Jim Willford wrote:

>In our discussions about music, we need to be constantly aware of the
>distinction between good judgement and personal taste.  The first is an
>accomplishment of time, experience, training, and ability.  The second is
>an unassailable fact that, when stated, leaves little room for discussion.

Thanks for your response, Jim.  A couple of points I should clarify:
when I refer to dissonant and atonal music as the stuff that sounds little
better than "my alarm clock on Monday morning," no doubt I make myself
sound like an utter philistine to some.  Truth be told, the issue for
me isn't the ound - but the utterly predictable sense of exhaustion about
the music itself.  Putting it bluntly - the moment of high modernism
that Shoenberg &co are emblematic of is over - and has been for some time.
Works in the present that perpetuate the form are little more than a
sterile, academic exercise that better reflect the conservatories that
incubate them.  Much of it is derivative in the manner of, say - to find an
analogy in the visual arts - abstract expressionist or pop art knock-offs.
No one can paint a Marilyn, a soupcan, or dribble paint anymore and think
it original, yet strangely, this is precisely the state of affairs in
serious music.  And the fact is:  alot of it just ain't news.

That I can tick off on but one hand the number of well-known, present -day
living composers is, in my opinion, an appalling state of affairs.  When
was the last time a serious composer got on the cover of Time? Indeed,
novelists, film makers, painters, sculptors, etc get the occasional cover
- but no nods to the composers of serious music? Certainly we might
attribute this to the fatuousness of a culture itself which seems ready
to swoon over an ephemeral pop sensation at the drop of a hat, but we'd
be misleading ourselves.  In fact, this paucity of public attention, to a
degree, is attributable to nothing less than the hidebound, reclusive sway
of a rutted, proto - modernist / Frankfurt School sensibility that has
become respectably enmeshed in the academic music culture.  Its grip has
withered music.  And to those who claim atonal, dissonant music as
"rebellion," I say "Stalinism" with a fully-operational "Berlin Wall."
Serious music has cut itself off, thinking this affirms its authenticity.
How utterly misguided.

Show me a classical composer who could induce riots in our present day and
I guarantee his/her album would go platinum in a week's time.

"Chris L Beckwith" <[log in to unmask]>