Satoshi Akima wrote:

>You see, because the grammar of the musical language is a little different
>doesn't make it any more likely that you will agree or disagree with what
>the composer is trying to say in the language.  A text written in Greek is
>not necessarily inferior to one written in English.

The analogy seems to me to be a reasonable one.  A text written in Cornish
or Manx is not necessarily inferior to one written in English.  However,
I may question whether it is worth my while taking the time and effort
necessary to learn to read Cornish or Manx, given that (i) there are so
many interesting things still being written in English, my native language,
and (ii) the texts in Cornish and Manx were probably written in those
languages because the author didn't want too many English-speaking people
to understand what he or she was saying.

>...  Yet somehow even well educated professional musicians will say that
>a really wonderful composer such as Webern is a 'bad' composer because the
>musical language he writes in sounds foreign to them.  The difference in
>musical language comparing the late 19th century/early 20th century music
>with dodecaphony is not much greater than that between modern English and
>Shakespeare.

IMO there are two faulty assumptions implicit in this.

Firstly, it seems to be assumed that people who dislike Webern's music
invariably do so because of his use of serial techniques.  Perhaps some do.
I dislike much of Webern's music because of its brevity - continuing the
literary analogy, it comprises sound-bites, not well-constructed arguments.

There's an early piece by Webern, "Im Sommerwind".  IIRC, it's longer than
any other Webern orchestral work, and IMO it's also better than any of the
others too.  Webern clearly had the talent to write effective large-scale
orchestral works, and whoever persuaded him to do miniatures instead did
him no favours.

The second faulty assumption is that the dividing line between what
everyone finds acceptable and what those of us who dislike "atonal music"
object to invariably comes mid-way through Schoenberg's career - that
anyone who likes late Schoenberg will also like Berio, and that anyone who
hates Berio will also hate late Schoenberg.  Again, perhaps this is true
for some.

That there is little difference between most early 20th-century music and
the early 20th-century music which happens to use serial techniques but
is in all other respects the same is probably so obvious as not to require
saying.  There are, for example, masterpieces at either end of Schoenberg's
career (Verklaerte Nacht and the String Trio) as well as works which
personally I find tedious (such as the 1st Chamber Symphony and the Violin
Concerto).  Schoenberg may have settled on a peculiar way of creating
melodies, but the other elements of the CM tradition, such as rhythm,
harmony, counterpoint and symphonic development, are all still present.

Between late Schoenberg and Berio, all these seem to me to have been lost.
I can't hear any melody in Berio Sequenzas, and I can't hear any rhythm,
harmony, counterpoint or symphonic development either.  This doesn't
mean that no-one likes Berio (I have some strange tastes too).  It does
mean that those of us who are looking for something in the tradition of
Beethoven, Brahms and Sibelius (and for that matter Berg and Schoenberg)
aren't going to find what we're looking for in Berio.  Encouraging people
to listen to late Schoenberg may well be worthwhile (although there are IMO
other composers from the 1930s and 1940s who are more consistently great),
but saying that it's a route to understanding Berio is simply wrong -
there's too much difference.

Peter Varley
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