Post-Tonal Music Theory

Introductory Terms

• Aleatoric Music - using some degree of random or chance procedures to introduce interdeterminacy, often left up to the performer, who may be given a variety of options to follow as he/she wishes, even decided during a performance.
• Atonal Music - the techniques and styles of pitch organization that result from a search for alternatives fo functional tonality.
• Functional Tonality - chords have a harmonic or tonal function that create a relationship with each other, often in relation to the tonic, dominant, and pre-dominant chords.
• Minimalism - short melodic and rhymic figures combined with a pulsing beat and a large amount of repeition, with subtle changes gradually introduced as a form of development.
• Neotonal (Neo-Romantic) Music - a revitatlization of tonality that began in the final decades of the twntieth century.
• Pitch Centricity - the organization of pitches around one or more pitch centers, not necessarily including a system of pitch hierarches around a tonic.
• Post-Serial Music - an evolution of twelve-tone (pitch) serialism that use additional elements of music such as rhythm, timbre, dynamics, register, etc.
• Twlve-Tone Serialism - a system of pitch organization that attempts to avoid pitch centricity by following organization of the twelve chromatic pitches in a subscribed order - what is commonly referred to as a "row". All twelve chromatic notes are stated without repitition initially and form the basis for a section or an entire piece of music. Arnold Schoenberg is the most prominent name associated with this technique.