Steven Schwartz writes:

>I hate having to bring this sort of thing up - something I feel the need
>to do with no other composer - but Schoenberg really has become the musical
>Antichrist whom well-meaning people believe has fundamentally changed
>Western European music.

You need to change "well-meaning people" to "well-meaning composers." And
remember that for many composers coming of age after the *change* so to
speak, being a musical Antichrist was the ticket!

For me Schoenberg retains that good ol' 19th-Century magic because he
used his music to speak for (and to) Humanity; many of his major works
are certainly programmatic.  He was a prophet for the people as well as
a prophet, (or a bad boy), among his fellow artists.

Those well-meaning composers certainly got the "bad boy" part right, but
like most of the bad boys of our youth, they now humbly pump gas for the
likes of Barber, Rachmaninoff, and Copland.  (Copland luckily went to
reform school and changed his ways.)

John Smyth (*Mr.* Smyth to all those bad boys out there)