I should start by thanking Kathleen O'Connell for stressing that:
>...one doesn't have to be a professional, or even very musically
>literate to love pan-tonal / serial / atonal music!
It seems many of the defenders of pantonality/serialism have been
non-musicians. To those musicians, who unlike us do have a formal
musical education, and who have posted unkind words about "atonal music"
this should a strong incentive to reconsider their views.
D. Stephen Heersink wrote:
>>Duodecaphonic compositions do not always have melody, harmony, or both, and
>>therefore do not always fit the shared conceptual understanding of music.
To which Stirling Newbery added:
>I'm afraid this argument does not hold up on examination - you've moved
>the question "what's music?" to "what is melody or harmony?".
Exactly. Is the principle theme of Bach Prelude in C major from Bk I of
the "48" a 'melody'? If not, the theme that opens the Schoenberg Violin
Concerto certainly is, and it is much more 'singable' (once you become
accustomed to it) than the Bach. Dodecaphonic music does have harmony,
it's just that it's dodecaphonic harmony.
Having made these brief remarks I would like to devote my attention to
Sterling Newberry's post. He writes:
>These three camps correspond rather directly to the three camps of music
>in the 20th century. The first corresponds directly to those who wrote
>tonality in the old form, the second to the strands of neo-classicism,
>the third to the musical avant-garde.
I must say I see 20th century music differently. With this I am forced to
take a stand with respect to 20th century music. It should be remembered
that Stravinsky started to write dodecaphonic music in his later years.
It is music which to me sounds every bit as 'neo-classical' as the works
from the 1940-50's. Dodecaphony is not a musical style any more than
triadic-diatonic music is a 'style'.With this in mind I would like to
stress that stylistically the Second Viennese School and most of the
post-war so-called 'avant garde' composers could not be more different.
The Second Viennese School were at heart traditionalists. They sort order
where wild chromatism threatened the traditional music system with chaos.
Boulez complains that Schoenberg treats a tone row as if it were a theme
to be subjected to variations - and in sense he is absolutely right.
Strictly speaking it is developing variations - which is the term
applied by Schoenberg to Brahms' development technique. Furthermore the
systematic treatment of a single musical idea whose treatment by inversion,
retrograde, retrograde-inversion, augmentation, diminution etc to produce
not just a single movement but a whole work is something Schoenberg learns
from JS Bach, who achieves this in works such as the Art of Fugue.
Schoenberg even wrote in "New Music, Outmoded Music, Style and Idea":
The secrets of the Netherlanders [ie Franco-Flemish polyphonists of
the 1400-1500s], strictly denied to the uninitiated, were based on
the a complete recognition of the possible contrapuntal relations
between the seven tones of the diatonic scale....In contrast Bach,
who knew more secrets than the Netherlanders ever possessed, enlarged
these rules to such an extent that they comprised all the twelve
tones of the chromatic scale. Bach sometimes operated with the twelve
tones in such a manner that one would be inclined to call him the
first twelve tone composer.
Has it also never occurred to anyone that it is no coincidence that
Schoenberg's first orchestral dodecaphonic essay was his Variations for
Orchestra just as Brahms' first orchestral essay was the St Anthony Choral
Variations. The two works even share similarities in form in that certain
groups of variations have a scherzo like character whereas others have a
slow movement like character.
Even Webern who was hailed by some as the father of abstract
intellectualism wrote of his work that it was all an expression of his
anguish after the death of his mother. His works prove to be as soul
searching and semi-autobiographical as that Webern's hero, Mahler. Webern
even orchestrates like Mahler. Webern's much praised crystalline clarity
is an extension of something already becoming increasingly apparent in late
Mahler. Similarly has nobody ever noticed that Webern's first major opus
is a Passacaglia for orchestra - again Brahms is the great precedent here.
If that was not enough Webern not only orchestrated some Bach but wrote his
PhD thesis on Heinrich Isaacs, one of the greatest of all the
Franco-Flemish polyphonists.
I therefore maintain that the most deeply traditionalist and conservative
composers of the 20th century (or ANY other century) were those of the
Second Viennese School. I will also say that nothing done by the post-war
'avant garde' especially those who most busily indulged in sometimes facile
experimentalist theatrics was ever quite so profoundly - and necessarily -
radical as what the Second Viennese School achieved.
Indeed it is precisely this radical conservatism that makes the music of
the Second Viennese School the most necessary music of the first half of
the 20th century. It is necessary because it connects us to our roots in
the music of the centuries which have preceded it more deeply than that
of any other music written in the 20th century. It is a link not only
to Mahler, Wagner or Brahms but to JS Bach and the polyphonists of the
1400-1500s.
In comparison these so called traditionalist who claim to write 'tonal'
music end up writing music so chromatic that tonality is incapable of being
the all dominant architectonic unifying force that it once had been. None
of these 'tonalist' write tonal music in any traditional way. They write
music that makes Schenker turn in his grave. The floors of tonality are
old and rotting under their feet and still they cling to it. They cling
because they cannot look far enough into either the past or the future.
20th century music is only a big chaotic hodge-podge if you allow
dodecaphony to be misrepresented as a break from the past. Only when
thus misunderstood does the century seem a disordered free-for-all.
While I grant that much of the post-war experimentalism was an attempt to
deliberately break from the past as an end in itself, and that while many
of these experiments were interesting exercises, I do not feel 20th century
music was much enriched by this process.
>... what is incommensurable to many is not a particular formalism
>- whether serial or quantum - but two opposing senses of how people must
>live and exist. Each demands a capitulation from the other. That which
>we see in the universe is real, or it is not real and only the result of
>observation of interactions - either 12 tone music is "noise" or it is the
>only music which is truly "of our time", which will supplant all previous
>music.
If you have followed my argument to date then you will you see that it also
follows that in serialism there is NO breech with the past. Dodecaphony
does NOT supplant the music of the past but achieves a deeper continuity
with it, one more self-consciously realised and more radically so than EVER
before achieved in the history of music. That is why it is necessary.
That is why Schoenberg said:
I am a conservative who has been forced to become a revolutionary.
Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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