It is amazing and wonderful in a way that we are still talking about
atonal music as though the issue were somehow current.  At least the
Brahms/Wagner controversy seems to have died down!  I think Donald Clarke
put the whole thing in a nutshell when he wrote:

>It seems to me that a great many listeners today do not want to hear
>anything that they haven't heard before, which is not good for music.

No, it is not good for music and not much good for anything else either.
Susan Jacoby's new book "The Age of American Unreason" makes the point
that we have become so polarized that we are unwilling to listen to any
ideas other than our own.  She notes that toward the end of the 19th
century "millions of Americans -- many of them devoutly religious --
packed lecture halls to hear Robert Green Ingersoll excoriate conventional
religion." She also mentions the great interest in Huxley's lectures on
Darwin in 1876.  I think it is wholesome to listen now and then to people
whose ideas differ from your own.  This is especially important in
politics because the consequences of ignorance are so dire.  But it is
also true when it comes to art, because failure to know what's going on
is to risk missing some joyful pleasure.  You certainly don't have to
like everything, but it is useful to know what is out there.

I had to smile at Jeff dunn's astute observation:

> The majority of the time I'm dissatisfied with new music, atonal
>OR tonal: Let's face it, the majority of music is mediocre-- most
>composers are not Beethovens.  [How true!] You shouldn't confuse the
>rampant mediocrity of atonal music with its mode of expression-- although
>atonality, since it can be intellectually justified on paper, provides
>a far better cover than a retrograde tonal composition would.

In other words, a bad tonal piece is more obviously bad than a bad atonal
piece.  And I have to agree in part with Jeff that:

> ...writing a truly beautiful, harmonized melody
> nowadays is more difficult to bring off than an entire atonal symphony.

Well, maybe not more difficult, but it is certainly not easy to write
a beautiful melody.  I generally strive for the beautiful, harmonized
melody, but I have written a few atonal works, and I can tell you that
it is not all that easy either -- that is if one aims to produce something
that is intellectually honest and emotionally satisfying.  My perception
is that few composers of the last couple of generations have seriously
tried writing beautiful melodies, but that is no doubt because they are
focusing on other things.  Fashion plays a huge role here as it does
everywhere else.  A composer who actually did write beautiful melodies
would probably find that his music would not be taken seriously or
performed.

Nevertheless, there is some magnificent new music out there, and even
after a long life of listening, I am still delighted to find the occasional
gems.

David Lamb in Seattle

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