While Steve Schwartz has replied to Stephen Heersink as eloquently as I
can imagine there are one or two other additional points I'd like to make.

>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...  At best they are "ordered"
>sounds, but not ordinarily what one calls "music."

Steve Schwartz reminds us that Jocelyn Wang is involved in a 20th century
music series.  My general experience is that the average concert goer feels
much the same even when presented with a late 20/21st century composition
which is NOT even serial/dodecaphonic.  I have had to defend Bartok against
such accusations in the past.  There are cartoons from Mahler's time which
charicaturise him in a similar way.  My favourite one is where Mahler is
shown conducting an orchestra in which the musicians are shown pulling cats
and dogs tails and the like.  In another one he is standing there before
the orchestra saying "where's the motor horn?"

More importantly I have repeatedly stressed that listening to the
most radically experimentalist work from the Cage or Stockhausen is
a poor introduction to 20th century music.  It's the sort of thing I
have been trying to get people to avoid.  It was a sign of the times
when composers were busily experimenting for it's own sake.  Even then
the ideals were based on ancient Chinese mysticism, and the belief in
meaningful coincidence.  This was the over-the-top heady age of 'flower
power', far Eastern Guru's, Woodstock, psychadelic drugs and the Vietnam
War etc.  In retrospect it was a fascinating era, but even more than
dodecophany this is really an acquired taste.  Some composer's such as
Boulez refused to have anything to do with this sort of thing.

I should briefly say that exploration of the relationship between noise
and music is nothing new as you can hear in Beethoven's 6th Symphony where
there are bird songs and storms.  You can hear night insects in Bartok.
Cage and Stockhausen had the mystical idea of turning every noise or sound
to music, as though to reveal that everything (the whole cosmos even) was
just music.

In any case don't even think about dabbling in this sort of thing out until
you have fully come to grips with the Second Viennese School.  Some posters
have quite rightly pointed out that even this does nothing to guarantee you
that you will find post-war experimentalism any easier to digest, although
I will continue to insist that it really is important to be introduced to
the right pieces.  After all you would not introduce someone to Classical
Music with the Requiem by Ockegehm, Beethoven's Grosse Fuge, Bruckner's 5th
Symphony, Bach's Art of Fuge, Trio Sonatas by Telemann and Sibelius' 4th
Symphony.

>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.

This very much remains the case, especially in Schoenberg and Berg,
although it was Webern who said that the day will come when children
will be singing his music.  Do not forget that these composers, unlike
virtually all of the other famous 'Viennese' composers (Schubert is the
only exception) really are themselves Viennese, born and bred.  They
have an instinctive lyricism which becomes ever clearer with increasing
familiarity with their music.  Brahms and Schubert are never too far away.
Having said that it was Schoenberg who wrote that some people say that
Beethoven's Grosse Fuge sounds like "atonal" music.

>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.

That's just what Copernicus said about Monterverdi in his time.

>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.

I do not know a single composer who ever felt that this was their
motivation for writing what they did.  Who ever said this about music?

>My view is that all composers should set out to compose wonderful
>music...
>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.

This is precisely why I love the Second Viennese School.  This is why I
love Boulez, Berio, and many others.

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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