Deryk Barker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>And still sounds unmistakably like Stravsinky, as Copland's
>serially-influenced pieces still sound like Copland.

Two of my favorites 20th century scores - admittedly from the include
everything up to & including the kitchen sink basket - are Theodorakis's
Spring Symphony & Eisler's Deutsche Sinfonie, both of which (i'm supposedly
reliably informed) use serial structures within their more conventional
tonal structures.  Don't ask me which sections are serialist...  they all
sound like the Golden Greek/tragic German to me.  Same is true with Malcolm
Arnold & Zhu Jian'er's experiments with the form, more or less; although i
can something recognise the distinctive time/texture differentiations of a
total serialist approach...  it usually ends up sounding a little like Alan
Hovhaness on really bad exstasy.  On the other hand, i'm no fan on the
terminally tedious Boulez, whose bland - albeit noisy - musical meanderings
i personally find begin nowhere, end nowhere, & say nothing particularly
interesting along the way...  but i suspect that Boulez would bore me as
rigid if he attempted to write a charming orchestral piece for precorded
whale songs & sensa misura orchestra as the late, great Hovhaness would
excite me with a rare experiment in total serialism.

What am i trying to say? I'm not sure that the tonerow (& its multiplicity
of variants) is really the problem for most 20th century music phobes;
although the unsustainable hype that some advocates of these musical
constructions indulge in certainly doesn't help...  the idea that modern
artists should (or shouldn't) write (both contentwise & venacular) to be
appropriate to the 20th century experience is unmitigated aesthetic facism;
& one of the main reasons i describe contemporary modernism as a profoundly
reactionary (as opposed to the radicalism it presumes to) aesthetic.  If
people feel that the musical constructions of Haydn (even nothing but the
musical constructions of Haydn...  i'm going beyond Bachianas Brasilerian
hybridisation here) is an appropriate mode of expression for dealing with
the contemporary experience they have the same right to be taken seriously
as someone using the latest NASA musical technology (although one could
certainly argue that the lyrically retro Hovhaness is far more radical than
Boulez...  Theodorakis is certainly more revolutionary than von Webern)....

...  & in the real market out there, they _are_ being given the same
respect (or lack of same) as anything the critical elite might approve.
The diversity of sounds available to listeners in the CD means means (like
it or lump it) we've gone beyond special pleadings for the sounds one
personally likes...  if the art doesn't speak directly to the listener, no
moral imperatives are going to force him or her to open his/her wallet &
support it; & if the listener decides to totally write the 20th century off
as artistic bad karma....

(That's why the cf with contemporary art is wrong.  Art has so retreated
into the institution of the museum that there's no real market in the
real work; & as a result of this lack of popular input, its relevance
to contemporary life is exactly zero.  At least some people are still
listening to music; so we haven't completely succumbed to living
fossilisation)

Stripped of the aesthetic bs, though, tonerows are just a device for
organising musical composition (exactly like the sonata & passacaglia);
& exactly like the sonata & passacaglia, most of us listeners wouldn't
recognise it in a piece if it came up & bit us on the nose.  Like all
devices, it has strengths & weaknesses: used well, the technique creates
strong, generally dark textures, often of considerable power; while in
the hands of a modern romantic (i'm thinking of Brits like Searle,
Frankel & the Catalan/Brit Gerhard here) it can also achieve a distinctly
nonconventional lyricism which borders on the grumpy New Age...  Waste Land
pastorales, i like to call them.  On the other hand, it isn't real good at
what Flanders & Swann would call a happy song; & (notwithstanding the
pioneering efforts of the distinguished Teutonic musicologigist Prof.
Bruno Heinz Jaja) comic opera seems somewhat beyond its textual range.
Treat it as a device & stop misrepresenting it as a revolution; & a lot
of the heat would vanish from this argument would vanish real quick.

What wouldn't change, though, has been the tendency of some tonerow-linked
composers to bundle their twelve tones MSstyle with other user-unfriendly
devices (limited dynamic range, usually starting at f & moving loud;
indifferent pacing - an occupational hazard when using total serialist
construction, of course; & a surprisingly chronic inability to really
sell a piece by giving it the artistic basics of an interesting beginning,
enticing development & memorable ending)...  devices which - more than the
tonerows themselves - may have worn out most listeners patience with music
linking itself to the form.  Audience rejection doesn't mean that tonerow
music is necessarily bad, of course; anymore than audience rejection means
that the salon de refuses is inevitably good....

All the best,
Robert Clements <[log in to unmask]>