Len Fehskens:

>>Indeed it is precisely this radical conservatism that makes the music of
>>the Second Viennese School the most necessary music of the first half of
>>the 20th century.  It is necessary because it connects us to our roots in
>>the music of the centuries which have preceded it more deeply than that
>>of any other music written in the 20th century.
>
>Acknowledged that it connects us this way to the past.  But to what in the
>future does it connect us?

Who knows?

>It is the fact that it seems to me to have led nowhere that leads *me* to
>conclude that it "failed".

It has indeed led somewhere.  I would hazard a guess that most professional
composers, of whatever style, view the writing of music more as Schoenberg
and Webern did than, say, Tchaikovsky did.  Benjamin Britten's Cantata
Accademica, for example, a brilliant tonal work uses a row.  His late
music, also tonal, manipulates cells a la Schoenberg.  Actually, his
very early music did this as well.

However, by your criterion, Renaissance music also failed, since we're no
longer writing Palestrina counterpoint in the Church modes.

Poor Josquin!  Superseded!

>>None of these 'tonalist' write tonal music in any traditional way.  They
>>write music that makes Schenker turn in his grave.
>
>So, Schenker is the sole arbiter? And it's ok to break with tradition one
>way but not another? That's the problem I have with much of this argument.
>Implicit in it seems to be some variation of "revealed truth", a one true
>way for music to evolve, and any other way is wrong.

No.  Stop trying to turn us into your boogymen.  We're saying that
atonality and dodecaphony are as legitimate a way to go about writing music
as any other, more popular style.  The only expressions of restriction in
this thread have been people making claims like "atonality precludes
beauty" and "atonality has failed." If I've indulged myself by saying that
Atterberg's compositions usually don't interest me, it's not because he's
a tonal composer, as anyone who's read my gushes over Vaughan Williams and
Barber would know.  In fact, I would bet that most, if not all of us on
this side of the room like most of the 20th-century music you like.  Our
only differences seem to be that we enjoy a larger subset of 20th-century
music and that we tend not to rule anything out on grand historical and
philosophical grounds.

Satoshi Akima:

>>While I grant that much of the post-war experimentalism was an attempt to
>>deliberately break from the past as an end in itself, and that while many
>>of these experiments were interesting exercises, I do not feel 20th century
>>music was much enriched by this process.

Len again:

>Again, why then is serialism the one true way?

I fail to see anything in Satoshi's paragraph that says he thinks this.
I'd love to know why you've read it in.

>Why is it alone more than just an "interesting exercise"?

I don't know.  Why is Bach's Art of the Fugue more than an interesting
exercise? Depends on the piece, doesn't it?

>What's so special about a row of all twelve tones?

Nothing.  And there's nothing special about the main thematic cell of the
first movement of Beethoven's 5th, either.

>Why do I *have* to use all of them? Why can't I choose to leave some out?

A very interesting question.  Read Schoenberg and find out, if you're
really interested.  However, I guarantee you that it was Schoenberg's
response to the actual problem of writing extremely chromatic music that
modulated very fast.  If you don't want to write extremely chromatic music
that modulates very fast, the procedures probably won't help you.  You
might ask as well why parallel 5ths were frowned on during the age of
common practice or why composers tend to end tonal pieces with the tonic
tone emphasized.

Mats replies to me replying to Peter Varley:

>>>What's wrong with (amongst others) Alfven, Arnold, Atterberg, Bacewicz,
>>
>>absolutely nothing, except that Atterberg wrote only one
>interesting piece
>
>Uh? Which one interesting piece is the subject of this peculliar
>statement?

Obviously, it's the Suite No. 3.

Now you know.

Len Fehskens replies to Bill Pirkle's suggestion:

>>Maybe there are no rules for writing good music, just rules about what to
>>avoid doing.
>
>And I would bet that for every such rule, we could find a composer of
>genius who broke that rule to wonderful effect.

I won't forget singing the Bach motet "Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied" and
coming across a brief startling passage of parallel octaves in the bass and
tenor parts.  It was as if a chasm had opened up.

Len Fehskens replies to me:

>>It influenced even non-serial composers, including big names
>
>Maybe "influenced some composers" means to you it significantly affected
>the course of 20th century music.  To me it doesn't.  If it had, I'd expect
>most composers today would be writing serial music all the time, not
>dabbling with it for a while at some point in their careers.

Why would you think that?  Every style, as far as I know, has had a "shelf
life."  Most composers aren't writing regularly in the style of Mozart
either.  As far as I know, this doesn't mean Mozart was a failed composer.

Steve Schwartz