductive nature that this soundscape creates. Instead of using melodies or harmonies to progress a story, Stravinsky uses changes in rhythm as a way to invoke movement within this piece(and also his other works).
Despite their contrasting and controversial pieces of music, Shoenberg and Stravinsky both solidified the dominance of atonality. Over the course of around 300 years, diatonicism was slowly falling by the wayside, and now it finally met its end. Chromaticism in all its expressiveness triumphed. And with it, the security and order of diatonicism were lifted.
In the 19th century, humanity had just reached its adolescence, being exposed to the problems that persist within our artificial means of order. Intrinsic meaning and cultural traditions that had persisted for millennia are being questioned, and their degradation allowed for unadulterated freedom.
Atonality and its later predecessors were a symptom of this liberation from previous traditions and the need for objective expression. Now, pieces were not subject to religiosity or the innate feelings of the composer but instead exist in their own little bubble, representing totally different worlds of being from the composer.
Stravinsky’s dualisms (such as primordial vs modern in the Rite of Spring) manifested themselves in their own contained spheres, isolating vast stretches of music (and to a larger extent, the universe itself) and demonstrating the superficial nature of humanity’s traditional order.
The death of tonality isn’t a bad thing, just as the existence of tonality isn’t always a good thing. However, with its death, the borders of western classical music have now become obsolete as composers and musicians explore the unknown outside of tonality. In a sense, the death of tonality finally allowed us to grow up and accept the delights and dangers that inhabit the ambiguity of life.
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