Felix Delbrueck <[log in to unmask]> asks numerous questions on
atonal and "duodecaphonic" music.  It seems that in a nutshell the basic
question is something like "Given that I want to make an effort to listen
to atonal and 12 tone serial music, how should I listen to it and with what
degree of concentration and "attitude"?

My answer is quite simple - just listen and make of whatever pieces
you hear "in those styles" whatever you will.  There's really no need
to analyse tone rows, retrogrades, inversions, retrograde inversions,
note durations, rhythmic patterns and mathematical relations between
notes, or which particular instruments are required to make the performance
"authentic" rather than anachronistic etc etc.  (Unless, of course, you're
a professional musicologist, conductor, composer, instrumentalist, singer,
Ph.D or DMus candidate etc etc).

Speaking for myself, I've spent a lifetime dabbling in music in one way or
another and making no headway whatsoever.  Every now and then my absolute
confidence in my belief that I am irredeemably and profoundly ignorant
in all matters pertaining to music is severely shaken when someone comes
along and attributes some degree of musical knowledge or insight to me on
the basis of a few casual remarks that I am sometimes guilty of making.
I suppose the stunned silence that usually results could easily be
misinterpreted as "savouring the moment" (or a performance of 4:33, if it
lasts precisely that long) or as simple acknowledgement of the wisdom so
strangely and unexpectedly conferred upon me at just these moments.

At any rate just a few words of 'advice' from one who should really learn
to hold his tongue.

Geoffrey Gaskell
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