Atonal Music is Pretty!

I have been enjoying our atonal music projects!
I was signed up for composition last September and when I realized we had to do atonal stuff I dropped it thinking that I wouldn't like to write that stuff so I would just nevermind-
But! now that we have been writing and listening to atonal music for a month an a half, I actually really like it and sometimes when I'm listening to something I can't tell right away if it is tonal or not because the atonal stuff doesn't jump out at me as weird or ugly anymore. A lot of it is really beautiful. And even the stuff that's not meant to be pretty isn't so bad either! I like that we can just listen to the intensity and colours of the chords and interactions of the notes. It's a really new way of listening to things and I think it opens up a lot of creative and expressive doors.

This reminds me of learning in history class that people used to cringe when they heard 7th chords and today we don't notice anything dissonant about it. I think that is going to happen with atonal music as younger people will hear more and more of this as they grow up they won't automatically think that dissonance is ugly.

I also think it's really neat how some of the compositions in class are so beautiful, as I used to associate atonality with really dissonant crunchy chords. It's neat how atonal chords can be high AND low in intensity and that project from the begining of the term was a big eye opener for me in that regard.

So there it is. I like atonal music.