His musical language uses contrasting but essentially tonal elements stacked up to make the harmony spiky.
Although usually atonal, twelve tone music need not be-several pieces by Berg, for instance, have tonal elements.
Bernstein tries too self-consciously to make a conflict between tonal and nontonal elements into the substance of this piece.
The presence of tonal elements in both works barely matters.
His pungent harmonic language, combining tonal and atonal elements, eludes description.
In the last movement, according to Berg's self-analysis, the, "entire material, the tonal element too .
In composing his score, Mahler temporarily abandoned the more progressive tonal elements which had appeared in his most recent works.
Both artists use linear and tonal elements to create abstracted scenes that are based on observation but deviate far into subjective and impressionistic territory.
Combinatorial formation refers to the ability to form small phrases from different tonal elements.
Beginning with Schoenberg himself, composers have manipulated the ostensibly atonal 12-tone system to produce common chords and other tonal elements.