Donald Satz wrote:

>The overt hostility to non-tonal music is amazing.  You'd think that its
>existence has caused lasting damage to classical music lovers.

In addition to my "day job," I keep a shift at our classical station.
Sometimes the hostility towards non-tonal music goes, in my opinion, beyond
the amazing, to the absurd.  Based upon an occasional call I have gotten at
the station over the years, one would think that some people find non-tonal
music sacrilegious-immoral.  I remember one listener speaking to me like I
was the next Hitler.

I am reminded of an article I read in an old issue of some record review
journal, perhaps Grammophone.  The article dated from the early 1920's,
at the time of the introduction of electrical recording.  The writer
was highly critical of electrical recordings calling them immoral.  His
thinking was that the sound, being transferred to a different form of
energy, somehow perverted the sound.  Of course, there was some truth in
his notion, but not necessarily in those terms.  While I don't mean to open
the door to some unrelated discussion of the validity of various recording
techniques (I know Dave would appropriately halt that one), I do see some
similarities to the tonal-non tonal discussions.

Consider historically, say in the time of Palestrina, when much of the art
music was written for the church, and the church had such control over the
very harmony and intervals considered appropriate.  Not using those rules
could be considered "sinful."

For me, there can be great beauty in music that is not based in the
traditional notion of tonality.  For that matter, thinking about it, much
of impressionism is not, strictly speaking, tonal.  I also think of works
like the Adagio from Mahler's 10th.  You can't explain (reasonably) that in
terms of common practice (tonal) harmony, yet it is, to my ears, one of the
most profound and spiritual moments in all music.

To end my rambling...a few weeks ago I broadcast the Torke work December on
a Sunday morning.  I got two calls, both complaints.  One said it was way
too modern.  The other caller suggested that we needed a new station policy
that would restrict us from using anything written after 1900 in our
morning broadcasts.

"Not only do I not like it, my friends don't either."

Karl