Atonalno

Atonalno is a term used in several South Slavic languages to describe music that lacks a tonal center or key. In English this concept is called atonality or atonal music. Atonal music does not establish a stable tonic or a hierarchical system of chords around a key; instead, it treats pitches more evenly, which often yields ambiguity, tension, or a sense of openness. It may be chromatic, freely organized, or generated by formal procedures such as tone-row methods.

Historically, atonal music emerged in the early 20th century with the work of the Second Viennese School, notably Arnold Schoenberg, who argued for the emancipation of dissonance from the traditional tonal system. He and his followers, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, explored approaches to organize pitch without a conventional key. The twelve-tone technique, which uses a series of all twelve pitch classes as the basis for musical material, became a central method for achieving an organized but atonal musical language. Later composers—Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and others—expanded and varied these ideas.

Characteristics commonly associated with atonality include the absence of a functional tonal hierarchy, complex chromaticism, and a focus on texture, timbre, and rhythm over traditional harmony. Techniques such as serialism, pitch-class sets, inversion, retrograde, and transposition are often used, though not all atonal music employs every method. Some works blur the boundary between tonal and atonal practice and may imply local centers or pitch collections without a fixed key.

Atonalno remains a central concept in musicology for describing a broad range of practices that depart from conventional tonal harmony, and it has significantly influenced 20th-century and contemporary composition.