Satoshi replies to Jocelyn:

>>It may be insulting to Boulez, Carter, and company, but I don't see
>>how it's any more insulting to their listeners than those occasional
>>What's-so-great-about-Mozart threads are to Mozart lovers.
>
>There is a major difference, in that someone who is not keen on much
>of Mozart like me is still capable of following any musical argument that
>he may present me.

Yeah.  I like to put it this way: I don't mind unfavorable criticism, if
the critic demonstrates to me some understanding of the piece.  However,
"this is noise" doesn't really cut it.

>This sounds likes someone who doesn't read German reading Goethe and
>concluding he must be bad because it doesn't make sense and gives one
>a headache.

I've occasionally used this analogy myself.  Several people told me it
wasn't a good analogy, though for the life of me I don't see why not.

>> Many living tonal composers have a hard time even being
>> considered for programming because there is the ridiculous
>> attitude among many music directors that if it's modern, it has
>> to be [a]tonal.
>
>I presume Jocelyn was meaning to write 'atonal'.  In fact this attitude
>is not in the least bit ridiculous, because even amongst the conservatives
>in contemporary composition, tonality fails to be such a powerful
>universal structural principle that it once was.  Tonality in contemporary
>composition is a kind of vestigial pseudotonality to which ears accustomed
>to anachronistically tonal popular styles of music necessarily react in
>the same way that Jocelyn's ears do to Boulez.  In a funny way they are
>absolutely right in doing so.

I have problems with this, mainly because I don't consider either
tonality or atonality to be "necessary." Art, to me, is usually arbitrary.
Whatever works, and you never know beforehand what works.  The "historical
necessity" of atonality seems to me a very bad idea, as does the
"conformity to physical law" of tonality.  Both of them get their
believers into incredible trouble.

Also, I'd disagree with the idea of "pseudotonality" as the tonality
of contemporary composition (or at least I'd add something else).  True
enough that tonality functions in a different way in people like Paert,
Glass, Reich, or Gorecki than in Brahms or Mahler, but there are still
plenty of people writing -- someone like Rouse, for example -- for whom
tonality does function structurally, and though more dissonant than Mahler
is essentially the same as Mahler.

Steve Schwartz