free atonality
Definition
Music that avoids establishing a tonal centre but does not yet use the systematic twelve-tone method. Free atonality emerged in the works of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern around 1908–1909 as the logical endpoint of the intense chromatic language of late Romanticism. Berg's Piano Sonata Op.1 stands precisely at the boundary: it still has a key signature of B minor and returns to B at its close, but the harmonic language throughout is too chromatic to be heard as conventionally tonal. His Op.5 clarinet pieces (1913) are fully freely atonal, with no tonal reference points.
Interpretive Guidance
Playing freely atonal music requires abandoning the expectation that dissonances will resolve in the familiar tonal way. In Op.1, tension accumulates differently: through developing variation, through the return of motivic ideas transformed, through registral and dynamic shape. Identify the motivic cells rather than chasing chord progressions.