Peter Varley replies to me replying to him:

>>>What's wrong with (amongst others) Alfven, Arnold, Atterberg, Bacewicz,
>>
>>absolutely nothing, except that Atterberg wrote only one
>interesting piece
>
>That's a matter of opinion (and not one I share).

Absolutely.

>>and that several people in the list that followed wrote dodecaphonic
>>serialism.
>
>I know that some of the composers in the list used serial tone rows when
>they thought it appropriate to do so.  I don't think any of them were
>fanatical about it.

Well, I'm not sure what you mean by "fanatical." They used the basic
procedures set down by Schoenberg, invented a few of their own, and above
all wrote some really good music.

>There seem to be several different arguments going on at once here.
>I'm not against serial tone rows as such.  I don't really care whether
>composers come up with their thematic material using native genius, or hard
>work, or folk song, or Mozart's dice game, or serial tone rows, or even
>using Bill Pirkle's computer software.  It's what they do with it that
>matters.  IMO it's harder to write great music starting with serial tone
>rows, but there have been composers talented enough to get away with it.

Bravo!  You don't blame the hammer for the fact that the house fell down.
None of this "hammers preclude solid construction" nonsense.  I just wish
more people were as sane.

>As you say, no-one likes everything, and I don't like the 1960s
>avant-garde.

Quite frankly, I don't like most of it myself, but I don't blame something
as empty and powerless as a system.  I'm glad to discover you don't either.

>I dislike their outlook as much as I dislike their music, and in
>particular I dislike their claim to be the only valid musical expression
>of the 20th century.

Well, not many of them made that claim.  Certainly very few make it now.
On the other hand, I don't hate Wagner because he claimed (or someone in
his behalf) that he was writing Music of the Future.  In fact, very little
music screams its own time as much as Wagner's.

>I agree with those previous postings which expressed the opinion
>that this attitude has done serious harm to CM in the second half of the
>20th century.

The attitude is particularly stupid and ugly (no more stupid and ugly,
however, than the same sort of attitude from the other side), but the claim
has been made that it's the *music* which has turned people off.  Again,
with so few opportunities available to hear this music, I'd like to know 1)
how exactly this was accomplished, and 2) why it turned people off to *all*
classical music.

>1) There are truly worthwhile composers whose music wasn't heard because
>it didn't conform to the avant-garde party line.  Some have been discovered
>in the 1990s, and it's likely that there are others who haven't been
>discovered yet.

This sounds suspiciously like an article of faith, rather than a deduction
from solid evidence.  I do know personally of several composers who did not
write in this style and had trouble in the academy (as well as composers
who were no avant-gardistes and who had great academic gigs), but the
academy isn't the only venue for music.  I think what you'd find in concert
programming, although I have no solid figures to back me up, that very
little 20th-century music of any stripe has been programmed in the U.S.
Isn't it interesting that so much of the music now being programmed from
the "truly worthwhile" composers simply repeats works from the Louisville,
Eastman, and CRI catalogues?

>2) There were worthwhile composers who stopped composing altogether, or
>composed but didn't publish, because they knew that the music they wanted
>to write would not be performed.  Only a fanatic would consider this
>desirable.

Yeah, and there were worthwhile composers of all stripes who kept and
who keep hustling, who have been published, and who continue to compose.
I mourn the fact that Harold Shapero stopped, but I'm sure glad that Lees,
Piston, Thomson, Foss, Bergsma, Hovhaness, Siegmeister, Gould, and Rosner
have continued.  Composing classical music is not only not a paying
proposition, but there's very little demand for the music one composes, of
whatever degree of avant-gardism (including none).  First of all, damn few
people these days - including a minority of the CM public - read music at
all.  A publisher won't sell a lot of copies.  Second, many people won't
bother to listen to the music of someone they haven't at least heard of
before.  It takes a fanatic - or at least someone passionate enough to work
at it - to get this music heard at all.

I believe the fact that most CM listeners are passive consumers rather
than active performers has done its share to bring about this sad state
of affairs.

>3) There are people who refuse to listen to anything written after the
>death of Tchaikovsky, or Ravel, or Richard Strauss.  They've heard some
>avant-garde stuff, didn't like it, and have been told that it's that or
>nothing from 1950 onwards.  Whether these people are numbered in dozens
>or millions, I don't know.

I don't know either.  Given the choice, I'll say millions, if only because
it gives me a warm feeling to imagine a group millions of people strong who
listen to classical music at all.

>4) There are people who refuse to listen to CM at all, because they think
>it's a tradition in which nothing new and worthwhile is being produced.
>They've heard some avant-garde stuff, didn't like it, and have been told
>that that's what CM is like nowadays.  Again, whether these people are
>numbered in hundreds or millions is something I don't know.

I don't get your point.  Do you believe that that's the *only* or even the
main reason why most people don't listen to classical music? Seems a bit
simplistic to me.

>>>By contrast, the pantonality tradition lasted a few decades at most.
>>
>>In fact, it's still going on, whether you pay attention to it or not.
>
>As we can now listen to modern music other than that written by the
>commissars of the avant-garde, the extremist version of their ideology
>has been overthrown.

This is nonsense.  You could always listen to music other than the
avant-garde stuff, if you took the trouble and sought it out.  I heard
most of the interwar neoclassical American music I know for the first time
in the 1960s and 1970s, supposedly the time of the "commissars'" hegemony.
If you're waiting for the music to come to you nicely served, you've got a
long wait.  You've got to be willing to seek it out.  If you're not, don't
complain about the commissars.

Steve Schwartz