Review: “The Birth of Atonality” by Toshie Kakinuma

If you have learned the history of 20th-century music as a linear narrative in which Wagner’s extreme chromaticism led to the collapse of tonality, from which Schoenberg created atonal music that evolved into the twelve-tone technique, then this book will fundamentally shake your perspective on music history and provide a new kind of intellectual excitement.

Toshie Kakinuma’s book, *The Birth of “Atonality”: The Future of Music in an Age Without Dominants*, poses a fundamental challenge to this “myth” of music history that many of us have accepted without question.

The book begins with a question so simple, yet one that everyone has avoided: Where did the word “atonality” actually come from?

Surprisingly, it was not coined by Schoenberg himself. Around 1906, it was a term born from the emotional reactions of audiences and critics who, finding his work too difficult to comprehend, dismissed it as “not musical” or “unmusical.” It was, in essence, more of an “impression” than a formal term.

Schoenberg, who would later be called the “founder of atonal music,” despised this label. He referred to his own music as “pan-tonality,” believing that tonality had not disappeared but had instead been expanded to encompass all tonalities, creating a new, broader form. This was a highly original philosophy that sought a more comprehensive state of music, transcending the dualism of major and minor keys.

The book meticulously traces the origins of this term, exposing the fragility of the conventional, evolutionist view of music history that posits “tonal music collapsed, and a new music called atonality was born in its wake.”

However, the true essence of this book goes beyond a mere reconsideration of music theory. The author brilliantly illustrates how the concept of “atonality” became intertwined with politics and ethics outside the realm of music.

At the time, Schoenberg’s aim of “liberation from the shackles of tonality” gave rise to a discourse of “atonality = freedom” and “atonality = revolution,” which was further amplified by the tides of history.

In particular, the Nazis’ rejection of atonal music as “degenerate music” paradoxically ingrained the view among musicians and intellectuals that “the music Hitler hated must be the truly sincere and noble art.”

Behind this was the influential musicologist and philosopher Theodor W. Adorno. As a staunch defender of Schoenberg, he went so far as to criticize composers who continued to write tonal music as “reactionary.” For Adorno, this was not merely a matter of musical taste but an ethical imperative for someone who had experienced the atrocities of Nazism.

A picture emerges of an era where, under such political pressure, many composers “converted” to the twelve-tone technique against their true intentions or felt a palpable sense of coercion.

This is a sobering reminder of how the act of musical creation is inextricably linked to the influences of its time and society. An anecdote in which cellist Julian Lloyd Webber stated at a later Davos conference that “‘atonal music,’ banned by Hitler, is now paradoxically persecuting tonal music” serves as a compelling symbol of this absurd situation.

If the conventional view of history is flawed, how should we re-evaluate the music of the 20th century? Author Toshie Kakinuma argues that “tonality did not collapse; it expanded.”

By abandoning the “atonality versus tonality” dichotomy, we are awakened to the fact that “tonal” composers who were previously overlooked, such as Sibelius and Britten, were in fact expanding the possibilities of tonality through new techniques and cyclical time structures.

Furthermore, the analysis of early Penderecki, revealing that “even within seemingly radical avant-garde works, traditional temporal structures were hidden,” teaches us the importance of looking beyond surface styles to grasp the true essence of a composer’s work.

This book vividly illustrates how the music of the 20th century and beyond has formed a diverse and rich landscape, rather than converging into a single historical mainstream.

As we have seen, *The Birth of “Atonality”* is a book of intellectual adventure that reconstructs existing knowledge.

Reading this book—whether you are a music lover, a creator, or a scholar—will be an experience of dismantling and rebuilding your framework of understanding.

The narrative, which traces the question of whether “atonality” as a concept ever truly existed in a reversed, almost inverted manner, takes on the quality of a high-class mystery or documentary, guided by the author’s detailed prose.

Upon finishing, you will find yourself listening to the music of the 20th century and beyond with a different perspective, equipped with the inspiration to form a new vision of what music can be.

Table of Contents for “The Birth of Atonality”

About the Author

Toshie Kakinuma

Born in Shizuoka Prefecture. Completed her Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego, with a dissertation on Harry Partch.
Her publications include “American Experimental Music Was Ethnic Music” (Film Art Sha, 2005). Major translations include John Cage’s “Silence” (Suiseisha, 1996), “Issues of Cultural Identity” edited by Stuart Hall et al. (co-translation, Omura Shoten, 2000), “Selected Works of Alan Lomax” (Misuzu Shobo, 2007), and Alex Ross’s “The Rest Is Noise” (Misuzu Shobo, 2010, winner of the Music Pen Club Japan Award) and “Listen to This” (Misuzu Shobo, 2015).
Her articles include “The Activities of the Lomaxes, Father and Son: From ‘Folk Song’ to ‘Cantometrics'” in “World Music from the Perspective of Folk Song: Exploring the Geomythology of Song,” edited by Shuhei Hosokawa (Minerva Shobo, 2012).
She was a professor at the Faculty of Music, Kyoto City University of Arts until March 2019 and is currently a professor emeritus. She is also a certified master (natori) of the “Ichigenkin,” a one-stringed koto that became popular during the Edo period and is still passed down today. (Quote from the book)