Chris Bonds asks:

>One may hold that opinion of serialism, and one may not understand it,
>and maybe people don't write using those techniques so much as they did 50
>years ago, but it makes no sense to say it didn't pan out.  That implies it
>was a failed experiment--that it tried to do something and failed.  WHAT
>did it fail to do?

Obviously, it failed to achieve beauty and win the hearts of all true music
lovers everywhere.

Seriously, however, if it failed, it failed in the sense that any piece
of music or work of art fails.  For example, it may fail to convince or to
grab someone's attention - one more reason, ironically, not to treat it as
a special case.

Steve Schwartz