Felix Delbrueck <[log in to unmask]> writes:
>Coming from a tonal perspective, I am used to reacting to more diatonic
>music as calmer and more stable, more chromatic music as more nervous and
>unstable. To me, atonal music sounds like the extreme of chromaticism. It
>seems ideally suited to 20th century notions of dislocation and angst. I
>am thinking about Wozzeck or Lulu, or Schonberg's 'Erwartung'. The problem
>then is - can this music express anything else? (Note that I am theorizing
>here - I have very little experience in listening to this kind of music -
>that's why I want some starting hints).
Mr. Delbrueck raises one on the most important features and concerns about
twentieth-century atonal music. It does, as he suggests, have a "nervous
and unstable" character to, unlike the classical, indeed unlike all other
music heretofore, which historically has stressed "calmer and more stable"
diatonic music. Let's not quibble about Beethoven's music sounding more
"edgy" than his predecessors', or any gradualist development of classical
music's classical/romantic strands. Beethoven followed organically from
what preceded him; the dislocation and angst of atonal and duodecaphonic
music is a radical split from its roots.
This weekend I bought on the recommendation of other three CDs, having been
assured that my tonal preconditions would be met: Varese and Rautavarra.
I listened intently, although it stressed me as if I had consumed twenty
cups of coffee. I doubt seriously I shall ever listen to them again. My
sentiments are not unusual. Even some of the more diatonic music I've
requested that my local classical music station play has been declined for
being to "acerbic, bitter, grating," etc. Maybe classical music had to
come to this. Maybe this was the only place where classical music hadn't
gone. And maybe, just maybe, future generations will find dissonance
beautiful.
But whatever the ontogenesis, the reality is that most people can tolerate
dissonance only in limited amounts, and then only if melody and harmony
triumph! More and more twentieth-century classical music is becoming
appropriately irrelevant and unheard because of its cacophony of noise for
noise's sake. It's brutal. It irritates. Some think it vulgar. Some,
myself included, do not believe it is the best that mankind has ever
thought or produced.
Stephen Heersink
San Francisco
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