Atonalism

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The school of atonal musical composition uncountable, usually

    "No matter how melodramatic the story behind the music might be, most audiences won't buy atonalism; Arnold Schoenberg could have been devoured by escaped circus tigers while he was finishing the Variations for Orchestra and it would still get booed off the stage."

  2. 2
    the absence of a key; alternative to the diatonic system wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
atonalityatonalitycacophonyclinkerdiaphonydisharmony

Example

More examples

"No matter how melodramatic the story behind the music might be, most audiences won't buy atonalism; Arnold Schoenberg could have been devoured by escaped circus tigers while he was finishing the Variations for Orchestra and it would still get booed off the stage."

Etymology

From atonal + -ism.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.