Mark Landson:

>I truthfully cannot think of one composer thought of as great that was not
>reflecting the ideals shared by the normal educated class.

Think harder.

>Even in the case of the 20th century.  Shoenberg, Cage, etc.  all reflected
>the worldview of those who deemed them great.

Actually, I don't agree with Schoenberg's or Cage's worldview.  I don't
agree with Bach's, for that matter.  Yet I consider two of the three great
composers, and I enthusiastically listen to their music.  Furthermore, if
I had never heard a Beethoven work with text or read a Beethoven letter,
I'd have no idea of his Weltanschauung.  In fact, I'd say that this is the
normal situation for most listeners.  For example, I have no idea -- other
than Polish freedom from Russia -- what Chopin believed or how he viewed
the world.  The music itself doesn't tell me, because music doesn't work by
denotative thought.  This doesn't mean that a Chopin ballade can't move me.

>The difference is that there was a schism between the intellectuals and
>the general public that turned off the public.

This is way too simplistic.  There are a lot of reasons why this is the
case.

>When the intellectuals firmly gained power, and pushed forward their
>agenda, the public retreated.

The public retreats when Carl Nielsen is on the program.  Nielsen is
hardly as "far out" as Schoenberg or Cage.  The public retreats from the
unfamiliar.  What do you attribute that to? Furthermore, it's been going
on far longer than Schoenberg's birth (at least since Beethoven).  If you
read Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective, you will come across Philip
Hale's famous remark:  "Exit in case of Brahms." I don't really see, say,
Luciano Berio as a pops composer, no matter how many centuries we have
left, but I don't see why composers like this are trotted out as Exhibit
A every time somebody wants to slam the modern movement in music.

>I do think that these aforementioned "villians" were more relevant in
>their time than Rachmaninoff, even though Rachy is loved more (by me as
>well).

Relevance, as you seem to imply, doesn't mean all that much.  Enjoyment or
"understanding" counts for almost everything.  For most of us, Josquin or
Chopin aren't really relevant, in the sense that their ideas and opinions
are.  Yet, they sell, or at least Chopin does.  Most composers, as far as
I can tell, don't write the way they do because they want to be relevant.
I would assert instead that most of them actually enjoy the music they
write.

I was listening to an interview with the British composer Elizabeth
Lutyens (c.  1906-1984).  Without ever hearing or even knowing of scores
by Schoenberg, Berg, or Webern, she independently created dodecaphonic
serialism.  She didn't arrive at it because it was relevant.  She had
simply grown very tired of musical modulation:  "I came to the point that
if I ever heard another cadence again, I would scream." Afterwards, she
first heard a score by Webern.  She thought, aside from its beauty and that
here was somebody doing the same thing she was, it was a very odd score
indeed for the composer of Der Freischuetz ("I was never all that good
with names").  But, again, she thought the music beautiful.

>Indeed, communication IS the object of art.  A concept that would be highly
>debated by the avant garde.

Depends on the particular member of the a-v.  Schoenberg, for example, was
convinced he would become a popular composer, eventually.  Beethoven, while
he at times aimed at vulgar success, considered himself primarily a
composer "for the cognoscenti."

>But I stand by that concept strongly.  And what is the very first thing
>you must have to be able to communicate? Something to say.

Yes, but if you are a composer, that "something to say" is, first and
foremost, music, not a vision of the world.  A vision of the world may
impel you to write music -- or it could be a simple desire to write music
or it could be money -- but unless you tell people *in words* what that
vision is, it's not very likely they will infer it from the music itself.
I have no idea, for example, what vision impelled Beethoven to write the
Symphony No.  7, as opposed to the ideas that the music stirs up in me
as I listen (not at all the same thing).  As a matter of fact, I don't
particularly care about Beethoven's 7th-symphony vision, although it might
be interesting to find out.  Nevertheless, the music is quite enough for
me.

Steve Schwartz