Atonality describes music that does not use a tonal center or key.

It applies to music that does

not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies which characterized European classical music
between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Atonality usually describes compositions
written from about 1907 to the present day where tonality is not used as a primary foundation
for the work.

Although there were progressive composers such as Josef Suk who individually
experimented in chromatic polyphony leading towards atonality, the most prominent school
to compose in this manner was the Second Viennese School of Arnold Schoenberg, Alban
Berg, and Anton Webern. Composers such as George Antheil, Béla Bartók, John Cage,
Carlos Chávez, Aaron Copland, Roberto Gerhard, Alberto Ginastera, Alois Haba, Josef
Matthias Hauer, Carl Ruggles, Luigi Russolo, Roger Sessions, Nikos Skalkottas, Toru
Takemitsu, Edgard Varèse, and others, including jazz artists such as Anthony Braxton,
Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Cecil Taylor (Radano 1993, 108-109), have written
music that is described as atonal, and many traditional composers “flirted with atonality,” in
the words of Leonard Bernstein.

Though atonality and the resulting dissonance which it often produces can provide certain
expressive or atmospheric conditions in music, as a end unto itself (dissonance for
dissonance's sake) did not find favor with many composers until after World War II when
serialist and formulaic methodologies began to hold sway in modern composition. Some
composers were highly outspoken about the "soulless" aspect of atonal music.

In a "manifesto" written in 1932, Ottorino Respighi was among several prominent Italian
composers who denounced atonality as being decidedly inhumane in its rationale. Among
other things the document bemoaned the "mechanical" and hyper-intellectual methodologies
employed by composers of the avant-garde. Respighi and his counterparts viewed the atonal
utterances of the avant-garde as being absurdist on certain levels in that it neglected, and even
displayed a hostility, to the old musical order in which melody and perceptual clarity were
necessary for understanding and communication. In an interview he stated: "Dissonance has
its place as a medium of tone-color and polytonality has important uses as a means of
expression, but for their own sake, they are completely abhorrent to me."1

1 "Atonality." - New World Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, 27 Nov. 2012. Web. 06 Feb. 2016.