Achim Breiling <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>I would like to ask a general question to Mrs. Wang and Mr.Heersink:
>What do they expect a contemporary or 20th century composer (as I have the
>impression they like to mix all this music together as atonal) to compose?

I cannot answer Mr. Breiling's question put to Mrs. Wang. And I
confess I am not certain of the question, but at the core, it asks,
What I expect contemporary composers to compose? The simple answer is
"music." But even I admit that such an obvious answer really doesn't
address some of the issues confronting 20th-century composers. But
let's bifurcate the two issues to examine each one more clearly.

My view is that all composers should set out to compose wonderful
music. And equally important, unless someone really wants to live in a
"vat," the composition must be more than mere noise (or the absence of
it, as in the case of Cage),

t seems to me that it isn't difficult to distinguish readily between
those composers who earnestly incorporate melody, lyricism, color,
harmony, dynamics, resolution, and the like from an ensemble that is
merely banging away, or blows hard on metal or plastic, or screeches
contraptions that screech and holler.

Let me cite a personal example. While attending Mills College, my
class and I were required to attend a concert that every last one of
us walked out of. And not only my classmates, but those who had paid a
good fee to listen to these "compositions." All I and most others
heard was noise that made a nearby freeway sound delicious by
comparison. When a nearby freeways becomes the reference for
"superior" sound to the pretensions of a "concert" of noise, it's
clear to me at least that such "sounds" do not sufficiently constitute
"music." At best they are "ordered" sounds, but not ordinarily what
one calls "music."

Schoenberg, Webern, et alia did not take their efforts to such
extremes, but they similarly missed an important element of music.
Music is in some way a song, or it's not music as it has been known
for more than two millennia. And, while I realize that the pressure to
do "something new" confronts composers today, the effort to do
something new doesn't automatically succeed by virtue of its
difference from others.

 Where the atonalists fail, in my opinion, is in the misunderstanding
that music can be, or even should be, a cerebral, intellectual
enterprise constructed with the confines of abstract theorectical
definitions. There's a place for such things, if and only if they
advance the enjoyment of the enterprise, namely music. One may have
valid premises that lead to a sound conclusion and still be wrong.
Atonal music, however, doesn't even have sound premises.

Music, qua music, as tested over time, requires a certain emotional
"fit" to be interesting, much less pleasurable. Calculated sounds
alone don't satisfy this requirement. Harmonies, melodies,
counterpoint, dissonance, and everything else work only if they "fit"
our emotional yearning. Music must be able to transcend that species
known as "noise" or it is just noise -- tonal or atonal. But atonal
sounds are most obviously the greater offender to the public ear.

I could draw this out, but the point remains that music is more than
noise, and good music must be structured and performed to produce an
intellectual and emotional "fit" beyond some theoretical paradigm.
Music is music when it is enjoyed as such.

___________________

Stephen Heersink
San Francisco
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