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47-415: Though often atonal , highly abstract, and dissonant in sound, New Complexity music is most readily characterized by the use of techniques which require complex musical notation . This includes extended techniques , complex and often unstable textures , microtonality , highly disjunct melodic contour , complex layered rhythms, abrupt changes in texture, and so on. It is also characterized, in contrast to

94-558: A song cycle for soprano and chamber ensemble, demonstrates many traits found in New Complexity music. In addition to being generally difficult to learn and perform, the pitch vocabulary makes heavy use of microtones—in this case, equal-tempered quarter tones . It also contains many tuplets of unusual ratios which are nested in multiple layers. Rapid changes, sometimes from note to note, happen in dynamics, articulation, and playing technique, including techniques such as multiphonics on

141-545: A basic cell or the linking of two or more basic cells". Regarding the post-tonal music of Perle, one theorist wrote: "While ... montages of discrete-seeming elements tend to accumulate global rhythms other than those of tonal progressions and their rhythms, there is a similarity between the two sorts of accumulates spatial and temporal relationships: a similarity consisting of generalized arching tone-centers linked together by shared background referential materials". Another approach of composition techniques for atonal music

188-486: A few yet to follow soon were termed 'atonal,' by I know not whom, and I prefer not to know, for in no sense does the term make sense. Not only does the music employ 'tones,' but it employs precisely the same 'tones,' the same physical materials, that music had employed for some two centuries. In all generosity, 'atonal' may have been intended as a mildly analytically derived term to suggest 'atonic' or to signify 'a-triadic tonality', but, even so there were infinitely many things

235-515: A means of organizing more coherently the relations used in the pre-serial 'free atonal' music. ... Thus, many useful and crucial insights about even strictly serial music depend only on such basic atonal theory". Late 19th- and early 20th-century composers such as Alexander Scriabin , Claude Debussy , Béla Bartók , Paul Hindemith , Sergei Prokofiev , Igor Stravinsky , and Edgard Varèse have written music that has been described, in full or in part, as atonal. While music without

282-402: A piece as being in one key or another". Composer Walter Piston , on the other hand, said that, out of long habit, whenever performers "play any little phrase they will hear it in some key—it may not be the right one, but the point is they will play it with a tonal sense. ... [T]he more I feel I know Schoenberg's music the more I believe he thought that way himself. ... And it isn't only

329-421: A set of foundational assumptions in terms of which the compositions that are collectively designated by the expression 'atonal music' can be said to represent 'a system' of composition". Equal-interval chords are often of indeterminate root, mixed-interval chords are often best characterized by their interval content, while both lend themselves to atonal contexts. Perle also points out that structural coherence

376-407: A symmetry with respect to the axis formed by 0 and 6. If we carry on with our example [0 3 6] becomes [0 9 6]. An important characteristic are the invariants, which are the notes which stay identical after a transformation. No difference is made between the octave in which the note is played so that, for example, all C ♯ s are equivalent, no matter the octave in which they actually occur. This

423-466: A tonal center had been previously written, for example Franz Liszt 's Bagatelle sans tonalité of 1885, it is with the coming of the twentieth century that the term atonality began to be applied to pieces, particularly those written by Arnold Schoenberg and The Second Viennese School. The term "atonality" was coined in 1907 by Joseph Marx in a scholarly study of tonality, which was later expanded into his doctoral thesis. Their music arose from what

470-938: Is clear from a large number of composers invited from North America; these included Ignacio Baca-Lobera from Mexico and Aaron Cassidy, Franklin Cox, Chris Mercer, Steven Takasugi, and Mark Osborn from the United States. There are various individual performers who have become to varying degrees closely associated with the movement, among them flautists Nancy Ruffer and Lisa Cella, oboists Christopher Redgate and Peter Veale, clarinettists Carl Rosman , Andrew Sparling and Michael Norsworthy , pianists Augustus Arnone , James Clapperton , Nicolas Hodges , Mark Knoop , Marilyn Nonken, Mark Gasser , Ermis Theodorakis , and Ian Pace , violinists Mieko Kanno and Mark Menzies, cellists Franklin Cox , Arne Deforce and Friedrich Gauwerky. A number of ensembles are also known for performing New Complexity works, such as

517-402: Is given by Allen Forte who developed the theory behind atonal music. Forte describes two main operations: transposition and inversion . Transposition can be seen as a rotation of t either clockwise or anti-clockwise on a circle, where each note of the chord is rotated equally. For example, if t = 2 and the chord is [0 3 6], transposition (clockwise) will be [2 5 8]. Inversion can be seen as

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564-453: Is most often achieved through operations on intervallic cells. A cell "may operate as a kind of microcosmic set of fixed intervallic content, statable either as a chord or as a melodic figure or as a combination of both. Its components may be fixed with regard to order, in which event it may be employed, like the twelve-tone set, in its literal transformations. … Individual tones may function as pivotal elements, to permit overlapping statements of

611-570: Is neither tonal nor serial , especially the pre- twelve-tone music of the Second Viennese School , principally Alban Berg , Arnold Schoenberg , and Anton Webern . However, "as a categorical label, 'atonal' generally means only that the piece is in the Western tradition and is not 'tonal ' ", although there are longer periods, e.g., medieval, renaissance, and modern modal music to which this definition does not apply. "Serialism arose partly as

658-556: Is normally heard on the thematic or linear level. That is, centricity may be established through the repetition of a central pitch or from emphasis by means of instrumentation, register, rhythmic elongation, or metric accent. Swiss conductor, composer, and musical philosopher Ernest Ansermet , a critic of atonal music, wrote extensively on this in the book Les fondements de la musique dans la conscience humaine (The Foundations of Music in Human Consciousness), where he argued that

705-433: Is why the 12-note scale is represented by a circle. This leads us to the definition of the similarity between two chords which considers the subsets and the interval content of each chord. The term "atonality" itself has been controversial. Arnold Schoenberg , whose music is generally used to define the term, was vehemently opposed to it, arguing that "The word 'atonal' could only signify something entirely inconsistent with

752-629: The Arditti Quartet , JACK Quartet , Ensemble Exposé, Thallein Ensemble , Ensemble 21, Ensemble SurPlus, and ELISION Ensemble . Works by Ferneyhough and Dillon, in particular, have been taken on by a wider range of European ensembles, including ensemble recherche , Ensemble Accroche-Note, the Nieuw Ensemble, and Ensemble Contrechamps. Sources A collection of articles on most of the British members of

799-536: The Sydney Conservatorium of Music . He has performed in Europe, Asia, Australasia and both North and South America as a soloist. He is closely associated with composers such as Brian Ferneyhough , Michael Finnissy , Richard Barrett , Chris Dench and Liza Lim , as well as frequently performing such composers as Pierre Boulez , Helmut Lachenmann and Vinko Globokar . He is also a conductor and co-director of

846-495: The British influence, via the teaching efforts of Brian Ferneyhough and Michael Finnissy, was decisive in the origins of this movement, initial support came not from British institutions but rather from performers and promoters of new music in continental Europe, particularly at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse where Ferneyhough coordinated the composition courses from 1984 to 1992. Ferneyhough's Etudes Transcendantales ,

893-460: The Darmstadt courses, and with considerable divergence amongst themselves in styles and techniques. This can be seen in the range of nationalities of composers interested in this aesthetic direction, the international interest of ensembles in this music, and the impact of teachers such as James Dillon, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf , and Brian Ferneyhough in both Germany and the United States. One example of

940-417: The New Complexity. Atonal Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center , or key . Atonality , in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a single, central triad is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale function independently of one another. More narrowly,

987-540: The classical musical language was a precondition for musical expression with its clear, harmonious structures. Ansermet argued that a tone system can only lead to a uniform perception of music if it is deduced from just a single interval. For Ansermet this interval is the fifth. In France, on December 20, 2012, French pianist Jérôme Ducros gave a conference at the Collège de France entitled Atonalism. And after? as part of Karol Beffa 's chair of artistic creation. He compares

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1034-776: The concept of a movement with his article "Four Facets of the New Complexity"; Toop's article emphasizes the individuality of four composers ( Richard Barrett , Chris Dench, James Dillon , and Michael Finnissy ), both in terms of their working methods and the sound of their compositions, and demonstrates that they did not constitute a unified "school of thought". In the UK, particularly at the instigation of ensembles Suoraan and later Ensemble Exposé, works by "New Complexity" composers were for some time frequently programmed together with then unfashionable non-UK composers including Xenakis and Feldman , but also such diverse figures as Clarence Barlow , Hans-Joachim Hespos , and Heinz Holliger . Although

1081-475: The discursive properties of tonal language and non-tonal languages, largely giving the advantage to the former, and considers the return of tonality as inevitable. This conference sparked a heated controversy in the French musical world. An example of atonal music would be Arnold Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire”, which is a song cycle composed in 1912. The work uses a technique called “Sprechstimme” or spoken singing, and

1128-412: The end of World War II . After Schoenberg's death, Igor Stravinsky used the twelve-tone technique. Iannis Xenakis generated pitch sets from mathematical formulae, and also saw the expansion of tonal possibilities as part of a synthesis between the hierarchical principle and the theory of numbers, principles which have dominated music since at least the time of Parmenides . The twelve-tone technique

1175-772: The ensemble Libra, as well a member of the ELISION Ensemble . He also often performs works involving singing and spoken text; Richard Barrett's work Interference exploits both his vocal and clarinet-playing abilities, and he gave the premiere of Aaron Cassidy 's work for solo voice, I, purples, spat blood, laugh of beautiful lips . He has also performed concerts featuring nineteenth-century melodrama works for speaker and piano, notably with pianists Mark Knoop and Ian Pace and sung lieder by Schubert and Schumann. He has recorded for ETCETERA, NMC, and ABC Classics. He has also written on music for periodicals. He lives in Cologne where he

1222-422: The exceptional and the normal became more and more blurred. As a result, there was a "concomitant loosening" of the synthetic bonds through which tones and harmonies had been related to one another. The connections between harmonies were uncertain even on the lowest chord-to-chord level. On higher levels, long-range harmonic relationships and implications became so tenuous, that they hardly functioned at all. At best,

1269-482: The felt probabilities of the style system had become obscure. At worst, they were approaching a uniformity, which provided few guides for either composition or listening. The first phase, known as "free atonality" or "free chromaticism", involved a conscious attempt to avoid traditional diatonic harmony. Works of this period include the opera Wozzeck (1917–1922) by Alban Berg and Pierrot lunaire (1912) by Schoenberg. The second phase, begun after World War I ,

1316-476: The inspiration for serialism. Atonality emerged as a pejorative term to condemn music in which chords were organized seemingly with no apparent coherence. In Nazi Germany , atonal music was attacked as " Bolshevik " and labeled as degenerate ( Entartete Musik ) along with other music produced by enemies of the Nazi regime. Many composers had their works banned by the regime, not to be played until after its collapse at

1363-623: The international spread of the movement can be found in the Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik during the leadership of the composer Wolfram Schurig from 1995 to 2006. Although numerous other compositional directions were represented as well, this festival was prominent during this decade for its support of composers associated with the New Complexity, in many respects replacing the Darmstadter Ferienkurse in leadership in this compositional direction. The international nature of its programming

1410-476: The movement can be found in the issue "Aspects of Complexity in Recent British Music", edited Tom Morgan, Contemporary Music Review 13, no. 1 (1995). The journal Perspectives of New Music also published a two-part "Complexity Forum", edited by James Boros, in volumes 31, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 6–85, and 32, no.1 (Winter 1994): 90–227 which included some contributions by and about composers associated with

1457-580: The music is atonal, meaning that there is no clear tonal center or key. Instead, the notes of the chromatic scale function independently of each other, and the harmonies do not follow the traditional tonal hierarchy found in classical music. The result is a dissonant and jarring sound that is quite different from the harmonies found in tonal music. Carl Rosman Carl Rosman is an Australian clarinettist, singer and conductor. Rosman studied with Phillip Miechel in Melbourne, then with Peter Jenkin at

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1504-567: The music of the immediate post–World War II serialists, by the frequent reliance of its composers on poetic conceptions, very often implied in the titles of individual works and work-cycles. The origin of the name New Complexity is uncertain; amongst the candidates suggested for having coined it are the composer Nigel Osborne , the Belgian musicologist Harry Halbreich , and the British-Australian musicologist Richard Toop , who gave currency to

1551-506: The music was not". "Atonal" developed a certain vagueness in meaning as a result of its use to describe a wide variety of compositional approaches that deviated from traditional chords and chord progressions . Attempts to solve these problems by using terms such as "pan-tonal", "non-tonal", "multi-tonal", "free-tonal" and "without tonal center" instead of "atonal" have not gained broad acceptance. Composer Anton Webern held that "new laws asserted themselves that made it impossible to designate

1598-460: The nature of tone... to call any relation of tones atonal is just as farfetched as it would be to designate a relation of colors aspectral or acomplementary. There is no such antithesis". Composer and theorist Milton Babbitt also disparaged the term, saying "The works that followed, many of them now familiar, include the Five Pieces for Orchestra , Erwartung , Pierrot Lunaire , and they and

1645-487: The oboe, glottal stops for the voice, and key-clicking for the flute. According to Richard Toop, the rhythm for the oboe part in the first song is almost totally determined by a strict system with five stages of complexity, each governed by its own cycle of numbers. By 1997, the composers associated with the New Complexity had become an international and geographically disjunctive movement, spread across North America, Europe, and Australia, many of them with little connection to

1692-458: The players; it's also the listeners. They will hear tonality in everything". Donald Jay Grout similarly doubted whether atonality is really possible, because "any combination of sounds can be referred to a fundamental root". He defined it as a fundamentally subjective category: "atonal music is music in which the person who is using the word cannot hear tonal centers". One difficulty is that even an otherwise "atonal" work, tonality "by assertion"

1739-560: The rules of the common practice period so that what was not allowed is required and what was required is not allowed. This is what was done by Charles Seeger in his explanation of dissonant counterpoint , which is a way to write atonal counterpoint. Kostka and Payne list four procedures as operational in the atonal music of Schoenberg, all of which may be taken as negative rules. Avoidance of melodic or harmonic octaves, avoidance of traditional pitch collections such as major or minor triads, avoidance of more than three successive pitches from

1786-470: The same diatonic scale, and use of disjunct melodies (avoidance of conjunct melodies). Further, Perle agrees with Oster and Katz that, "the abandonment of the concept of a root -generator of the individual chord is a radical development that renders futile any attempt at a systematic formulation of chord structure and progression in atonal music along the lines of traditional harmonic theory". Atonal compositional techniques and results "are not reducible to

1833-430: The subsequent distribution into individual elements brought three concepts into play: 1. Musical elements that had since been secondary to tonal form groups now became autonomous. 2. The absence of tonal coherence prompted the search for a unity that could connect the disjointed musical language in an alternative way. 3. Due to the replacement of diatonic principles, new concepts of form arose. The twelve-tone technique

1880-484: The system. His student, Anton Webern, however, is anecdotally claimed to have begun linking dynamics and tone color to the primary row, making rows not only of pitches but of other aspects of music as well. However, actual analysis of Webern's twelve-tone works has so far failed to demonstrate the truth of this assertion. One analyst concluded, following a minute examination of the Piano Variations, op. 27, that while

1927-444: The term atonality describes music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies that characterized European classical music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries . "The repertory of atonal music is characterized by the occurrence of pitches in novel combinations, as well as by the occurrence of familiar pitch combinations in unfamiliar environments". The term is also occasionally used to describe music that

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1974-529: The texture of this music may superficially resemble that of some serial music ... its structure does not. None of the patterns within separate nonpitch characteristics makes audible (or even numerical) sense in itself . The point is that these characteristics are still playing their traditional role of differentiation. Twelve-tone technique, combined with the parametrization (separate organization of four aspects of music : pitch, attack character, intensity, and duration) of Olivier Messiaen , would be taken as

2021-487: The vagueness and generality of the term. Additionally George Perle explains that, "the 'free' atonality that preceded dodecaphony precludes by definition the possibility of self-consistent, generally applicable compositional procedures". However, he provides one example as a way to compose atonal pieces, a pre-twelve-tone technique piece by Anton Webern, which rigorously avoids anything that suggests tonality, to choose pitches that do not imply tonality. In other words, reverse

2068-420: Was also preceded by nondodecaphonic serial composition used independently in the works of Alexander Scriabin, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók , Carl Ruggles , and others. "Essentially, Schoenberg and Hauer systematized and defined for their own dodecaphonic purposes a pervasive technical feature of 'modern' musical practice, the ostinato ." Setting out to compose atonal music may seem complicated because of both

2115-412: Was described as the "crisis of tonality" between the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in classical music . This situation had arisen over the course of the nineteenth century due to the increasing use of ambiguous chords , improbable harmonic inflections, and more unusual melodic and rhythmic inflections than what was possible within the styles of tonal music. The distinction between

2162-402: Was exemplified by attempts to create a systematic means of composing without tonality, most famously the method of composing with 12 tones or the twelve-tone technique. This period included Berg's Lulu and Lyric Suite , Schoenberg's Piano Concerto , his oratorio Die Jakobsleiter and numerous smaller pieces, as well as his last two string quartets. Schoenberg was the major innovator of

2209-422: Was preceded by Schoenberg's freely atonal pieces of 1908 to 1923, which, though free, often have as an "integrative element...a minute intervallic cell " that in addition to expansion may be transformed as with a tone row, and in which individual notes may "function as pivotal elements, to permit overlapping statements of a basic cell or the linking of two or more basic cells". The decay of the sense of tonality and

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