Jocelyn Wang <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>Ah, this tired, old, and utterly false argument yet again: people who
>dislike atonality dislike it because they don't understand it, or they
>just haven't heard enough of it to be used to it.  Please...

Please, on my behalf, too.  If your thing is studying scores and devining
the atonal riddles contained in 'em then you're fit material for the Adorno
League.  It's there that they play to the notion that the more cacophonous
the sound, the more astringent the effect, the nobler, perforce, the
effort.  An effort it surely is, but appreciation of music it is not.  Mind
you, there are atonal works, a few of them, that can be appreciated by the
sane musical ear because they make up for their lack of tonality with the
effective and arresting use of some other clearly recognizable organizing
principle.  But even these are mostly good only as a change of pace, not as
a steady diet.  Rather than having an evening at Symphony Hall blemished by
being obliged to endure some Boulez between the Mozart and the Schubert,
I'd accept as far more "classical" a modern composition for Japanese
festive drums--obviously not for its tonality but for its underlying and
entirely explicit compositional principle, driving rhythm.

Denis Fodor