Atonality

Atonality describes music that departs from the system of tonal hierarchies, which characterizes the sound of classical European music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Atonality usually describes compositions written from about 1900 to the present day, where the hierarchy of tonal centers is not used as the primary way to organize a work. Tonal centers gradually replaced modal organization starting in the 1500s and culminated with the establishment of the major-minor key system in the late 1600s and early 1700s.

See also

• Emancipation of Dissonance
• List of atonal pieces