atonaladj.

1922 A. E. Hull in Musical Opinion Oct. 48/3 Keyboard chord-writing as well as linear, tonal as well as Atonal.

1923 Observer 11 Nov. 8/4 Modern music in Vienna. ‘Atonal’ and otherwise.

1928 Observer 18 Mar. 12/5 His music is distinguished by simplicity, melody, and genuine feeling. Despite the dicta of the ‘atonal’ composers, significantly enough, he reverts to fugues with marked effect.

1928 Daily Express 25 June 10/6 Eugene Goossens himself said recently that ‘modern music composition has come to an impasse in its trend towards laboratory atonalism’.

1936 Scrutiny V. 153 Atonalism would seem to be an adequate medium for the expression of certain precious, morbid, esoteric sensibilities.

1929 P. C. Buck Hist. Mus. iii. 34 Nor as a means of destroying the key-scale as the atonalists of today are using it.

1936 Scrutiny V. 153 The fact that the works of the most relentless of the atonalists, Webern, rarely last more than a minute or so..is surely significant.

1952 B. Ulanov Hist. Jazz in Amer. xxiii. 330 He can teach almost anything..from counterpoint to atonalist formulations.

1963 Listener 14 Feb. 313/3 Luigi Dallapiccola, an atonalist who has remained faithful to his country's abiding concern for melody.

1922 A. E. Hull in Musical Opinion Oct. 48/1 I have been working for two years at a system of non-tonal harmony, which I had long been unable to christen. Now, after visiting no less than seven foreign countries I not only find that the thing is widely known as Atonality, but [etc.].

1923 Mus. Assoc. Proc. 1922–3 67 We find the principle of polytonality or atonality superseding the old key system.

1958 Times Lit. Suppl. 4 July 372/3 What began as atonality is now called dodecaphony..or..serialism.

1930 Mus. Assoc. Proc. 97 To write atonally in a harmonic form at present is to produce a thought ‘heterodyne’.

1958 Listener 18 Dec. 1051/1 Schönberg who was also writing atonally in such a work as the Five Pieces for orchestra.