Stewart Newberry writes a fascinating long essay, and it is a shame to
rip out one small piece, but here it is anyway.

>This dichotomy - of tonality as natural versus avant-gardism as advanced
>- is, in its strange way, a rather stable solution set.  It provides two
>sets of answers which seem to divide the world between them,and each gains
>strength from the existance of the other.  Until the last tonalist is
>slashed and has salt poured in his open wounds, until the last 12 tone
>piece is left to rot in the stacks of some library - along with 15th
>century polyphonic compositions, a study for the curious alone - the two
>sides cannot rest.  Demons abound and must be exorcised.

And yet, the simple listener (to whose numbers I belong) really need not
get involved in these doctrinal disputes, which are as relevant to us as
the causes of the Thirty Year War.  He or she, ignoring the patronizing
slights of the hard edged avant garde, and the poignant complaints of the
tonalists, can simply partake of the feast.  Boulez? Sure, but there is
also Messiaen, and Dutellieux.

Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra? By all means, but also Hartman's
Symphonies, and Holmboe's symphonies, and Shostakovich, and Schnittke.  And
early Stravinsky, late Stravinsky, Berg, and always, Bartok.  Birtwhistle,
named as the greatest English composer since the sixteenth century by Dr.
Akima? Well, not for me, but if you love it, fine.  You are still permitted
to listen to Maw, Vaughn Williams, Britten, even Elgar.  Bernard Chasan
(aka the simple listener)

Professor Bernard Chasan
Physics Department, Boston University