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Atonality: Atonal Music, 12 Tone, Serialism, and Why It Sounds Chaotic
Then there’s atonal music. No diatonic order, no tonal centre, no tonality.
Atonality refers to music composed deliberately without a tonal centre. It’s usually associated with, among others, Arnold Schoenberg and 12 tone serialism, attempting to establish "post-tonal" music. Serial composers seek to compose music with every note having the same importance, avoiding the likelihood of the listener recognizing a tonal centre. The result, atonal music, is practically unlistenable except by a hardy minority of masochists. But Schoenberg and the atonalists deserve credit for bravery, attempting as they did (unwittingly) to modify preferences in the human brain that evolved over millions of years.
Hardly anybody actually listens to atonal music because of the near exclusion of small-integer ratio intervals in melody and harmony. The brain hears atonal “music” as chaotic, irritating static.
The brain responds to small-integer-ratio tunes. That’s biological reality. It’s inborn, true of infants, true of adults, and applies cross-culturally.
Brain recognition of organized relationships of tones is not a science or technology. It does not become obsolete with the invention of “upgraded tonal technology” such as atonal composition. Tonality is linked in the brain directly with human emotions, which have not changed from generation to generation for many thousands of generations.