Nicolas Croze-Orton:

>Do you really believe that the Boulez and ....  Well any of the let's
>say Schonberg " followers" hold the key to a new musical kingdom? I don't
>think so ...

I don't believe *anybody* holds those keys.  Music will develop the way it
develops - essentially the way composers choose to write.  It's not really
important who establishes the future.  Certainly Rachmaninoff did not, but
who cares? He wrote beautiful music.  I'd also say the same of Schoenberg,
Webern, and Boulez - at least, some of their work strikes me as very
beautiful indeed.

>It ruptured something in music instead of following a constant evolution
>in what we feel is musical language, there Is a way of being evolutionary
>without falling into tonal rupture AND without being regressive.

You make way too much of tonal/atonal - far more than Schoenberg, Berg, or
Webern did.  Adorno was, I think, the first to emphasize this distinction
in a very silly essay called "Schoenberg vs.  Stravinsky." I doubt very
much that even professionals could tell without a score an atonal piece
from a highly chromatic one.  Schoenberg himself thought of his music as
continuing post-Wagnerian chromaticism, and I must admit he makes more
sense to me than Adorno does.

A very fine composer once asked me whether I thought atonality made
Schoenberg bad.  Since I liked many Schoenberg's works, I couldn't really
accept the premise, but of the ones I didn't like, the lack of clear
rhythms and the Wagnerian habits of phrasing bothered me far more.

Furthermore, as Stirling Newberry is fond of pointing out and you imply,
there are several musical strands that twentieth-century composers have
continued.  Any one of them can peter out.  After all, very few people
now write in Mozart's musical language, despite Mozart's achievement.
The idea of waiting around for the future to justify taste seems futile
to me.  Artists go in and out of notice all the time.  The idea that
art eventually comes to its just appreciation for all time is simply
historically inaccurate.  We tend to think of ourselves as the end of the
line and in possession of The Truth, unlike our childish ancestors.  How
could they have been so naive or so blind? It's more meaningful to say that
every time has its assumptions as to what great art is.  Some works fit;
some works don't.

Furthermore, as this list amply proves, there's no real consensus.  Each
of us has our own set of heroes and villains.  My current bete noir happens
to be ...  well, it doesn't matter.  The point is there's no one classical
audience.  Glenn Branca, George Perle, John Corigliano, John Williams, and
Alan Hovhaness all appeal to somebody, at least, who would miss them if
their music were no longer played.  The point is, I guess, enjoy what you
enjoy.  Don't worry about what the future thinks of you.  You'll be dead.

Steve Schwartz