Posttonal

Posttonal is a term used in musicology to describe music that lies beyond the functional tonality that dominated Western art music from the Baroque through the Romantic era. In posttonal works there is often no single key center, and harmony may be nonfunctional or organized by systems other than traditional key relations. The scope includes atonality, polytonality, and other approaches that do not rely on a tonal grammar.

The term emerged in the early 20th century as composers such as Arnold Schoenberg questioned tonal legitimacy. Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone method, while Webern and Berg expanded the non-tonal vocabulary through concise, pointillistic textures. In later decades posttonal techniques broadened to serialism, spectral music, and other modernist languages.

Key techniques associated with posttonal music include pitch-class organization, tone rows and their transformations, and nonfunctional chord landscapes. Composers often emphasize motive development, timbre, and rhythm over traditional harmonic progression, though some posttonal works reference tonal elements in unconventional ways.

The term remains debated among scholars. Some use posttonal as an umbrella for all music outside conventional tonality, while others reserve it for broader non-tonal or nonfunctional systems. Examples across the 20th century demonstrate the diversity of approaches that fall under the posttonal label.