Which of the following wrote compositions using the atonal style?

Answer Details

Atonality is a compositional approach that avoids establishing a tonal centre or key. Instead of organising music around a home note (tonic) and the hierarchies of traditional harmony, atonal music treats all twelve chromatic pitches as equal, producing a sound that lacks the familiar pull of resolution.

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) is the composer most closely identified with atonality. Beginning around 1908 with works such as the Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11 and Pierrot Lunaire (1912), Schoenberg abandoned traditional tonality. He later formalised his approach into the twelve-tone technique (serialism), in which all twelve notes of the chromatic scale are arranged in a fixed row and no note is repeated until all twelve have been sounded.

Schubert and Smetana were Romantic-era composers who wrote firmly within the tonal system. Stravinsky experimented with many styles (primitivism, neoclassicism, and eventually serialism), but he is not primarily identified as the pioneer of atonality the way Schoenberg is.