I'm not sure that anyone has yet talked about atonal music from the point
of view of the performer, in particular the point of view of a singer.
Singing poses a particular problem because unless you have very reliable
absolute pitch there is a mental process involved in finding the notes -
you can't just put your fingers in the right place.

There are the following ways of 'reading' vocal music:

a) pitch memory.  If you have absolute pitch you can use this a lot, but
even without that ability it's possible to have some pitch memory.  Once
I've sung them a few times I can usually feel where the pitches of notes
towards the top of my range are.

b) working out the interval of the next note from a previous note (usually
but not always the one immediately preceding)

c) relating the notes to a key When you've really learnt the piece
thoroughly all of this is replaced by

d) just knowing how the piece goes so that when given a starting note you
can sing it without consciously working it out as you go along.

With an atonal piece of course method c) fails completely.  It's a bit
like navigating on a walk (to use a metaphor from another of my activities)
where you still have your eyesight and a map but your compass has broken.
So does this make the music 'unnatural' or indeed 'unvocal'?

I have recently been putting all this to the test by learning _Warm die
Luefte_.  For those of you who don't know this piece, it is the last of
Berg's four Op.  2 lieder, and his first atonal composition, or at least
the first that he published.  Although the first three songs of Op.  2 are
very chromatic, there's a marked change when you get to number 4, not a
barely perceptible shift over the tonal/atonal boundary.  In particular,
the piano part loses almost all pitch connexion with the vocal line - most
of the time it is a semitone out with the singer somewhere.

I deliberately haven't set myself any deadline for learning this but have
been worrying away at it a little at a time on and off for about 3 weeks,
after spending time working on other pieces (such as the rest of op. 2).
I've now more or less learnt the voice part but have yet to combine it
with the piano part (not trivial - see the previous paragraph). Nor have I
really got the vocal line flowing yet - I am still feeling it too much as
a series of notes. This is of course the result of having to rely on method
b) above when learning them, but with practice I expect I can overcome this
- in fact I already have with some phrases.

I won't pretend this isn't hard, probably as hard as anything else I've
learnt to sing.  But the fact that a piece is hard to learn isn't a
judgement on its worth (one way or the other!).  While many of the usual
cues I might use to help me are missing, I have found other things to guide
me:  a series of climactic notes in a long phrase, each one a semitone
higher than the last, and a series of chords which is an extension of
a two-chord phrase which occurs repeatedly in the first song of op.  2.
As bits of the melody become internalised the music gradually falls into
place, and feels as natural as any other song.  And it certainly isn't
unvocal (though I think the climax really needs a rather bigger voice than
mine, but that is a problem with me, not the music).

I think it helps to be convinced (as I was) when you start that the
composer knows what he is doing, that the music itself is worthwhile and
there are good reasons for it to be the way it is, even if they aren't
immediately clear to you.  I suspect that if I'd been strongly hostile to
atonal music I wouldn't have been converted by trying to sing some.  But
if I had yet to make up my mind about it, learning this song could have
brought me round.

I expect that if I were a professional singer specialising in atonal
repertoire I would get much better at working by interval - like any
other skill it improves with practice, and so the process of learning
such a piece would get easier.  (Of course if I were good enough to be
a professional I'd probably be a lot better at learning music anyway).

In a few weeks I'm taking part in a weekend series of vocal classes with
Jane Manning, a specialist in this sort of repertoire.  (I expect I will do
amongst other things one of the earlier songs in op.  2).  If she has any
interesting observations relevant to this discussion and we aren't all
totally fed up with it, I will pass them on.

(I don't think my 18 month old daughter is like the child mentioned earlier
in the thread which sang back bits of atonal melody.  I haven't heard her
singing any of the song, but maybe my rendering of it is still too
inaccurate).

I'm intrigued by the food analogy.  When my local delicatessen started
stocking a range of olives notable for their bitterness, I was according
to the owner the only customer who actually liked them.

Virginia Knight, Institute for Learning and Research Technology
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Personal home page: http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/~ggvhk/virginia.html