Margaret Mikulska <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Generally, no, I don't think that serious = atonal and pabulum = tonal.
>(I assume, of course, that we are talking about tonal music being composed
>nowadays.) But somehow it happens that most neotonal works I heard sound
>reused and recycled to me, as if tired of their own musical language.

Or perhaps they have other things to say which are unrelated to the mere
language with which the information is being communicated.  As a pretty
good general rule, artists who are interested in language are interested
only in language; & since most people go about their lives unconcerned with
mere Wittgensteinisms, its hardly surprising that this form of art tends
towards the moribund.

>Their composers seem to reach for musical devices that have become cliches
>a long time ago.  I want something fresh and new, a new kind of musical
>beauty, and I find it in, among others, Carter and Boulez.

What you want is fine & absolutely your choice (as indeed it is the choice
of any free person)...  but this choice you deny to others who deign not
to agree with others (see below).

>So here we have a continuity of a certain tradition, a certain approach
>to music; that the musical language changes is inevitable: how long can
>one repeat the same musical tricks???

If the medium isn't the only mass age, there reusing what you prejudicially
call tricks is valid as long as they achieve the required effect.  Such
an assessment requires you to do more than merely respond to your personal
taste but analyse both the intent & achievement...  which is exactly what
you accuse others of not doing for music you personally enjoy.

>But continuity is there, and if it's not obvious at first listening, it
>will become obvious in due course.  (Unless you just don't like this music
>- not everything is to everybody's taste.)

Or the approach is inherently uninteresting to the listener; which
is subtly different to not liking something.  I quite like really good
noiseworks; & i understand pretty much exactly what a composer like Boulez
is trying to do; but while occasionally i enjoy his effects, i inevitably
find his preference for sounding original merely for the sake of sounding
so limiting in cf to someone like Searle or particularly Arnold, both
of whom understand the value & impact of selective dislocation within
convention.  In cf, the bland originality of a Boulez is far more
conventional (in the strict sense that it follows slavishly an artistic
convention: that of modernist originalism) than other, supposedly more
conventional (in the colloquial, somewhat derogatory sense of being overly
traditionalist) composers.

>There are still genres in which tonal music has its place.

This is without doubt one of the most outrageous statements anyone could
possibly make about art.  To say that any voice is relevant of irrelevant
in any context is appallingly patronising; & reflects a mind more closed
than those you're criticising.  It may merely have been a poor choice of
words; but in context, it reads as though you really believe that you can
choose what approach to art is appropriate for this (or any) context.  The
only way you can view choice here is by Demokritean convention; & there are
no atoms & void to baseline things.

Live in peace
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