Jocelyn Wang writes in response to me:

>Since the entire process of atonal composition is inconducive to producing
>anything resembling beauty, it does not take a leap to dislike every last
>one of them.

If a non-musician and total ignoramus like me can learn to love Webern and
Boulez I think anybody can.  When I first started out listening seriously
to music I used to find late Mahler way too modern and dissonant to my
ears.  I couldn't understand it at all.  I likewise found Bartok to be no
better.  You can probably get an idea of how hopelessly ignorant I was when
I say I used to find a lot of Prokofiev too monstrously dissonant.  Even
Debussy was hard going.  So I went foolheartedly from this straight into
Webern.You can probably imagine how I felt!  Even now I still find myself
having to defend a Bartok or a Stravinsky from the accusation of being
monstrously dissonant modernist quackery ("why can't they compose like
Tchaikovsky..etc") now and then.

It wasn't much better when I had a nibble at Renaissance polyphony either.
The modal-polyphonic musical language here was almost every bit as foreign
to me as dodecophany.  Interesting I started learning German around the
same time and was equally ambitious in my attempts to leap in and read
Goethe.  German sounded to me much like dodecophany:  I used to think I'd
never come to grips with it.  Yet the ignoramus who found Prokofiev too
dissonant started to sing Webern in the shower.  I had someone once think
I was German talking on the telephone.  When you get used to it sounds like
any other language does.  Sometimes I forget I am speaking German, I am
only aware only of speaking.  So it is with dodecophany:  I am aware only
of listening to music.

Even if I felt daunted when I started I perservered.  I believed in
Schoenberg's wonderful vision where even now many professional musicians
and music students are strangely baffled by it.  I only wish that someone
had shown me an easier way to start off rather than leaping blindly into
the deep end.

>>If you can listen to late Mahler, Bartok, Strauss, and late Shostakovitch
>>(especially the late string quartets) then it really shouldn't present
>>much problem to you.
>
>This is a bit like saying, "If you like orange juice, then gulping down
>this nice glass of sulfuric acid really shouldn't present much problem
>to you." It's the old atonalists' mantra: Hardly anyone likes what you
>want them to like, so that means they haven't heard enough of it, are
>closed-minded toward it, etc.  SNORE!

It's more like the case of grape juice and wine.  Someone who had only ever
drank grape juice might find even the best chardonnay or merlot too dry.
That's why I've try to recommend a lot of music which is the equivalent
of a medium wine.

In the case of the music of each of these composer's (Mahler, Bartok,
Strauss, and late Shostakovitch) there are times when tonality almost
collapses anyway.  You are always almost skirting around the brink of the
inevitable.  It's actually interesting that dodecophany actually sounds
LESS dissonant to my ears than hyperchromatic music where the flimsy tonal
centre is so constantly under assault that it leaves you sea sick.  Instead
of a tonal centre you find another 'centre':  that is the tone row.  It's
actually a great relief once you get used to it.

I am sure that Jocelyn has had some teacher or lecturer try to shovel
Stockhausen and the like down her throat.  Her's is a natural reaction and
is more of a sad reflection on the way this sort of thing is taught.  I am
not some sort of 'atonalist'.  I am just someone that loves music.  I do
not even have a formal musical education.  In fact that's probably why I
really love this music because nobody forced this sort of thing on me

All I did was ask that people give music they hear that may seem difficult
or daunting a second chance rather than dismissing it off hand:

>Who the devil is frightened of it? No one.  Saying one is repulsed by it,
>can't stand it, wish it never existed so as to drive audiences away from
>modern works, and so forth, is a far cry from being frightened of it.

There is too much that is really wonderful you are missing out on.  So
please don't dive into the most blatantly experimental Stockhausen but at
least try to discover just how beautiful some Berg is.Shostakovich's late
String Quartets are generally much more harsh and austere than the Berg
Violin Concerto or the Schoenberg 2nd String Quartet which really are so
intensely romantic.  So go on give it a bit of a try!!!

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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