Word: atonalist
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Most relentless Atonalist was gloomy, bald-headed Arnold Schöberg, who in his time influenced at least half the younger composers of Europe. Other eminent Atonalists, all Schöberg disciples: Anton von Webern, who wrote orchestral pieces like the slight whine of a determined mosquito; the late Alban Berg, who wrote the atrabilious opera Wozzeck; Ernest Krenek, who once relapsed so far into cheerfulness as to write an imitation jazz opera called Johnny Spielt...
Atonality is no longer as fashionable as it was, and even No. 1 Atonalist Schönberg, who is now in Hollywood (but not of it), has begun to put slightly more melodious whistles in his work. Not so, his disciple Krenek. Last spring Composer Krenek, in an article in Musical America, deplored the reaction of his contemporaries, exhorted them to turn back to the stern old days of esthetic revolution, of completely tuneless music...
...While the music of Jewish Atonalist Arnold Schönberg was immediately blacklisted, compositions by "Aryan" Atonalist Paul Hindemith have occasionally been heard, those of "Aryan" Atonalist Alban Berg were heard as late as 1934. Russian Modernist Igor Stravinsky is still a popular composer in the Third Reich...
Among the big figures of the modernist musical movement, many, including Stravinsky, Schönberg, and Prokofieff, are today writing a much milder and more melodious type of music than they were in modernism's heyday. In a current article in Musical America Atonalist Ernest Krenek sighed for the good old days of musical revolution. Wailed Composer Krenek: "Moderns are saying atonality is passe. Most contemporary music is reactionary...