Steve Schwartz wrote:

>General recognition is as much a matter of luck as anything else, and
>people seem to understand this with respect to all music except what's
>generally called "atonal." I have yet to figure out why aesthetically this
>music constitutes a special case - why people should get so much hotter
>over this than over other music whose appeal is equally limited.

My explanation is that atonal music seems to have lent itself to
expressions of angst, strain, and extreme neurosis.  There may be
historical (hysterical?) cultural reasons for this but this is the way
it sounds to me.

Is this connection an inevitable one? Is it an undesirable one? The answer
to the first question, is clearly no, IMHO.  Schoenberg's Piano and Violin
Concertos illustrate the point, among many other works.  The music of
Roberto Gerhard (an interest of mine and perhaps of not another soul on
this list) is further evidence.  There are many others.

To the second point, I can anticipate the mail from list members who
will say:  angst in music is an appropriate response to angst in twentieth
century life.  And I agree with this when it comes to Berg's Wozzeck or
his Violin Concerto or his Lyric Suite.  But Pierrot Lunaire is a different
story altogether, and Pierrot Lunaire and similar works by epigones too
much represents the aural image of atonal music in the classical music
listener's mind.

All this is a matter of the personal taste of an amateur, and perhaps we
tend to make too much of our personal tastes. But here it is. Fire away.

Professor Bernard Chasan
Physics Department, Boston University