a commonly misused term which refers to music having no perceived tonal center This perception is often due to the uneducated ears of the listener Twelve-tone and serial music can almost always be referred to as atonal Also, many 19th century compositions (Liszt's Nuages gris for instance or the opening section of the Faust Symphony) can also be referred to as atonal (although these works or passages may be more correctly described by the term suspended tonality)
Music which rejects traditional tonality Music which abandons the use of a tonic or key center to which all the notes and chords of a piece are related
In music, the absence of functional harmony as a primary structural element. Probably originally a pejorative term applied to music of extreme chromaticism, it has become the most widely used descriptive term for 20th-century music whose connection with tonality is difficult to hear. Arnold Schoenberg and his students Alban Berg and Anton Webern are regarded as the seminal atonal composers; the serialism of their later work is often distinguished from their earlier "free atonality
Atonality music avoids any key or mode by making free use of all twelve notes of the chromatic scale Since all twelve notes are given equal importance, there is no pull towards any central tonic