Jocelyn Wang to Dave Harman:

>...it has been 75 years or so since the spread of the atonal plague, and
>all the fuss about Beethoven was well forgotten by the time 75 years had
>passed, but it is still safe to say that the vast majority of concert-goers
>or very much put off by atonality.

It's sad to read statements as this.  Less than a "demolishing" criticism
about the majority of the XX century music (as Jocelyn seems to pursue)
this is a clear show of the biblical proportions of her ignorance.  Just
the expression "atonal plague" indicates that, at the interesting mind
of Jocelyn, composers so distant between them as Schoenberg, Varese and
Lutoslawski are bounded by a strange and sordid brotherhood tie, by which
they become more or less the same, if not equal.  Now the real affinities
between Webern and Cage, between Ligeti and Zemlinsky, between Messiaen
and some works of Maxwell Davies are definitively brought up to light by
the magical, original and comprehensive Jocelyn's reading of XX century
music: they are all....atonal!!!.  Concerning your sentence about "the
vast majority of concert-goers": I don't think it's safe to say it.  You
could have a real surprise about it some day, when you go out from your
little four wall world.  Just in case: I hate Boulez's music (as many
people do), but some of us have better arguments for that than just
calling it "cacophony".

Pablo Massa
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