polymodal chromaticism

Polymodal chromaticism is a musical term coined by composer, ethnomusicologist and pianist Béla Bartók. The technique became a means in Bartók's composition to avoid tonality in the sense used between approx. 1600-1900 and yet a different approach than Arnold Schoenberg and his followers in the Second Viennese School and later serialists took, not to be strained within the limits of tonality.
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