Wes Crone writes:

>Ohh brother......this never ends.

Sorry to have to add this, but I couldn't keep my nose out.

>As far as your counterarguments are concerned......
>
>I would like to know just what you know about fugues. ...

I think the point is that all art is arbitrary or has some arbitrary basis.
That's what makes it art, rather than nature.

>As far as species counterpoint and basic polyphony are concerned.....these
>devices were developed to basically make music "sound" better.

etc.  I really question this.  I have no idea at all why any of these
things were developed.  I doubt that anyone else knows beyond the trivial
reason.  Parallel fifths and octaves, for example, didn't sound as good to
enough people at a certain time.  At other times, they've been perfectly
OK.  Bach used them - infrequently, I admit, but they're there.

>There is no such thing as a correct fugue.  plain and simple.  This is why
>Bach's fugues differ from Beethoven's amd from Brahms' and from Handel's
>and so on.  Noone's in 'more' correct.  Some people mistakenly think so.

I agree with this, because we're talking about real music.  But are you
telling me my counterpoint professor shouldn't have knocked off points from
my school fugues?

>Now let me comment on sonata form.  I have already included a posting
>abotu the differnce between formal design and tonal system design.  I don't
>really want to reiterate all of that here so I will keep it short.  Form is
>like a cake pan or a jello mold.  the ingredients are tonal but differnet
>forms make differnet cakes.  Hmm....Consider the form like a cake pan and
>the ingredients to be the tones.  It doesn't mater much to me what the cake
>looks like as long as it tastes/sounds good.  But, if you decided to create
>a predetermined system for what ingredients will be added, culminating with
>a system that requires totalitarian treatment of the tones, you may well
>end up with a nasty piece of cake.  You may, then again, find that the cake
>is the best you've ever had.  Whoi knows.....it only really matters to you
>and your own opinion.  I hope that analogy wasn't too out of whack.

I'm sorry, but you seem to have the wrong idea of the 12-tone system as
formulated by Schoenberg.  It does *not* predetermine anything, any more
than "correct" four-part harmony or a Bach fugue does.  A reason can be
found for the theoretically unchanging succession of notes (and the basic
manipulation of the series) that corresponds to your reason about
guaranteeing the advertised number of parts, namely that a tonality would
be emphasized otherwise.  This did not prevent Schoenberg (and others) from
departing from this stricture when it suited them, and it suited them
pretty often.  Incidentally, your characterization of the manipulation
as "totalitarian" calls to mind an article by Adorno - "Stravinsky vs.
Schoenberg" (ie, tonal Stravinsky vs.  atonal Schoenberg).  Adorno applied
"totalitarian" to Stravinsky's music and "democratic" to Schoenberg's.  Of
couse, he meant the dominance of a single pitch-center in tonal music, as
opposed to the "liberation" of the pitch (because freed from "monarchic,"
"hierarchical" harmonic demonds) in the atonal music of the time.  Even
this is misleading (and no wonder Schoenberg hated the term "atonal"),
since various composers have produced 12-tone works which make use of pitch
centers.

Steve Schwartz