Stephen Heersink writes:

>What I expect contemporary composers to compose? The simple answer is
>"music." But even I admit that such an obvious answer really doesn't
>address some of the issues confronting 20th-century composers. But
>let's bifurcate the two issues to examine each one more clearly.
>
>My view is that all composers should set out to compose wonderful
>music. And equally important, unless someone really wants to live in a
>"vat," the composition must be more than mere noise (or the absence of
>it, as in the case of Cage),

First of all, I find it very strange indeed that anyone, considering the
amount of work it takes just to put notes down on paper, would set out to
compose crap.  Second, noise isn't really something that can be objectively
measured.  It's someone's judgment.

>t seems to me that it isn't difficult to distinguish readily between
>those composers who earnestly incorporate melody, lyricism, color,
>harmony, dynamics, resolution, and the like from an ensemble that is
>merely banging away, or blows hard on metal or plastic, or screeches
>contraptions that screech and holler.

Apparently, it is.  You've heard people say that they find certain music
beautiful that you find not only ugly, but not even music.  Hell, I've just
heard a couple of people wax rhapsodic about Boulez.  Go figure.  I find
his music gorgeous myself, but I was fully prepared to accept that I've
been miswired.

>Let me cite a personal example.  While attending Mills College, my class
>and I were required to attend a concert that every last one of us walked
>out of.  And not only my classmates, but those who had paid a good fee
>to listen to these "compositions." All I and most others heard was noise
>that made a nearby freeway sound delicious by comparison.  When a nearby
>freeways becomes the reference for "superior" sound to the pretensions of
>a "concert" of noise, it's clear to me at least that such "sounds" do not
>sufficiently constitute "music." At best they are "ordered" sounds, but not
>ordinarily what one calls "music."

I can't disagree, since I haven't heard the music.  I can say, however,
I've attended concerts where people walked out on Carl Nielsen's
symphonies.  I've also attended concerts where people complained bitterly
about Beethoven's Missa Solemnis.  I don't think either one of us wants
to say that this reflects badly on Nielsen and Beethoven.

>Schoenberg, Webern, et alia did not take their efforts to such extremes,
>but they similarly missed an important element of music.  Music is in
>some way a song, or it's not music as it has been known for more than two
>millennia.

Hardly.  First, classical music isn't two millenia old.  Second, song as a
conscious component of classical music is really only as old as the 18th
century.  Most songs before then were "pop" music.  Very few Renaissance
masses are "songs," for example.

>And, while I realize that the pressure to do "something new" confronts
>composers today, the effort to do something new doesn't automatically
>succeed by virtue of its difference from others.

I doubt most composers seek to do something "new." It's critics,
journalists, and audience that have clamored for the Next New Thing.
I think most composers try to find what their modes of expression are.
Some are more successful at it than others.

>Where the atonalists fail, in my opinion, is in the misunderstanding that
>music can be, or even should be, a cerebral, intellectual enterprise
>constructed with the confines of abstract theorectical definitions.

And what atonalists believe this? Most atonalists I've read have been
practically starry-eyed Romantics describing their aims.

>Atonal music, however, doesn't even have sound premises.

And they are ...

>Music, qua music, as tested over time, requires a certain emotional
>"fit" to be interesting, much less pleasurable. Calculated sounds
>alone don't satisfy this requirement.

I doubt most atonalists would disagree.  Certainly, Schoenberg wouldn't.

>Harmonies, melodies, counterpoint, dissonance, and everything else work
>only if they "fit" our emotional yearning.  Music must be able to transcend
>that species known as "noise" or it is just noise -- tonal or atonal.  But
>atonal sounds are most obviously the greater offender to the public ear.

Again, most atonalists are as Romantic as you are.  Furthermore, the public
ear seems to have trouble with classical music in general.

>I could draw this out, but the point remains that music is more than
>noise, and good music must be structured and performed to produce an
>intellectual and emotional "fit" beyond some theoretical paradigm.
>Music is music when it is enjoyed as such.

Who could possibly disagree with this? And yet we disagree.  I happen to
think that some atonal music fits this definition and some tonal music does
not.  You fault atonal music for no reason other than you and people who
agree with you don't like it.  I and people who agree with me don't happen
to like a lot of Bruckner.  So what? I don't treat Bruckner as a special
case.  Why do you insist on treating atonal music as special?

Steve Schwartz