Ulvi Yurtsever:

>Esther Sims <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>>...fundamental elements of music from previous eras are still there, but
>>the tonality has been completely obliterated - how does this affect the
>>listener?
>
>No differently than other stylistic choices other composers make; you
>either get used to them and concentrate on the underlying musical/emotional
>content, or you are so annoyed by them that you can't listen.  Some people
>have the latter problem with atonality, others don't.

I rather think that the "serial" or "atonal" question could be construed as
an objective rather than subjective one.  That is, as more than a matter of
taste.

The deal is this, in a simplified nutshell:  The natural progression in
tonal music, and pre-tonal music (chant, early polyphony, counterpoint) is
from a place (whether a tone, or a chord, etc.) to another, opposed place,
creating a tension, and back to the original place, having travelled about
or learned something in the interim to a greater or lesser extent.  This
movement, from rest to tension to rest, or from home, away and back again,
is a primary principal of western art, from drama to music to film (easy
with "moving" idioms), and also in writing, poetry, painting and such, in
a more abstract way.  Paintings have movement, it is just not temporal in
the way music or drama flows through time.  I think of this as the Odyssey
or Ulysses principal, where closure is not achieved until returning home
(sometimes to find things are not quite as you left them).

When this element is forcibly removed in art, as in the so-called Second
Viennese School, some immediate intelligibility is lost.  The similarity to
what the ear hears usually even today is faded.  Even the most violent/dark
metal/rap groups don't even come close to straying from tonality; it is too
intuitive.  (There is atonal rock, too.)

So I think something is scary and a little inaccessable to un-initiated
ears about atonal works.

This can be overcome with openmindedness, and yes, study.  It seems to
me that some of the importance in these works is the new systems these
composers 'invented' to get new sounds.  Appreciating the compositional
method helps me appreciate the works.  Perhaps this is not so for everyone.
I'm certainly not suggesting one -can't- enjoy or understand this music.
But, in the case that the method is the thing, so to speak, it helps me at
least to get it.

Don't get me wrong.  I like serialist and atonal works (not all of course).
I only wanted to suggest that there is something more than taste involved
in liking or disliking this kind of music.  But hey, just revel in the
sounds of the Bartok quartets and Webern chamber music and forget the
theory.  (Still trying with "Lulu".  Need help.)

I am slowly working through a book by American composer George Perle
called something like "Twelve-Tone Tonality" that has been most helpful
in understanding more about these ideas.  It is thick going but rewarding
(it looks like set theory on paper!).  He deals more with Bartok, Berg
and Webern than Schoenberg though.

Dang!  That -was- a diatribe.  I'd like to hear what others have to say.

Bob K.