# Why 12-tone music?



## KenOC

Why invent a whole new set of rules for composing music? What problems does it solve?

Certainly it is not much liked. It is next to never heard on the radio because people will change the station. It is next to never encountered in the concert hall because people won't buy tickets. In fact, probably the most popular (if that's the word) 12-tone piece, Berg's Violin Concerto, was programmed exactly twice by major US orchestras in the 2014-2015 season.

So, I ask again...what's the point?


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## Mahlerian

It's not a set of rules, nor is it wholly new at all. It's modeled on traditional methods of counterpoint and motivic development, and it's only a tool for creating music.

The point is the music. The technique is entirely secondary.

The idea that people won't buy tickets if a piece is 12-tone is simply wrong, and you're basing it on the actions of concert organizers who are convinced beforehand that 12-tone technique is going to scare people away when the truth is none of those who would be scared away could recognize whether a work is in fact 12-tone or not.

There have been plenty of successful runs of, say, Schoenberg's opera Moses und Aron or Berg's Lulu (which recently played to large crowds at the Met).

It doesn't need a justification other than the masterpieces created using it.


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## KenOC

Three minutes! Not bad. A pity, though, that those "masterpieces" seem to go unrecognized by most, even after decades have passed.


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## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> Three minutes! Not bad.


Well, you have to tell me why you're casting aspersions on a technique which you couldn't even recognize if you heard it. Why does it matter to you?


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## KenOC

Mahlerian said:


> Well, you have to tell me why you're casting aspersions on a technique which you couldn't even recognize if you heard it. Why does it matter to you?


 We're getting a bit ad hominem here, aren't we? It might be better to stick to the question asked.


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## isorhythm

It doesn't matter how popular they are (though some of them are popular enough). It just doesn't.

I know, so snobby and unfair. That's art.


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## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> We're getting a bit ad hominem here, aren't we? It might be better to stick to the question asked.


I did answer the question. I then asked why you were asking it.

I'm also asking why you feel such a need to take down Schoenberg at every opportunity.

You've told several outright falsehoods about him, some repeatedly:

- That his music was never popularly successful
- That no one goes to his concerts
- That his music isn't played
- That nobody listens to his music

And finally, ridiculously and most absurdly given how easy it is to look up and prove otherwise:
- That he never had children

For a composer you tell us you don't care about, you certainly talk a lot about him, even so far as to introduce him into conversations when he was not previously under discussion.


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## KenOC

I was talking about 12-tone music and never mentioned Schoenberg. Please read my post. What on earth are you talking about?


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## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> I was talking about 12-tone music and never mentioned Schoenberg. Please read my post. And I know nothing of Schoenberg's sex life and have never said anything about it. What on earth are you talking about?


You did, in fact, in this post.

http://www.talkclassical.com/40757-why-listeners-listen-post974476.html#post974476



KenOC said:


> It is indeed. Some musicians, from Liszt through the present, attract groupies, which suggests a possible role of musical genes in passing along the ol' DNA. But some, such as Beethoven and Schoenberg, seem to have missed that particular boat. In one of the two cases, it was a shame.


Bringing up Beethoven, who was a bachelor, in this context, indicates that you are talking about composers who never had children or never married, etc.

Schoenberg, in fact, has a whole long line of living descendants. He was in fact quite good at "passing along the DNA" from his two marriages.


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## KenOC

The connection with Schoenberg's sex life (if any) is tenuous at best. And has nothing to do with this thread. The thread, BTW, is about 12-tone music. Please so notice.

I repeat: Why 12-tone music?


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## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> The connection with Schoenberg's sex life (if any) is tenuous at best. And has nothing to do with this thread.


You were the one who brought it up in the first place. I was just using it as an example of the bizarre falsehoods you've hurled at the composer.



KenOC said:


> I repeat: Why 12-tone music?


Because music is great. The 12-tone method is one way of writing music. Like any tool, it's only as good as the craftsman.

Luckily, Schoenberg and Stravinsky were the two greatest composers of their era, and they could use it to craft masterworks.


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> Why invent a whole new set of rules for composing music? *What problems does it solve?*
> 
> Certainly it is not much liked. It is next to never heard on the radio because people will change the station. It is next to never encountered in the concert hall because people won't buy tickets. In fact, probably the most popular (if that's the word) 12-tone piece, Berg's Violin Concerto, was programmed exactly twice by major US orchestras in the 2014-2015 season.
> 
> So, I ask again...*what's the point*?


It didn't "solve a problem" anymore than Cubism "solved a problem" in art.

As for "the point", what is the "point" of any art? Someone had something to say and they wanted to say it that way not the other way - that was the "point".


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## violadude

Why modal music?
Why vocal music?
Why Opera?
Why Piano Music?
Why Major and Minor?
Why Minimalism?
Why counterpoint?
Why harmony?
Why melody?
Why tones?
Why Music?
Why Spaghetti?
Why food?
Why Water?
Why Oxygen?
Why?
Why? 
Why?




But seriously, Why Katy Perry?


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## brotagonist

I couldn't care less if Schoenberg had children-or who else did or didn't, for that matter (not picking on your argument there, Mahlerian). I'm not listening to their [email protected] (a distortion of something Beethoven had said).

[OT: I don't have children and I don't want any wailing and disturbance at my place. In fact, I don't want to share my place at all! It's my sanctuary, the place I return to after having been among the public :tiphat:]

As for dodecaphony: I liked it right off the bat. Most of my friends did, too. True, it was an artsy crowd. It sure influenced a lot of composers afterwards-right to the present day! I have to agree with Mahlerian: the majority of people wouldn't have a clue if music was 12-tone, atonal or major or minor key. Any music that sounds a little bit 'different' will be labelled as whatever it is they dislike. Some people simply enjoy music that might be a bit different, while many don't want to leave the comfort of the familiar. The odd thing is, I could even be among those latter ones, except that dodecaphony was what I grew up with, so it is my familiar


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## Dim7

brotagonist said:


> I have to agree with Mahlerian: the majority of people wouldn't have a clue if music was 12-tone, atonal or major or minor key.


I wouldn't be so sure about "major or minor key". I think the difference is pretty easy to hear most of the time.


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## brotagonist

I guess I really need to learn about music!  Is there a YT video that has sound samples so I could just hear them once and for all to memorize?


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## ptr

KenOC said:


> I repeat: Why 12-tone music?


I would be much more interesting to discuss "why not 12-tone music", for me it is a natural part of Darwinism, one of the new forms that evolved through natural selection! But given that a wast majority of the population of North America do not recognize Darwinism I find it quite unsurprising that they do not recognize any new concepts in music (not that Mr Schönberg's theories are that new anyway)..

So the simple answer to to this question is, _because in the right hands it makes for for some very stimulating music!_ And the fact that some individuals do not own the intellectual properties to comprehend this form of music just indicates a lack of proper education...

I fully expect the anti Darwinian lobby to edit or delete this post!


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## KenOC

I very much agree that Darwin is relevant here! There are many organisms that survive in the crevices, so to speak, while having little noticeable effect in the larger ecosystem.

You are correct that in the US there is a large proportion of people who will have no truck with the idea of evolution. But it is not the majority. See the latest Pew Research poll for details.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/02/12/darwin-day/


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## dgee

ptr said:


> _because in the right hands it makes for for some very stimulating music!_


Well that's the right answer there! Another answer may be: if you have to ask, you'll never know!


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## Dim7

KenOC said:


> Why invent a whole new set of rules for composing music? What problems does it solve?
> 
> Certainly it is not much liked. It is next to never heard on the radio because people will change the station. It is next to never encountered in the concert hall because people won't buy tickets. In fact, probably the most popular (if that's the word) 12-tone piece, Berg's Violin Concerto, was programmed exactly twice by major US orchestras in the 2014-2015 season.
> 
> So, I ask again...what's the point?


Certainly classical is not much liked compared to pop music. Why classical music?


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## dgee

Dim7 said:


> Certainly classical is not much liked compared to pop music. Why classical music?


THE dirty secret of classical music! Why have Beethoven and Verdi lost such audience share over the past 50-80 years? Because people are bad. Why is contemporary music from the past 50-80 years so unpopular? Because the music is bad

LOLZ - but I admit there may be other factors either way...


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## Gouldanian

KenOC said:


> Why invent a whole new set of rules for composing music? What problems does it solve?
> 
> Certainly it is not much liked. It is next to never heard on the radio because people will change the station. It is next to never encountered in the concert hall because people won't buy tickets. In fact, probably the most popular (if that's the word) 12-tone piece, Berg's Violin Concerto, was programmed exactly twice by major US orchestras in the 2014-2015 season.
> 
> So, I ask again...what's the point?


Evolution. Self affirmation. Every generation of anything, music not being the exception, wants to cut ties with the past and leave its own stamp, a mark of existence if you will. I personally hate it but it's like that, it's part of human nature.


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## dgee

Gouldanian said:


> Evolution. Self affirmation. Every generation of anything, music not being the exception, wants to cut ties with the past and leave its own stamp, a mark of existence if you will. I personally hate it but it's like that, it's part of human nature.


I personally hate what Italian opera of the 19th century from Rossini to Verdi did to the operatic tradition but I guess that it was a change that needed to happen at the time.

If you had studied music you may see how the big 3 were a continuation of the romantic tradition - even webern! If not, you may find out more about that with some research


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## Ilarion

ptr said:


> I would be much more interesting to discuss "why not 12-tone music", for me it is a natural part of Darwinism, one of the new forms that evolved through natural selection! But given that a wast majority of the population of North America do not recognize Darwinism I find it quite unsurprising that they do not recognize any new concepts in music (not that Mr Schönberg's theories are that new anyway)..
> 
> So the simple answer to to this question is, _because in the right hands it makes for for some very stimulating music!_ And the fact that some individuals do not own the intellectual properties to comprehend this form of music just indicates a lack of proper education...
> 
> I fully expect the anti Darwinian lobby to edit or delete this post!


Yes, why not 12-tone music? Even though I am not a fan of 12-tone I can still acknowledge it for being another compositional technique/tool for ones toolbox.


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## Strange Magic

Number One Statement: "De gustibus non est disputandum."

Number One Question: Can popularity as defined by willingness to shell out cash tell us anything beyond itself? If so, What?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_music_artists

Number Two (Yes!) Question: Is there such a thing as good/bad art/music?

Statement Number Two: "De gustibus non est disputandum."


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## Gaspard de la Nuit

I probably wouldn't be able to tell a 12-tone piece from a composer who isn't using the technique but is creating works that sound more or less reminiscent of composers that have or do use it.


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## MarkW

Uh,

1) Because the composers who used it (many of them, anyway) thought they had something to say that could be expressed that way;

2) Boredom with the old way;

3) Because everyone else was doing it?


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## Weston

I'm puzzled that people get so riled up about this subject. It's not like you go to a coffee house or mall and get subjected to Webern at 100 decibels every day.


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## Crudblud

12-tone composition is not a set of rules by default, but, like any other technique, it can have a set of rules if you want it to. In real terms its applications as a tool for composition are manifold and capable of producing extremely varied results. I've already written fairly extensively about my own experience working with the technique here (in a discussion spanning several posts), so I won't go to the bother of clogging up this thread with miniature essays, but people who don't understand why a composer might want to use it or how it could possibly benefit a composer at all may find it interesting to get a different perspective from someone who has employed it in their own work.



Weston said:


> I'm puzzled that people get so riled up about this subject. It's not like you go to a coffee house or mall and get subjected to Webern at 100 decibels every day.


That's why I don't go to coffee houses or malls.


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## Ilarion

Weston said:


> I'm puzzled that people get so riled up about this subject. It's not like you go to a coffee house or mall and get subjected to Webern at 100 decibels every day.


Weston,

Could it be that people who know so precious little about 12-tone are getting riled to the point of a showdown at the O.K. Corral?


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## brotagonist

KenOC said:


> I very much agree that Darwin is relevant here! There are many organisms that survive in the crevices, so to speak, while having little noticeable effect in the larger ecosystem.


That's the real reason why we have our careers! If it was just about money, we'd all be on welfare or working at McD.


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## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> For a composer you tell us you don't care about, you certainly talk a lot about him, *even so far as to introduce him into conversations when he was not previously under discussion*.


Just as you have done with Shostakovich.


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## Mahlerian

EdwardBast said:


> Just as you have done with Shostakovich.


Oh, I'm actually very interested in Shostakovich. I don't always like his music, I'm baffled by his reputation with some, but I will not deny he's a fascinating figure.

I'm not aware of having outright lied about him, though. I would never say that nobody likes his work or that he deliberately destroyed music or that he wasn't attractive enough to have children.


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## Guest

EdwardBast said:


> Just as you have done with Shostakovich.


A fair point at first glance, Edward, but if you think Ken likes Schoenberg 10% as much as Mahlerian likes Shostakovich, I'll have to accuse you of selective reading


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## brotagonist

Let's lie about the music we love :lol: or we could sit on the fence!


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## EdwardBast

As for whether or not twelve-tone composition is or was a method: It certainly seems to have been codified as such in many U.S. music departments throughout the late 20thc. Among the "rules" that gained wide acceptance (based on personal encounters with composition teachers and the reports of colleagues) were an admonition against sequences readily construed as triadic, against favoring thirds, fifths and sixths over tritones, sevenths and ninths in ones rows, and against any other practice that might tend to establish the centrality of any one pitch class on either a local or a global level. Of course, teachers on the front line will use whatever means they can to bring students toward their sound ideals, without regard to historical grounding or theoretical rigor.


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## Stavrogin

Why don't you like Shostakovic, Mahlerian?
How is this not worth extraordinary admiration?





Sorry for the OT but it's always alarming for me when Mahlerian's tastes differ from mine 
It's like "what am I doing wrong???"


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## EdwardBast

nathanb said:


> A fair point at first glance, Edward, but if you think Ken likes Schoenberg 10% as much as Mahlerian likes Shostakovich, I'll have to accuse you of selective reading


The validity or fairness of my point has nothing to do with anyone's musical preferences. It is fair because it is true as stated.


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## Mahlerian

I didn't say I don't like Shostakovich, I said that I don't like some of his works, and I don't enjoy his music to the degree that others do.

As it happens, I do enjoy many of his String Quartets, and the Eighth is a powerful little work that connects with audiences for its musical expression in addition to the compelling narrative surrounding it. The Fourth Symphony is among my favorite symphonies of the modern era and, I feel, a masterful work.


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## Janspe

Why 12-tone music? I couldn't tell, but I know for a fact that the world of music - for me, at least - would be much duller without it. Schoenberg, Webern and Berg are integral to my musical life, and that's only three composers who used the technique. I'm not an expert on the subject, and I certainly don't recognize the method every time someone uses it - but I don't feel that this diminishes my ability to enjoy the music in any way. So is 12-tone music something that only works on paper and only advanced musicians can understand? I don't think so!

I've never quite understood the argument that nobody really likes 12-tone music - I certainly do, and I know plenty of other people who do too. But maybe I'm living in a 12-tone bubble and I'm happily oblivious to the world around me, who knows...


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## arpeggio

Mahlerian said:


> I didn't say I don't like Shostakovich, I said that I don't like some of his works, and I don't enjoy his music to the degree that others do.
> 
> As it happens, I do enjoy many of his String Quartets, and the Eighth is a powerful little work that connects with audiences for its musical expression in addition to the compelling narrative surrounding it. The Fourth Symphony is among my favorite symphonies of the modern era and, I feel, a masterful work.


It seems that one of the problems with the more traditional members is that they have problems understanding how a person who likes atonal music can still appreciate 19th century common practice tonality. There are a few members who think all 20th century music is superior. I know this not scientific but from reviewing all of the various polls here it seems that contemporary is greater crowd maybe only 5% of the members.

The vast majority of us like everything from Gregorian Chant to contemporary avant-garde. Since Carter sounds so different from Beethoven some find if difficult to understand how many of us can like both.


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## Stavrogin

arpeggio said:


> It seems that one of the problems with the more traditional members is that *they have problems understanding how a person who likes atonal music can still appreciate 19th century common practice tonality*. There are a few members who think all 20th century music is superior. I know this not scientific but from reviewing all of the various polls here it seems that contemporary is greater crowd maybe only 5% of the members.
> 
> The vast majority of us like everything from Gregorian Chant to contemporary avant-garde. Since Carter sounds so different from Beethoven some find if difficult to understand how many of us can like both.


Where do you get that from?
If anything, it's the contrary.


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## starthrower

Mahlerian said:


> The point is the music. The technique is entirely secondary.
> It doesn't need a justification other than the masterpieces created using it.


And there's no justification or valid reason for complaining about it. The nerve of people complaining about the music they don't even listen to, or hear on the radio, or in the concert hall. And don't think the artists and composers aren't aware of you whiney pinheads. I was disappointed that the Calidore Quartet felt the need to apolgize before they launched into the performance of Webern's Six Bagatelles. "For those of you who don't like this kind of music, don't worry, it's only 5 minutes long."


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## Morimur

Shosty's life is more interesting than his music (with the exeption of the string quartets). If Stalin hadn't taken an interest in him, he'd just be a grey blur in our consciousness.


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## Janspe

starthrower said:


> I was disappointed that the Calidore Quartet felt the need to apolgize before they launched into the performance of Webern's Six Bagatelles. "For those of you who don't like this kind of music, don't worry, it's only 5 minutes long."


Seriously? Ouch, that's just sad. Makes me feel that perhaps the artists themselves aren't sure of the music they're performing - and a warning like that certainly imposes certain prejudices on the listener. I always cringe a little when I read program notes that are infested with long ramblings about the so called _difficulty_ of the music that's going to be performed - I want to keep my ears open, and make up my own mind. Not that I'd always let other people influence my thoughts, but I still find it a bit silly when a writer concentrates solely on the fact that something is considered difficult for the listeners.


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## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> Oh, I'm actually very interested in Shostakovich. I don't always like his music, I'm baffled by his reputation with some, but I will not deny he's a fascinating figure.
> 
> I'm not aware of having outright lied about him, though. I would never say that nobody likes his work or that he deliberately destroyed music or that he wasn't attractive enough to have children.


Apologies!; I should have highlighted the last bit when I quoted you above. I meant to refer only to the practice of bringing up a composer who was not under discussion in the current thread. Of course you have mentioned works by Shostakovich you admire and your views on him are nuanced.


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## arpeggio

Stavrogin said:


> Where do you get that from?
> If anything, it's the contrary.


I see it all of the time here, in all of the other forums I have participated in and with some of the board members I have had to deal with the various groups I have performed with. I am not going to mention names because I would end up violating the TOS. It would also take me a great deal of time to go rummaging through the forum to find examples of this. Then the members who created these posts would get mad at me, a war would break out and the moderators would end up closing the thread.

The TOS restricts one from mentioning names of other forums.

I think I can mention the difficult board members I have had to deal with without violating the TOS.

I will again mention the board of the music group that I was a member of that was taken over by traditionalist who felt that we should only play real tonal music that real people listen to. They fired the director who would not go along with their agenda and destroyed the group and they had to rebuilt it from scratch. This was the McLean Orchestra in about 1985.

I have found two of the posts where I have addressed this:

http://www.talkclassical.com/21629-conductor-news-6.html#post665362

http://www.talkclassical.com/31317-rant-horrible-music-composers-9.html#post639571

There are others.

As far as the musicians I play with I occasionally run into musicians who hate modern music. But I rarely run into musicians who only like just contemporary music.


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## superhorn

Composers have been trying new ways to write music for centuries ; the music of every era has been vastly different from that of the past . 
Schoenberg was simply looking for a new way to compose ; beginning as composer of ripe late romantic music influenced by Wagner and Brahms, he eventually developed his 12 tone system by the 1920s . There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this ; he was following in the footsteps if the great composers of the past . Schoenberg never felt he was rejecting or rebelling against the great composers of the past ; on the contrary ; no one had greater reverence for them . He was merely trying something new .


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## arpeggio

^^^^
Yeah.
Have I told you my favorite non-bassoonist are horn players?


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## Stavrogin

arpeggio said:


> I see it all of the time here, in all of the other forums I have participated in and with some of the board members I have had to deal with the various groups I have performed with. I am not going to mention names because I would end up violating the TOS. It would also take me a great deal of time to go rummaging through the forum to find examples of this. Then the members who created these posts would get mad at me, a war would break out and the moderators would end up closing the thread.
> 
> The TOS restricts one from mentioning names of other forums.
> 
> I think I can mention the difficult board members I have had to deal with without violating the TOS.
> 
> I will again mention the board of the music group that I was a member of that was taken over by traditionalist who felt that we should only play real tonal music that real people listen to. They fired the director who would not go along with their agenda and destroyed the group and they had to rebuilt it from scratch. This was the McLean Orchestra in about 1985.
> 
> I have found two of the posts where I have addressed this:
> 
> http://www.talkclassical.com/21629-conductor-news-6.html#post665362
> 
> http://www.talkclassical.com/31317-rant-horrible-music-composers-9.html#post639571
> 
> There are others.
> 
> As far as the musicians I play with I occasionally run into musicians who hate modern music. But I rarely run into musicians who only like just contemporary music.


Yeah, I meant "the contrary" as in "lovers of 20th music are generally considered very open-minded, therefore certainly without prejudices on earlier music". For my experience, of course.


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## Nereffid

arpeggio said:


> The vast majority of us like everything from Gregorian Chant to contemporary avant-garde.


Ugh, here I go again referencing my polls, but I don't think this is true. Medieval, Renaissance, early Baroque and late-20th/early-21st-century music are consistently less popular (generally speaking) than 18th- to early-20th-century music.

I might agree with "A majority of us are capable of tolerating, but not especially interested in, everything from Gregorian Chant to contemporary avant-garde".

But there's no contempt for early music. And Schoenberg seems much more popular here than Josquin.


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## GreenMamba

starthrower said:


> And there's no justification or valid reason for complaining about it. The nerve of people complaining about the music they don't even listen to, or hear on the radio, or in the concert hall. And don't think the artists and composers aren't aware of you whiney pinheads. I was disappointed that the Calidore Quartet felt the need to apolgize before they launched into the performance of Webern's Six Bagatelles. "For those of you who don't like this kind of music, don't worry, it's only 5 minutes long."


This reminds me of a story of the Bernstein introducing a Xenakis work by saying the NYPhil would be "on the honor system" tonight.


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## DaveM

I'm not a big fan of 12-tone music. In fact, my classical music taste has always tended towards the more traditional which usually means 19th century music or earlier with the exception of Rachmaninoff, Richard Strauss and the like. But, at least in this thread, I'm not going to make any value judgement about 12-tone or other 'contemporary' music.

However, I am always bothered by the use of the word 'lie' in forums like this. The use of the term immediately changes the discussion from informational to confrontational. Someone may think that a poster is stating a fact that is incorrect because of what may turn out to be some ignorance on the subject, that he/she is indulging in some hyperbole that overstates facts or is even exaggerating to the extent that he/she is skirting the fringe of the truth.

But lying infers that a person is purposely out to deceive. That, in and of itself, would be a ridiculous motive on a forum like this where anyone can quickly check the truth on the internet. Misstated facts can be challenged with the correct facts without injecting the term 'lying' into the discussion.


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## arpeggio

Stavrogin said:


> Yeah, I meant "the contrary" as in "lovers of 20th music are generally considered very open-minded, therefore certainly without prejudices on earlier music". For my experience, of course.


Understood. Sorry misinterpreting you post.


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## Stavrogin

arpeggio said:


> Understood. Sorry misinterpreting you post.


My bad, iI was too lazy to write more


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## Woodduck

Nowhere In this loud choral symphony "In Defenso Dodecaphonia" do I hear a response to the actual question posed by KenOC:

_"Why invent a whole new set of rules for composing music? What problems does it solve?"
_
There may be many people here without any clear idea of why this particular technique of composition came into existence, why it was felt to be necessary and important to its creator, and why it came to be considered so important by so many other composers, and to dominate musical academia, for so many decades. A discussion of these aspects of the subject, which seem to me implicit in the initial question, might actually be interesting, which the prevailing knee-jerk reaction to the question's poster and his presumed ulterior motives certainly is not.


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## GreenMamba

Woodduck said:


> Nowhere In this loud choral symphony "In Defenso Dodecaphonia" do I hear a response to the actual question posed by KenOC:
> 
> _"Why invent a whole new set of rules for composing music? What problems does it solve?"
> _
> There may be many people here without any clear idea of why this particular technique of composition came into existence, why it was felt to be necessary and important to its creator, and why it came to be considered so important by so many other composers, and to dominate musical academia, for so many decades. *A discussion of these aspects of the subject, which seem to me implicit in the initial question, might actually be interestin*g, which the prevailing knee-jerk reaction to the question's poster and his presumed ulterior motives certainly is not.


If that's what the OP wanted, he should have left out the stuff about it not being liked, etc. And the OP has a reputation of pot-stirring threads.


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## Morimur

GreenMamba said:


> If that's what the OP wanted, he should have left out the stuff about it not being liked, etc. And the OP has a reputation of pot-stirring threads.


KenOC, would you please leave the pot alone for awhile?

You pot-stirring rascal, you!


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## millionrainbows

What was said:


KenOC said:


> Why invent a whole new set of rules for composing music? What problems does it solve?
> 
> Certainly it is not much liked. It is next to never heard on the radio because people will change the station. It is next to never encountered in the concert hall because people won't buy tickets. In fact, probably the most popular (if that's the word) 12-tone piece, Berg's Violin Concerto, was programmed exactly twice by major US orchestras in the 2014-2015 season.
> 
> So, I ask again...what's the point?


It could be said that 12-tone music is an introspective art, not concerned with any social agenda or winning any popularity contests. In this sense, it is a "sociopathic" music, in the eyes of social conformists and exponents of the herd mentality. Of course, it is a flexible system, and can be used for any purpose, such as Schoenberg's Moses und Aaron, Nono (politics), soundtrack music (social and commerce), etc.

This notion of introspection runs contrary to prevailing views in a highly industrialized society. If a form of art or institution does not share the same goals as the prevailing social structure, it is seen as an aberration.

Example: Nichiren Buddhism (they chant nom-myoho-renge -kyo) is a form of Buddhism with a social agenda, and has a political arm & agenda in its native Japan (the Sokka Gakkai Party). This religion is very critical of Zen Buddhism, because Zen involves "going off and meditating alone," which is seen as potentially unproductive and anti-social. The point is that Nichiren Buddhism is much more suited to highly industrialized societies, such as post-war Japan and Dallas, Texas, home of Dr. Phil McGraw.

So that's the agenda and point of the OP. "introspection/inwardness/self-absorption/non-conformity" is bad, and "efficiency/social conformity/efficiency" is good. Just ask Dr. Phill next time you're in the wonderful city of Dallas, Texas.


----------



## Chordalrock

KenOC said:


> Why invent a whole new set of rules for composing music? What problems does it solve?
> 
> Certainly it is not much liked. It is next to never heard on the radio because people will change the station. It is next to never encountered in the concert hall because people won't buy tickets. In fact, probably the most popular (if that's the word) 12-tone piece, Berg's Violin Concerto, was programmed exactly twice by major US orchestras in the 2014-2015 season.
> 
> So, I ask again...what's the point?


Schoenberg invented it because he was faced with a sort of writer's block. He desired a method to unify atonal music structurally, since it lacked the unifying force of tonality. He invented the twelve-tone method, and was suddenly able to start composing again. Whether the method makes sense theoretically, it provided Schoenberg the practical value of allowing him to compose again, and compose music which many - albeit a minority - love.

I'd also add that the method is a good one for producing music with a certain kind of entirely new and consistent mood or moods. It's not the end-all be-all of music, but it's a valid type that should exist for the sake of variety if nothing else.

I think it's silly to pontificate against this sort of music - I say this as someone who has been guilty of the same - when the fact is that outside a few relatively popular composers, such composers are barely recorded or represented, even though they sometimes have a cult following as significant as any art film. There is nothing you can do to damage their market value, because they have none. It's not even like kicking a dead horse, it's like kicking a dead horse that has become a hamburger and never deserved it.


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## millionrainbows

I think it's silly to ignore the social, human aspect of this: Schoenberg was an alienated outsider, who desired to belong, and was ultimately rejected. This is also, perhaps to a lesser degree, true of Mahler. Also, Mahler makes the case more effectively that art has to progress, even when it is part of a continuing tradition. Example: you'd never hear that weird, dissonant chord from Mahler's 10th unless he was trying to go into new territory.

Moderate examples like Mahler seem to put things in more realistic perspective, not introspective personal extremes which only represent a skewed, conformist view.


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## Simon Moon

KenOC said:


> I very much agree that Darwin is relevant here! There are many organisms that survive in the crevices, so to speak, while having little noticeable effect in the larger ecosystem.


At this point in history, this analogy seems to apply to ALL classical music, not just 12 tone.


----------



## Simon Moon

KenOC said:


> Why invent a whole new set of rules for composing music? What problems does it solve?


Why does it need to solve a problem?

Seems this statement could have been said in reference to any new form of music throughout musical history.



> Certainly it is not much liked. It is next to never heard on the radio because people will change the station. It is next to never encountered in the concert hall because people won't buy tickets. In fact, probably the most popular (if that's the word) 12-tone piece, Berg's Violin Concerto, was programmed exactly twice by major US orchestras in the 2014-2015 season.
> 
> So, I ask again...what's the point?


I like it. Much more than early music, actually.

The fact that my local classical station in LA (KUSC) does not play it, is why I don't listen to the station very often. Even their once a week, 2 hour program dedicated to modern music "plays it safe", and does not play it.


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## Weston

starthrower said:


> I was disappointed that the Calidore Quartet felt the need to apolgize before they launched into the performance of Webern's Six Bagatelles. "For those of you who don't like this kind of music, don't worry, it's only 5 minutes long."


I wasn't there of course, but reading this sounds more like a an ice breaker joke than an apology.

It can still have the wrong effect though. Andras Schiff tells a seemingly harmless little joke about Schoenberg's piano music during his quite excellent Beethoven piano sonata lectures -- I forget which lecture. Unfortunately I let that little joke prejudice me against 12 tone music, not based on the music, but based on what I'd heard _about_ the music, and so assumed it was difficult and pretentious. The lectures are nevertheless a life changing experience I would recommend to anyone. It only took a few years for me to come around since I was already well into Ligeti, Wourinen, Penderecki and the like, who are at least contemporary if not 12 tone necessarily.


----------



## Weston

So from what I gather from this thread, peaking through the cracks in the entertaining drama segments, is that the use of 12 tone technique might be considered a springboard from which to base a composition's structure, vaguely similar to the way the fugue or _fortspinnung,_ sometimes became a springboard for earlier compositions?


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## Janspe

Weston said:


> It can still have the wrong effect though. Andras Schiff tells a seemingly harmless little joke about Schoenberg's piano music -- Unfortunately I let that little joke prejudice me against 12 tone music, not based on the music, but based on what I'd heard _about_ the music --


Schiff not only jokes about Schoenberg, but apparently holds a rather scathing opinion of his music in general. I quote him:

_"That is, I have enormous difficulties with the "Second Vienna School"; difficulties I can't resolve-or will not resolve. Also, when I said before that all great music derives from Bach, so too has the music of Schönberg much to do with Bach. However, something about it irritates my nervous system. Actually, there are pieces of Schönberg which sound indescribably hideous, for example, his last piano piece, Opus 33, or the "Horn Quintet"-nothing exits in the world that irritates me more. And, then, this equalization of the twelve tones; I can't think that way, it is against my nature."_

_"-- with few exceptions, apart from-and those concern Alban Berg, who sometimes didn't break so radically with the Classical tradition, like Schönberg or Weber_ [sic]_, for example-that is, what the "Second Vienna School" produced, is not real music."_

I admire Schiff's playing and artistry enormously, but this is one of the topics on which I can't agree with him...

Source: http://www.schillerinstitute.org/fid_02-06/021-2schiff.html - an interesting interview from 2001, certainly worth a read!


----------



## Mahlerian

Weston said:


> It only took a few years for me to come around since I was already well into Ligeti, Wourinen, Penderecki and the like, who are at least contemporary if not 12 tone necessarily.


Wuorinen uses an adaptation of the technique. The other two never did, not to my knowledge at any rate.



Janspe said:


> I admire Schiff's playing and artistry enormously, but this is one of the topics on which I can't agree with him...


I agree entirely. It's unfortunate that he doesn't see the connections between Bartok or Bach and Schoenberg and his school, but we as listeners don't have to stop listening to Schiff's recordings if we disagree with his aesthetic stances.


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## Celloman

Ah. I was wondering when this debate would rear its ugly head once again.

Schoenberg is unpopular? From my experience on the TC forum, I have seen strong evidence to the contrary. Schoenberg is alive and well among those who have an interest in his artform - neither too many nor too few. There are enough of us to reach a critical mass, I daresay.

And since when did a composer have an obligation to be popular? Shouldn't artists be allowed to express themselves as they so choose?


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## fluteman

Like a lot of musical or other artistic movements, serialism (which is not quite the same thing as 12-tone music) has had its impact on music that is performed and composers who are well known, like Leonard Bernstein. Some people have a similar complaint about all modern music, but from Stravinsky to Philip Glass, a lot of it has permanently entered and altered western culture.


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## DaveM

Celloman said:


> Ah. I was wondering when this debate would rear its ugly head once again.
> 
> Schoenberg is unpopular? From my experience on the TC forum, I have seen strong evidence to the contrary. Schoenberg is alive and well among those who have an interest in his artform - neither too many nor too few. There are enough of us to reach a critical mass, I daresay.
> 
> And since when did a composer have an obligation to be popular? Shouldn't artists be allowed to express themselves as they so choose?


Well yes, but, generally, there is a point where an artist needs to have some popularity to be an effective, as opposed to, a titular artist. After all, anyone can declare himself or herself to be an artist. There's no doubt in my mind that Schoenberg is a a genuine artist and all the more power to all those who like his works, but from everything I've seen, his recorded works have never exactly flown off the shelves. Just sayin'.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> It could be said that 12-tone music is an introspective art, not concerned with any social agenda or winning any popularity contests. In this sense, it is a "sociopathic" music, in the eyes of social conformists and exponents of the herd mentality. Of course, it is a flexible system, and can be used for any purpose, such as Schoenberg's Moses und Aaron, Nono (politics), soundtrack music (social and commerce), etc.
> 
> This notion of introspection runs contrary to prevailing views in a highly industrialized society. If a form of art or institution does not share the same goals as the prevailing social structure, it is seen as an aberration.


!2-tone music is a product of Western, industrialized society, and represents it better than any other music on earth. Who but a product of such a society could contrive a method of composition so technological and unspontaneous?

Introspective? Not in any sense of the word I know of. Sociopathic? I'll leave that one alone.


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## SeptimalTritone

Woodduck said:


> !2-tone music is a product of Western, industrialized society, and represents it better than any other music on earth. Who but a product of such a society could contrive a method of composition so technological and unspontaneous?
> 
> Introspective? Not in any sense of the word I know of. Sociopathic? I'll leave that one alone.


You're on a computer and therefore enjoying the benefits of a Western, industrialized, technological society.

And second, those who are fans of 12-tone Schoenberg actually find most of it to be introspective and yearning.


----------



## starthrower

Weston said:


> I wasn't there of course, but reading this sounds more like a an ice breaker joke than an apology.


I didn't find it funny. But I'm sure some of the blue hairs that showed up for the Mozart and Beethoven were relieved. Funny that they didn't feel the need to console the modern music fans that had to endure a much longer Mozart quartet.


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## Weston

Good point.^ More characters.


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## KenOC

The purpose of this thread was to discuss why 12-tone music (the method or whatever) was invented, what purpose it served. Usually if such a dramatic and purposeful step is consciously undertaken, there is a reason. To solve some sort of problem?

Schoenberg himself said, “Today I have discovered something which will assure the supremacy of German music for the next 100 years.” That didn't seem to work out too well since the Russians pretty much ruled the roost for several decades from that point forward. And, in fact, 12-tone music has had little or no impact on broad classical music audiences. Aside from Berg's violin concerto, occasionally performed, there is nothing. Even Schoenberg's own works are seldom performed by US orchestras -- they were programmed four times in the 2014-2015 season, and not one was a 12-tone work. Classical music audiences, broadly speaking, simply don't want to hear this stuff, even if some here insist that people are falling all over themselves in anxiety to hear it.

So -- what's the point? Does anybody really think that after all these years, music composed with such an arcane and artificial methodology is ever going to have any broad appeal? Or, in fact, does that matter?


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## EDaddy

I see I'm a bit late to the party and that yet another can of serial has been opened and aired out for all to wax poetic about. :lol: Just a few threads over Mahlerian and I have been having quite a go of it. So I'm feeling all good and warmed up for another such cockfight!

I kid, but seriously... The question for me is certainly not what's the point of 12-tone music. As others here have said, why any music? Or why art at all? And I agree. The minute we start questioning art's right to exist on it's on terms is the moment we have descended across that most dangerous of thresholds into the depths of Fascism, Nazism, and other such atrocious doctrines of control. Let's _not_ go there, shall we?

The question for me is not _why_ does 12-tone music exist. The question for me is why there are some who insist on calling it something it is_ not?_ instead of accepting and embracing it for what it is: senza tonalità

Come out! Come out!... all you closet serialists and proponents of all things atonal. Stand and be counted! Be proud of the music you love, whatever it is, where ever it is! Wear it like your sexual preference... bold and auspiciously! _Call it what it is!_ 

Just for the love of God, please quit saying its something that it _isn't!_


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## arpeggio

KenOC said:


> So -- what's the point? Does anybody really think that after all these years, music composed with such an arcane and artificial methodology is ever going to have any broad appeal? Or, in fact, does that matter?


Ask the people who like the Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack to the original _Planet of the Apes_.


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## brotagonist

EDaddy said:


> _Call it what it is!_


Straight. I'm outed-"bold and auspiciously." Is it ok that I like tonal music, too? :lol:

And you?


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> Why invent a whole new set of rules for composing music? What problems does it solve?


Woodduck suggests that this hasn't been answered. So just to be clear, let me ask back: before we got to the 'why', are you saying that the inventor of 12-tone music created these rules to solve problems?


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## KenOC

Not exactly. I'm asking, if not to solve problems, why? Was it simply to ensure "the supremacy of German music for the next 100 years"? Did the inventor really expect people to enjoy this stuff? Or was there, indeed, some sort of "problem" this was expected to solve? I'm truly kind of puzzled, although several others here seem to think it all quite unexceptionable.


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## violadude

KenOC said:


> Did the inventor really expect people to enjoy this stuff?


Not too high of an expectation, in retrospect, yes?


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## EDaddy

brotagonist said:


> Straight. I'm outed-"bold and auspiciously." Is it ok that I like tonal music, too? :lol:
> 
> And you?


Ha! Exit only for me. :tiphat:


----------



## EDaddy

MacLeod said:


> Woodduck suggests that this hasn't been answered. So just to be clear, let me ask back: before we got to the 'why', are you saying that the inventor of 12-tone music created these rules to solve problems?


Certainly didn't solve any problems on this board! :lol:


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## Weston

KenOC said:


> Not exactly. I'm asking, if not to solve problems, why? Was it simply to ensure "the supremacy of German music for the next 100 years"? Did the inventor really expect people to enjoy this stuff? Or was there, indeed, some sort of "problem" this was expected to solve? I'm truly kind of puzzled, although several others here seem to think it all quite unexceptionable.


I don't think art works this way. You get passionate about something and you can scarcely put it into words -- you just have to do it. Problem solving doesn't come into it until maybe when you're thinking about it later or trying to implement the passion in the real world. Or to paraphrase Captain Kirk, "You can't just sit down and say today I'm going to be creative." I'd bet money on the passion coming first, then the rationale.


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## Guest

EDaddy said:


> Come out! Come out!... all you closet serialists and proponents of all things atonal. Stand and be counted! Be proud of the music you love, whatever it is, where ever it is! Wear it like your sexual preference... bold and auspiciously! _Call it what it is!_


Jeebus this is beyond a dead horse being flogged. It is a horse that has died, been chopped up, put in a mincer, mixed with bulking materials, turned into pet food, canned, transported to the shops, sold to customers, opened, put on a plate and eaten.

_____________________________

Yes, let's not go down the slope to fascism.


----------



## arpeggio

There have been many threads that have been addressing these various issues not only here but in other forum for years. One can just review some of the threads listed in the 'Similar Threads' section below.

There are members who have provided some excellent responses.

There are also the many great musicians who have performed and conducted 12-tone music.

There are the Bernstein lectures which have been posted in other threads.

Then there is the this interview of Mitsuko Uchida concerning the Schoenberg _Piano Concerto_: 




If the observations and efforts of these great musicians can not establish the worth of 12-tone music I seriously doubt that there is anything I can say to contribute to the discussion. I have tried.


----------



## mmsbls

I think KenOC is not asking why did Schoenberg develop a style that people _presently_ don't enjoy but rather why did he develop this _new_ style back then.

My understanding is that 12 tone music is not that far removed from strongly chromatic music. In other words, Schoenberg only modestly changed music. Do those who understand the theory reasonably well agree that 12 tone is only modestly different from the highly chromatic music of Schoenberg's time? Maybe a similar example from music history would be useful as a comparison.


----------



## starthrower

Woodduck said:


> 12-tone music is a product of Western, industrialized society, and represents it better than any other music on earth. Who but a product of such a society could contrive a method of composition so technological and unspontaneous?


Thanks for the crude analogy! But I'll take Schoenberg's art despite his critics.


----------



## Ilarion

dogen said:


> Jeebus this is beyond a dead horse being flogged. It is a horse that has died, been chopped up, put in a mincer, mixed with bulking materials, turned into pet food, canned, transported to the shops, sold to customers, opened, put on a plate and eaten.
> 
> Yes, let's not go down the slope to fascism.


A pithy reply, dogen:tiphat::tiphat::tiphat: - But I fail to see the connection with the slope to fascism - And I refuse to ask you to qualify what is meant by it.:angel:


----------



## Ilarion

Weston said:


> I don't think art works this way. You get passionate about something and you can scarcely put it into words -- you just have to do it. Problem solving doesn't come into it until maybe when you're thinking about it later or trying to implement the passion in the real world. Or to paraphrase Captain Kirk, "You can't just sit down and say today I'm going to be creative." I'd bet money on the passion coming first, then the rationale.


Weston,

You da Man ... :tiphat::tiphat::tiphat:


----------



## Ilarion

starthrower said:


> Thanks for the crude analogy! But I'll take Schoenberg's art despite his critics.


Why is the analogy crude? Mefeels it is that it could be done. Truth be told, I despised Schoenberg so totally until after I had listened to his *Gurrelieder* - Then I doffed my hat in deference to him, eventhough Gurrelieder is not 12-tone.


----------



## Guest

Ilarion said:


> A pithy reply, dogen:tiphat::tiphat::tiphat: - But I fail to see the connection with the slope to fascism - And I refuse to ask you to qualify what is meant by it.:angel:


well I shall respond anyway!!!

The dead issue comment was not _meant_ to be connected to my comment agreeing with EDaddy: "The minute we start questioning art's right to exist on it's on terms is the moment we have descended across that most dangerous of thresholds into the depths of Fascism, Nazism, and other such atrocious doctrines of control. Let's not go there, shall we?"


----------



## Ilarion

dogen said:


> well I shall respond anyway!!!
> 
> The dead issue comment was not connected to my agreement with EDaddy: "The minute we start questioning art's right to exist on it's on terms is the moment we have descended across that most dangerous of thresholds into the depths of Fascism, Nazism, and other such atrocious doctrines of control. Let's not go there, shall we?"


Amen, Brother...:clap::clap::clap:


----------



## Chordalrock

mmsbls said:


> I think KenOC is not asking why did Schoenberg develop a style that people _presently_ don't enjoy but rather why did he develop this _new_ style back then.


I already responded to this question of his based on what I read in the authoritative Schoenberg biography by Malcolm MacDonald, but KenOC chose to ignore my response. He seems to be more interested in provocation than actually learning about the topic, which is unfortunate.

As for the quotation about "supremacy of German music", that was pretty obviously a sarcastic remark by Schoenberg, as MacDonald argues.


----------



## Ilarion

Chordalrock said:


> I already responded to this question of his based on what I read in the authoritative Schoenberg biography by Malcolm MacDonald, but KenOC chose to ignore my response. He seems to be more interested in provocation than actually learning about the topic, which is unfortunate.
> 
> As for the quotation about "supremacy of German music", that was pretty obviously a sarcastic remark by Schoenberg, as MacDonald argues.


Hi Chordalrock,

Methinks and mefeels that KenOC isn't being provocative, rather he is probing and poking to seek more truths and I congratulate him for doing so.


----------



## Mahlerian

Ilarion said:


> Why is the analogy crude? Mefeels it is that it could be done. Truth be told, I despised Schoenberg so totally until after I had listened to his *Gurrelieder* - Then I doffed my hat in deference to him, eventhough Gurrelieder is not 12-tone.


But why *despise* him? That's what really baffles me about this whole thing. Classical music listeners think that Schoenberg is this sort of devil or antichrist who came in and willfully destroyed music. The hatred and bile directed towards a man who's been dead for over half a century who never hurt a single person in his entire life is disturbing to me.

He was an artist, who wrote the music he believed in and felt compelled to write on an artistic level, who believed entirely in inspiration as a guide to creativity. His music is an extension of the Romantic tradition and, in the face of movements such as Neoclassicism that downplayed the expressive qualities of music, a composer who considered expression among the loftiest goals. To hear others say it, it's the exact opposite, but we only have to look to Schoenberg's own words to see that this was the case.



Ilarion said:


> Methinks and mefeels that KenOC isn't being provocative, rather he is probing and poking to seek more truths and I congratulate him for doing so.


KenOC is being provocative. Otherwise he wouldn't feel the need to stick in insults and jibes before the topic has even begun.


----------



## arpeggio

Ilarion said:


> Hi Chordalrock,
> 
> Methinks and mefeels that KenOC isn't being provocative, rather he is probing and poking to seek more truths and I congratulate him for doing so.


But most of us here already have figured out whether or not we like 12-tone music. We do not need lengthy rhetorical discussion to confirm what our ears have already figured out years ago. For many of us these discussions are meaningless.

KenOC and others have been asking these same questions for years and no matter what anybody says it is not good enough. Bernstein in his lectures which are available on YouTube addresses all of his questions. I know that he is familiar with these lectures. He is asking questions he already knows the answers too. If Bernstein's and other great musicians' observations are invalid, what can any of us say?

I do not understand why members who enjoy 12-tone music should keep having to justify why they enjoy this music.


----------



## Ilarion

Mahlerian said:


> But why *despise* him? That's what really baffles me about this whole thing. Classical music listeners think that Schoenberg is this sort of devil or antichrist who came in and willfully destroyed music. The hatred and bile directed towards a man who's been dead for over half a century who never hurt a single person in his entire life is disturbing to me.
> 
> He was an artist, who wrote the music he believed in and felt compelled to write on an artistic level, who believed entirely in inspiration as a guide to creativity. His music is an extension of the Romantic tradition and, in the face of movements such as Neoclassicism that downplayed the expressive qualities of music, a composer who considered expression among the loftiest goals. To hear others say it, it's the exact opposite, but we only have to look to Schoenberg's own words to see that this was the case.
> 
> KenOC is being provocative. Otherwise he wouldn't feel the need to stick in insults and jibes before the topic has even begun.


Hi Mahlerian,

I listened to Gurrelieder when I was 19 and now I'm 53, so Arnold has been a fav of mine for most of my life. As to KenOC, I believe he is seeking and that may cause some feathers to be ruffled. Please understand that I value your and KenOC's postings very highly because mefeels that both of you are very well-rounded and educated.


----------



## Mahlerian

Ilarion said:


> Hi Mahlerian,
> 
> I listened to Gurrelieder when I was 19 and now I'm 53, so Arnold has been a fav of mine for most of my life. As to KenOC, I believe he is seeking and that may cause some feathers to be ruffled. Please understand that I value your and KenOC's postings very highly because mefeels that both of you are very well-rounded and educated.


Ah, my apologies for misunderstanding your post.

The truth is that "Why 12-tone music?" makes no more sense to me as a question than "Why Neapolitan sixths?" or similar. It's just one thing you can do when writing music. It can be done well or poorly depending on the composer. Of course the technique does certain things, but KenOC has never shown any interest in those things, and his repetition of the canard that it is a "mechanical" technique shows that he is stabbing in the dark without any real understanding of how it works.


----------



## Ilarion

Mahlerian said:


> Ah, my apologies for misunderstanding your post.


No probs, Mate - I hold you in excellent state...:tiphat:


----------



## Mahlerian

EDaddy said:


> The question for me is not _why_ does 12-tone music exist. The question for me is why there are some who insist on calling it something it is_ not?_ instead of accepting and embracing it for what it is: senza tonalità
> 
> Come out! Come out!... all you closet serialists and proponents of all things atonal. Stand and be counted! Be proud of the music you love, whatever it is, where ever it is! Wear it like your sexual preference... bold and auspiciously! _Call it what it is!_
> 
> Just for the love of God, please quit saying its something that it _isn't!_


"'Atonal' became a useful missile of critical abuse, hurled first at Schoenberg and his school and then, increasingly indiscriminately, whenever a critic's ears were outraged by too uncomfortable a degree of dissonance in Bartok, Milhaud, Prokofiev, Britten....So widely was it used that it gradually lost some of its pejorative sting, became enshrined in dictionaries of music, and finally gained acceptance in both popular and scholarly parlance as the word that supposedly describes 'music without a key.' Yet *it is still a nonsense-word that completely misrepresents the works to which it is so blithely applied.*" - Malcolm MacDonald

This is why I don't call it atonal. Because it's not atonal at all, so far as that term is normally understood. Because atonality is a chimera invented in the minds of critics, and perpetuated in the minds of some audiences, without any real descriptive power or relevance to music as I hear or as I write it.


----------



## millionrainbows

KenOC said:


> The purpose of this thread was to discuss why 12-tone music (the method or whatever) was invented, what purpose it served. Usually if such a dramatic and purposeful step is consciously undertaken, there is a reason. To solve some sort of problem?
> 
> Schoenberg himself said, "Today I have discovered something which will assure the supremacy of German music for the next 100 years." That didn't seem to work out too well since the Russians pretty much ruled the roost for several decades from that point forward. And, in fact, 12-tone music has had little or no impact on broad classical music audiences. Aside from Berg's violin concerto, occasionally performed, there is nothing. Even Schoenberg's own works are seldom performed by US orchestras -- they were programmed four times in the 2014-2015 season, and not one was a 12-tone work. Classical music audiences, broadly speaking, simply don't want to hear this stuff, even if some here insist that people are falling all over themselves in anxiety to hear it.
> 
> So -- what's the point? Does anybody really think that after all these years, music composed with such an arcane and artificial methodology is ever going to have any broad appeal? Or, in fact, does that matter?


As I understand, Schoenberg developed the 12-tone method to work past the impasse of late-Romantic harmonic practice. He saw it as a way to compose music which, by this time, had developed its way into a highly chromatic practice which could no longer support the ideas and practices of the traditional tonal system.

Schoenberg's decision to do this was not for "appeal" to an audience, but for self-contained artistic, art-for-art's-sake reasons. The current "classical audience" of concert halls is irrelevant, since it is only concerned with the past, rather like a museum. It represents institutional tradition, and is separate from purely artistic concerns.


----------



## starthrower

Ilarion said:


> Why is the analogy crude? Mefeels it is that it could be done.


Crudeness I can decipher. As for your other statement? It's unintelligible.


----------



## millionrainbows

Mahlerian said:


> Ah, my apologies for misunderstanding your post.
> 
> The truth is that "Why 12-tone music?" makes no more sense to me as a question than "Why Neapolitan sixths?" or similar. It's just one thing you can do when writing music. It can be done well or poorly depending on the composer. Of course the technique does certain things, but KenOC has never shown any interest in those things, and his repetition of the canard that it is a "mechanical" technique shows that he is stabbing in the dark without any real understanding of how it works.


I must say that as a moderator, Mahlerian veers closely to the personal. Ironically, so does my response here. But I see his point: the net result of this thread is not about the music in any substantive way, but reveals information about the listeners and their motivations; but as an unintended side effect, it also reveals things about the creator of the OP.


----------



## SeptimalTritone

dogen said:


> well I shall respond anyway!!!
> 
> The dead issue comment was not _meant_ to be connected to my comment agreeing with EDaddy: "The minute we start questioning art's right to exist on it's on terms is the moment we have descended across that most dangerous of thresholds into the depths of Fascism, Nazism, and other such atrocious doctrines of control. Let's not go there, shall we?"





Ilarion said:


> Amen, Brother...:clap::clap::clap:


Um, dogen is a woman...

Just a little tip.


----------



## Simon Moon

KenOC said:


> Not exactly. I'm asking, if not to solve problems, why? Was it simply to ensure "the supremacy of German music for the next 100 years"? Did the inventor really expect people to enjoy this stuff? Or was there, indeed, some sort of "problem" this was expected to solve? I'm truly kind of puzzled, although several others here seem to think it all quite unexceptionable.


Seems there have been several response that explain why. As previously pointed out, Cubism did not "solve any problems" in visual art.

Why would a new method need to do anything beyond fulfilling the artists need to fulfill his or her artistic drive?

I actually did not start liking classical music _until_ I started hearing works by Schoenberg, Webern, Berg and other 20th century and contemporary composers.


----------



## millionrainbows

Simon Moon said:


> Seems there have been several response that explain why. As previously pointed out, Cubism did not "solve any problems" in visual art.
> 
> Why would a new method need to do anything beyond fulfilling the artists need to fulfill his or her artistic drive?
> 
> I actually did not start liking classical music _until_ I started hearing works by Schoenberg, Webern, Berg and other 20th century and contemporary composers.


To clarify, I presently see Cubism as a response to the changing function of painting. It was an attempt to answer the question of "What is the new function of painting, now that we have photography, cinema, and wireless news service?"

Perhaps in the same way, 12-tone was a response to the changing function of music, perhaps in a rather illogical way. This was the turn of the century, recorded music was on the rise, and the old Western paradigm of music exemplified by Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler, was rapidly become a vestige of a past era.


----------



## Chaszz

superhorn said:


> Composers have been trying new ways to write music for centuries ; the music of every era has been vastly different from that of the past .
> Schoenberg was simply looking for a new way to compose ; beginning as composer of ripe late romantic music influenced by Wagner and Brahms, he eventually developed his 12 tone system by the 1920s . There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this ; he was following in the footsteps if the great composers of the past . Schoenberg never felt he was rejecting or rebelling against the great composers of the past ; on the contrary ; no one had greater reverence for them . He was merely trying something new .


I don't believe that composers have been trying specifically to write in new ways for centuries. I think music and the arts in general have usually responded to changing social conditions by altering their approaches without necessarily wanting to create revolutions. The change from Baroque to Classical, for instance, was gradual and changes built up as social fashions shifted and composers reacted to each other's experiments and achievements. There are many composers one could cite as being halfway-there; for example J.C. Bach and Gluck. The changes sometimes occur in the unconscious, without conscious intention to make a big change, and gradually emerge into the light of day. At the same time, there were great artists who resisted change and sought rather to bring the art they received to greater heights within the confines of its received forms; two of these conservatives were more or less supreme in their arts: Rembrandt and Bach.

Since the beginning of the modern period however there have been more and more conscious efforts to in a wholesale nature overturn prior forms and artistic languages. So the movement toward Classical form which eventually resulted in the music of Haydn and Mozart for example, is not the same as Schoenberg adapting an entire new system of harmony in one fell swoop. The development of tonal harmony did not happen all at once and took long centuries. It is difficult, and sometimes a mistake, to speak of the centuries of pre-modern musical development and the century or century and a half of modernism as being equivalent in the aims of the artists.


----------



## KenOC

Chaszz said:


> ...The changes sometimes occur in the unconscious, without conscious intention to make a big change, and gradually emerge into the light of day.


I think the "new" has always been attractive, but the desire for the new arose in audiences, and composers reacted to the demand. So musical fashions changed, sometimes rapidly, more usually gradually.

The idea of a composer inventing a totally new and artificial (sorry, Mahlerian, but it's true) way of writing music without a noticeable audience demand seems to have been an unprecedented development. It worked about as well as you might expect, at least so far as the audiences were concerned.


----------



## Crudblud

KenOC said:


> The idea of a composer inventing a totally new and artificial (sorry, Mahlerian, but it's true) way of writing music without a noticeable audience demand seems to have been an unprecedented development.


Artificial as opposed to what?


----------



## KenOC

Crudblud said:


> Artificial as opposed to what?


In this case, I would define "artificial" as arising entirely from the intellect without any musical necessity or any promise of bringing people the pleasures normally associated with music. So it seems to me!


----------



## Chordalrock

KenOC said:


> In this case, I would define "artificial" as arising entirely from the intellect without any musical necessity or any promise of bringing people the pleasures normally associated with music. So it seems to me!


Have you ever tried composing strict canons in the style of Bach or Ockeghem? It is incredibly restrictive and like solving a puzzle. If you listen to something like Session's "Rhapsody" from 1970, it's easy to hear that the dodecaphonic method is a lot less restrictive and leaves a lot of room for creativity and artistic control. And if you compare it with parts of his second symphony, they are rather similar, even though the latter is not dodecaphonic. You are simply factually wrong in thinking that there is anything particularly artificial or limiting about the 12-tone method.

The accusation of dry intellectualism has been levelled at Ockeghem too, yet ironically his most popular mass is the one mass of his that is built out of canons.


----------



## KenOC

Repeat: "I would define "artificial" as arising entirely from the intellect without any musical necessity or any promise of bringing people the pleasures normally associated with music."

I don't think strict counterpoint, or Ockeghem, or Bach, meets this definition in any way. Your opinion may, of course, differ.


----------



## violadude

KenOC said:


> In this case, I would define "artificial" as arising entirely from the intellect without any musical necessity or any promise of bringing people the pleasures normally associated with music. So it seems to me!


Oh ya? And where did other music theorists get their ideas from? From their hearts?


----------



## Chordalrock

KenOC said:


> Repeat: "I would define "artificial" as arising entirely from the intellect without any musical necessity or any promise of bringing people the pleasures normally associated with music."
> 
> I don't think strict counterpoint, or Ockeghem, or Bach, meets this definition in any way. Your opinion may, of course, differ.


I didn't say strict counterpoint, I said strict canon. Do you know what a canon is? I ask, because I am shocked by the idea that you may not know the meaning of the term. It is - pardon my French - a ludicruous thought that I am arguing about music with someone who does not know the meaning of canon.

Nevertheless, some questions. How is a strict canon anything but purely intellectual in its origin? What could possibly be its "musical necessity", except to provide a unifying structure or element to a piece - incidentally the same reason that Schoenberg used the 12-tone method. As for the promise of bringing aesthetic pleasure, that is just you making up nonsense. Schoenberg didn't invent the method or compose the music to displease, but to please.


----------



## Avey

KenOC said:


> In this case, I would define "artificial" as arising entirely from the intellect without any musical necessity or any promise of bringing people the pleasures normally associated with music. So it seems to me!


Wait, so, Schoenberg is rarely played. Thus, people do not like his music. Namely, because he failed in bringing people pleasures. This was so, because his music was created without necessity, which suggests some more "natural" thing would have manifested in his place. Thus, under your arbitrary label, this music was "artificial."

So what instead? This feels like an argument for the status quo. But I don't know when the status quo was ever the side to take with respect to creating music, or any great art.

Also, what the heck is the end-game (conclusion) here; what is the purpose of pointing out how sad you think his music is? Are we to no longer talk about his repertoire? Stop listening to it. Stop recording it.

After finally catching up over these pages, it seems this has degenerated into a veiled diatribe of Schoenberg and his technique. Again.

---

Also, because:


----------



## KenOC

I assume by "canon" you mean something like "Row row row your boat," which I believe is a canon in unison? Or Haydn's Witch's Scherzo? Yes, developed for purely intellectual reasons I'm sure, by deep theoretical thinkers. Have you seen the ghost of John?

If Herr S developed his method to please, it seems he pleased few.

Added: BTW I have attacked nobody in this thread, yet it seems several people are attacking me, and quite personally. Obviously anybody can talk about, and listen to, whatever they like. That includes yours truly, I would hope.


----------



## TradeMark

KenOC said:


> In this case, I would define "artificial" as arising entirely from the intellect without any musical necessity or any promise of bringing people the pleasures normally associated with music. So it seems to me!


Like Sonata allegro form...
or fugues...
or canons...
or various other compositional techniques.


----------



## aleazk

Because it sounds good.


----------



## Chordalrock

KenOC said:


> I assume by "canon" you mean something like "Row row row your boat," which I believe is a canon in unison? Or Haydn's Witch's Scherzo? Yes, developed for purely intellectual reasons I'm sure, by deep theoretical thinkers. Have you seen the ghost of John?
> 
> If Herr S developed his method to please, it seems he pleased few.


Wouldn't you assume that by "strict canon" someone would mean a canon in which one of the voices is imitated strictly, rather than loosely, say, in the manner of many Renaissance composers who simply couldn't handle the limitations of strict imitation outside short sections or short half-phrases?

As far as I know, the method was developed in the Middle Ages alongside polyphony by serious composers, who were often poets and/or theoreticians serving aristocrats and churches. When Ockeghem composed Missa Prolationum, he wasn't interested in impressing peasants, and when Palestrina emulated Ockeghem in Missa Repleature os Meum, one of his best, he was not looking to gather more fans high or low, but apparently found his motivation in simply competing in skill and imagination with the best of the past. The kind of motivation that Harold Bloom sees driving the creation of canonic literature, and the kind of motivation that I believe would explain more about the history of classical music than any supposed attempt to please the masses.

At the end of the day though, Schoenberg has pleased millions. Whether that is "few" or "a few" or "many" or something else, anyone can decide for themselves.


----------



## isorhythm

The 12-tone method was so widely adopted in the 20th century because it solved different problems for different people.

Even the original three (Schoenberg, Berg and Webern) each used it to very different ends.

This is key to understanding its appeal to composers. For hundreds of years, there was one set of rules that everyone followed, but that still allowed composers' individuality.

In the 20th century the old system was exhausted. Now, people found lots of ways out, not just 12-tone. But the difficulty is that in many cases that meant they came up with their own sui generis languages from scratch, and where do you go with that? It's hard adopt the musical language of Stravinsky, Debussy or Bartok without basically copying them.

12-tone provided a new system that anyone could use while still finding their own paths, like the old tonal system.

It did not turn out to be as important at Schoenberg and his early supporters thought it would be. But it produced some fantastic music. It remains one of many compositional tools that composers can use.


----------



## KenOC

I would guess (without evidence) that peasants were singing "strict canons" like the ones I mentioned long before the bulging braincase set decided to incorporate them into "serious" works. Canons at intervals other than the unison or octave were, I think developed within the confines of more formal music. Again, a guess only. We need to be careful about our assumptions regarding past ages: Musical amateurs spent a great deal of good money buying the sheet music for Beethoven's piano sonatas, with the intent of actually playing them -- not something imaginable today.

Schoenberg's success in writing "pleasing music" with his 12-tone system is apparent, to me, in that not a single one of his 12-tone works was programmed by any of the top 20 or so US orchestras in the 2014-15 season. Others may draw different conclusions, though that might involve some reaching.


----------



## SeptimalTritone

All right fine Ken.

12 tone music objectively sucks, and you are completely right. It was, and is, nearly completely a failure. Few people like and listen to it, orchestras don't program it, recordings don't sell, people turn their radio channels, and most people think it sounds awful, grating, unintuitive, and like a splatter of brown mathematical paint with its tone rows.

Anyway, I still love listening to it, and quite often play it while running, driving in the car, or just listening. It's beautiful to me. But you're right, to most it sucks, and from an objective standpoint, it does suck, and overall it is a failure. I listen to it for both fun and catchiness, and emotional therapy, although it objectively sucks.

Schoenberg objectively sucks.


----------



## isorhythm

KenOC said:


> Schoenberg's success in writing "pleasing music" with his 12-tone system is apparent, to me, in that not a single one of his 12-tone works was programmed by any of the top 20 or so US orchestras in the 2014-15 season. Others may draw different conclusions, though that might involve some reaching.


I wish you would directly address the point that many people have made about this.

_Classical music is unpopular._

I don't mean it's somewhat unpopular compared to other genres. I mean classical music as we know it _literally could not survive in the free market_.

What does that tell us?


----------



## KenOC

I never said that Schoenberg's music (or 12-tone music in general) sucked or was objectively bad. Merely that it had failed to gain much popularity and, if it was intended to be popular or bring widespread pleasure, failed in that.

You'd think I had recommended getting the baby out of the car with a pitchfork.


----------



## Mahlerian

isorhythm said:


> I wish you would directly address the point that many people have made about this.
> 
> _Classical music is unpopular._
> 
> I don't mean it's somewhat unpopular compared to other genres. I mean classical music as we know it _literally could not survive in the free market_.
> 
> What does that tell us?


Nothing. There is absolutely no conclusion that can be drawn from this whatsoever.


----------



## KenOC

isorhythm said:


> I wish you would directly address the point that many people have made about this.
> 
> _Classical music is unpopular._
> 
> I don't mean it's somewhat unpopular compared to other genres. I mean classical music as we know it _literally could not survive in the free market_.
> 
> What does that tell us?


In the US, classical music survives _entirely _in the free market, a combination of ticket and recording revenues and volunteerism (performing and donations). Tax support, aside from deductibility of donations, is close to non-existent.


----------



## Chordalrock

KenOC said:


> I would guess (without evidence) that peasants were singing "strict canons" like the ones I mentioned long before the bulging braincase set decided to incorporate them into "serious" works. Canons at intervals other than the unison or octave were, I think developed within the confines of more formal music. Again, a guess only. We need to be careful about our assumptions regarding past ages: Musical amateurs spent a great deal of good money buying the sheet music for Beethoven's piano sonatas, with the intent of actually playing them -- not something imaginable today.


Canons are something you compose on a paper or a keyboard instrument, and with great effort. The idea that the technique originated among the poor and illiterate is amusing, but slightly unrealistic. Even if I were wrong and you were right, the reason why serious composers used it was as I described: to provide inspiration and unity like the 12-tone method.



KenOC said:


> Schoenberg's success in writing "pleasing music" with his 12-tone system is apparent, to me, in that not a single one of his 12-tone works was programmed by the top 20 or so US orchestras in the 2014-15 season. Others may draw different conclusions, though that might involve some reaching.


You could say the same about a heck of a lot of works and composers. 20 orchestras have a limited schedule, and the field of classical music composition is very competetive indeed, meaning there is tons of stuff that could be performed, even by just one composer.

How many times did Haydn's symphonies get programmed? Or Beethoven's 2nd symphony or his 4th symphony? I'm assuming not many. Does that mean they are worthless?

You should also keep in mind that the new generations mostly listen to classical music by playing it themselves (China, many music students in U.S.) or listening to it at home or otherwise outside concert halls. The preferences of aging and tonally oriented concert audiences don't tell the whole story. It's getting tiring to correct your errors, but Beethoven most definitely didn't compose his piano sonatas for amateurs in the sense that you imply. And the idea that there was more talent around back then than there is today is outrageously incorrect.

As for the rest: for most of history, only "few" people listened to serious composers. Did that stop them from composing great music, or did that stop the music from being important? I don't think so. Schoenberg's 12-tone music has passed the one test that matters: many intelligent, musical people from different cultures and eras have loved those works. It's obviously, incontestably music of lasting value.


----------



## isorhythm

KenOC said:


> In the US, classical music survives _entirely _in the free market, a combination of ticket and recording revenues and volunteerism (performing and donations). Tax support, aside from deductibility of donations, is close to non-existent.


Charity and volunteerism are by definition not market phenomena.


----------



## KenOC

isorhythm said:


> Charity and volunteerism are by definition not market phenomena.


They certainly are, since they are totally voluntary undertakings. "I give you this $10,000 because I expect in return to improve my city and its culture." "I devote my time to this volunteer new music ensemble because I want to bring this music to more people." Absolutely free-market transactions, like Twinkies, drugs, or donations to Donald Trump.


----------



## isorhythm

KenOC said:


> They certainly are, since they are totally voluntary undertakings.


What? "Market" doesn't mean "voluntary."

Even if we do adopt your unique definitions of these words, we can't fail to note that most other genres of music don't require charity or volunteerism.

So, again, what do you think popularity tells us?


----------



## KenOC

"Market" means transactions, fairly entered into by two or more parties, with the aim of each gaining according to their needs and values. This easily includes voluntary charity, donations, or whatever.


----------



## isorhythm

KenOC said:


> "Market" means transactions, fairly entered into by two or more parties, with the aim of each gaining according to their needs and values. This easily includes voluntary charity, donations, or whatever.


You're the only person in the world who uses it this way, but it doesn't matter. How do you answer the question?


----------



## KenOC

isorhythm said:


> You're the only person in the world who uses it this way, but it doesn't matter. How do you answer the question?


"A free market is a market economy system in which the prices for goods and services are set freely by consent between vendors and consumers, in which the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority. A free market contrasts with a regulated market, in which government intervenes in supply and demand through non-market methods such as laws creating barriers to market entry or price fixing." Nothing here excluding charity or voluntarism, so long as it is voluntary. Do you have evidence to the contrary?

Re your question: Popularity tells us how popular a piece is.


----------



## isorhythm

KenOC said:


> Re your question: Popularity tells us how popular a piece is.


Hm.

In your very first post you said:



KenOC said:


> Certainly it is not much liked. It is next to never heard on the radio because people will change the station. It is next to never encountered in the concert hall because people won't buy tickets. In fact, probably the most popular (if that's the word) 12-tone piece, Berg's Violin Concerto, was programmed exactly twice by major US orchestras in the 2014-2015 season.
> 
> So, I ask again...what's the point?


But now that we've agreed that popularity has no greater meaning, this is kind of a nonsense question, no?

We might ask about this whole thread...what's the point?


----------



## KenOC

isorhythm said:


> We might ask about this whole thread...what's the point?


The point of the whole thread is in the title: Why 12-tone music? Most of the answers are, "I like it, so there's your answer." For whatever reason, I don't find this very helpful, given the many composers over the past century who have dedicated themselves to this approach with (evidently) precious little benefit to audiences or likelihood of leaving anything of interest to posterity.


----------



## dgee

Does this thread strike anyone else as an ever so slight variation on some teen's "classical music is so lame does anyone even listen to it" on Yahoo Answers?

There's certainly music I don't like but I'm pretty secure about it existing, understand that it is enjoyed and cherished, and feel no need to ask what the point is - because that's a question that never needs asking


----------



## dgee

KenOC said:


> The point of the whole thread is in the title: Why 12-tone music? Most of the answers are, "I like it, so there's your answer." For whatever reason, I don't find this very helpful, given the many composers over the past century who have dedicated themselves to this approach with (evidently) precious little benefit to audiences or likelihood of leaving anything of interest to posterity.


There's plenty of other music you could say the exact same thing about (not that it made heaps of sense). So why is 12-tone your bugbear du-jour?


----------



## Guest

dgee said:


> Does this thread strike anyone else as an ever so slight variation on some teen's "classical music is so lame does anyone even listen to it" on Yahoo Answers?
> 
> There's certainly music I don't like but I'm pretty secure about it existing, understand that it is enjoyed and cherished, and feel no need to ask what the point is - because that's a question that never needs asking


Agreed on all counts. There are certainly a few insecurities common to various groups of music fans though. This is one. Metal fans are insecure about their own music to the point that they must insist on the existence of a "connection to classical". And so on.


----------



## KenOC

dgee said:


> There's plenty of other music you could say the exact same thing about (not that it made heaps of sense). So why is 12-tone your bugbear du-jour?


Because, after all, that's what this thread is about. No great mystery there!


----------



## Guest

isorhythm said:


> In the 20th century the old system was exhausted.


It was? Or was it that some composers were tired by it and wanted to try something else?



KenOC said:


> Merely that it had failed to gain much popularity and, if it was intended to be popular or bring widespread pleasure, failed in that.


You've yet to establish that "it" _was _intended to be popular (and you ignore the arguments of those who've argued that Schoenberg was driven by more than just a desire to write popular music), and your definition of 'artificial' was so loose as to be unrecognisable.


----------



## KenOC

MacLeod said:


> You've yet to establish that "it" _was _intended to be popular (and you ignore the arguments of those who've argued that Schoenberg was driven by more than just a desire to write popular music), and your definition of 'artificial' was so loose as to be unrecognisable.


How can I know Schoenberg's motivations? The fact is that his music is far from popular, that's all.

Re "artificial", I've done the best I could with that. Care to give it a try?


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> How can I know Schoenberg's motivations? The fact is that his music is far from popular, that's all.
> 
> Re "artificial", I've done the best I could with that. Care to give it a try?


You're right - you can't know his motivations, so why attempt to question them?

As for defining artificial, there was a thread a while back that discussed something similar (about which music was most human, I think). I nailed my colours to the mast then that the notion of any one type of music being more 'human' or 'artificial' than another when it is all a creation of artifice is redundant. I therefore don't recognise the term as relevant in any way.


----------



## KenOC

MacLeod said:


> You're right - you can't know his motivations, so why attempt to question them?


Uh...did I do that? Of course, Herr S himself said he expected his discovery to "assure the supremacy of German music for the next 100 years." We all know how that turned out. Aside from that, I'm no student of Herr S and can offer no insight into his motivations.

Others have argued that his music was intended to bring pleasure, which I was responding to.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> Uh...did I do that?


Well, let's put it this way. You asked "Why 12-tone?" on the basis that it is unpopular and artificial, implying that either Schoenberg meant to create something unpopular and artificial - and if so, why; or that he wanted to be human and popular, and failed. If that's not questioning his motivations (conscious or otherwise) ...


----------



## KenOC

MacLeod said:


> Well, let's put it this way. You asked "Why 12-tone?" on the basis that it is unpopular and artificial, implying that either Schoenberg meant to create something unpopular and artificial - and if so, why; or that he wanted to be human and popular, and failed. If that's not questioning his motivations (conscious or otherwise) ...


You speculate, sir. I neither deny nor confirm.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> You speculate, sir. I neither deny nor confirm.


Well I think I've accumulated enough evidence to support my speculation, but let's just come back to your question, which is cryptically brief (or briefly cryptic). If we were to fill out your words a little, mightn't it actually ask,

"For what purpose, did Schoenberg create 12-tone music?" or
"What prompted or motivated Schoenberg to create music based on a set of artificial rules, that proved to be unpopular?"

It could also be, "Why did musical evolution take the turn that it did when 12-tone was created?"

That would be a much more helpful enquiry, less focused on the agency of one composer (though it endows "music" with an agency that needs to be explained too).


----------



## KenOC

(Cautiously, in fear of some diabolical trap)...fair enough questions.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> (Cautiously, in fear of some diabolical trap)...fair enough questions.


Aha!! You've fallen into my diabolical trap! (devilishly twirls his villainous moustache while he thinks up the killer blow...)


----------



## KenOC

And it's time for bed (he said, anticlimactically).


----------



## Ilarion

SeptimalTritone said:


> Um, dogen is a woman...
> 
> Just a little tip.


Umm, thanx for the tip. How about that?! - Just like the mix-up with Huilu - D'oh


----------



## Dim7

Ilarion said:


> SeptimalTritone said:
> 
> 
> 
> Um, dogen is a woman...
> 
> Just a little tip.
> 
> 
> 
> Umm, thanx for the tip. How about that?! - Just like the mix-up with Huilu - D'oh
Click to expand...

Um, not to be confusing but dogen is in fact not a woman.


----------



## Ilarion

dogen said:


> Jeebus this is beyond a dead horse being flogged. It is a horse that has died, been chopped up, put in a mincer, mixed with bulking materials, turned into pet food, canned, transported to the shops, sold to customers, opened, put on a plate and eaten.
> 
> _____________________________
> 
> Yes, let's not go down the slope to fascism.


Dogen,

I apologise for thinking you were of the masculine gender. Whilst I'm on TC I will always treat fellow TC'ers with infinite respect and never intend for anyone to lose face.

Respectfully yours,

Ilarion


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

Dogen, you are a woman now, it's time to accept it and move on.


----------



## Ilarion

Oops - Here we go again - Its ready made for a TV version of *comedy of errors*.:lol:


----------



## Ilarion

Richannes Wrahms said:


> Dogen, you are a woman now, it's time to accept it and move on.


Richannes,

I would buy you a round of beers if we lived nearby - Why? Because your photoshopping of Wagner and Brahms is interesting...:tiphat:


----------



## Richannes Wrahms

Sorry to dissapoint but truth is I'm too lazy to take the time to learn photoshop, I just used this web: http://www.morphthing.com/.

I'd rather take a cup of tea.


----------



## ArtMusic

KenOC said:


> Why invent a whole new set of rules for composing music? What problems does it solve?
> 
> Cemaintainly it is not much liked. It is next to never heard on the radio because people will change the station. It is next to never encountered in the concert hall because people won't buy tickets. In fact, probably the most popular (if that's the word) 12-tone piece, Berg's Violin Concerto, was programmed exactly twice by major US orchestras in the 2014-2015 season.
> 
> So, I ask again...what's the point?


It is quite simply the next natural extension of musical theory to explore the harmonic scale. I have always maintained the view that atonal music is more a musical theoretical development than purely for composition per se. It was a necessary development.


----------



## isorhythm

MacLeod said:


> It was? Or was it that some composers were tired by it and wanted to try something else?


I'd say it's the same thing - to say common practice tonality was exhausted is just to say that most composers found they no longer had anything to say in it.


----------



## Strange Magic

isorhythm said:


> The 12-tone method was so widely adopted in the 20th century because it solved different problems for different people.
> 
> Even the original three (Schoenberg, Berg and Webern) each used it to very different ends.
> 
> This is key to understanding its appeal to composers. For hundreds of years, there was one set of rules that everyone followed, but that still allowed composers' individuality.
> 
> In the 20th century the old system was exhausted. Now, people found lots of ways out, not just 12-tone. But the difficulty is that in many cases that meant they came up with their own sui generis languages from scratch, and where do you go with that? It's hard adopt the musical language of Stravinsky, Debussy or Bartok without basically copying them.
> 
> 12-tone provided a new system that anyone could use while still finding their own paths, like the old tonal system.
> 
> It did not turn out to be as important at Schoenberg and his early supporters thought it would be. But it produced some fantastic music. It remains one of many compositional tools that composers can use.


This post got me thinking again about contemporary cultural stasis and the fragmentation of each of the arts into smaller and smaller, and more ephemeral, units of creation and consumption. I am reminded also of an observation made by H.D.F. Kitto in his book _The Greeks_: "A high culture must, historically speaking, originate with an aristocratic class, because this alone has the time and energy to create it. If it remains for too long the preserve of the aristocrat, it becomes first elaborate and then silly..." It may be, as isorhythm's post suggested to me (maybe that was not the intention, however), that "serious" music was/is becoming more and more the province of increasingly fragmented and isolated, yet more numerous, groups of composers and their followers; this has resulted in wholesale experimentation with all sorts of musical techniques, "theories":.12-tone, total serialism, aleatoric music, whatever. Some of these musics will turn out to indeed have been silly, if we are to gauge artistic success by breadth and depth of auditor satisfaction over time, ticket sales, album sales, widespread agreement as to excellence, etc. But if the composer felt fulfilled by creating the work, and any individual felt fulfilled by hearing the work, then does it matter whether anyone else cares? Are we each a majority of one? I think so, in that as we feel we belong to a smaller and smaller group of devotees of a particular composer, art form, poet, etc., the more fiercely we defend our enthusiasm, and the more we revel in our particular sensitivity and refinement of taste, we the Few. Kind of silly, but there it is.


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## Stavrogin

Wondering again about the OP's question, I have tried to look at it the other way around.

I mean, if this method/school had been unnecessary, uneffective, useless and unsuccessful, how come they actually became a trend first, an established style then, and eventually a major part of the classical world's output of the XX century?


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## isorhythm

Strange Magic said:


> I am reminded also of an observation made by H.D.F. Kitto in his book _The Greeks_: "A high culture must, historically speaking, originate with an aristocratic class, because this alone has the time and energy to create it. If it remains for too long the preserve of the aristocrat, it becomes first elaborate and then silly..."


I think a lot of us will agree that the loss of a large "lay" audience for new music engendered a certain amount of silliness.

Lumping _all 12-tone music_ in with that is just too extreme, though. Berg's _Lulu_ drew big and enthusiastic crowds in New York over the last few weeks, and it's largely 12-tone. I'm sure Berg couldn't have achieved what he did in _Lulu_ without the 12-tone method, in fact.

There's a big difference between _Lulu_ and Boulez's second piano sonata, is what I'm saying (not that I have anything against Boulez).


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## Woodduck

The only problem 12-tone music was invented to solve was the personal problem of its inventor. Schoenberg took post-Wagnerian chromaticism as far as he could, realized he couldn't create coherently articulated forms without tonal organization, and had to think up some principle (the "tone row") other than tonality for giving his music enough internal relationships to seem coherent to the listener. 

That this was Schoenberg's individual problem - that it was not a problem for music as a whole - is clear from the fact that numerous composers of the first rank went on writing tonal music of one sort or another, finding their own personal styles without having to "replace" tonality or make up out of whole cloth a completely new basis for holding music together. It's in this sense that the 12-tone method has been called "artificial": it was not a part of the general, gradual evolution of musical thought to which many people contributed new ideas and procedures, and it was not a concept implicit in the "vocabulary and grammar" of music as then known; it was rather the creation of one man whose attempts to use that existing vocabulary and grammar had reached an impasse, and who had the imagination and hubris to think that he could create a substitute for their basic function of making music coherent. That is, at the very least, a radical project, and quite an "artifice," whatever value one attaches to it.

The 12-tone method may have finally become just another technical device, but its early adherents attached much more importance to it. I think it was in accord with the spirit of the early 20th century that the triumph of the technological revolution affected music too: people bought into dual ideologies of revolution and "historical inevitability," artists wanted to create a new art for a new age, architects began erecting naked boxes with exposed plumbing ("machines for living," according to Le Corbusier), and the technology of 12-tone composition and its spawn, "total serialism," seemed the very essence of things modern. It's all rather amusing now, although I can't help wondering how amused all the now-geriatric 12-tone composers who filled the conservatories in the 1950s are at having produced truckloads of "machines for listening" that no one except their fellow technicians ever did want to listen to.


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## Ilarion

Richannes Wrahms said:


> Sorry to dissapoint but truth is I'm too lazy to take the time to learn photoshop, I just used this web: http://www.morphthing.com/.
> 
> I'd rather take a cup of tea.
> View attachment 78694


Tea and crumpets it would be then. I went to morphthing - WOW! Cool site...Thanx a trillion times for sharing.


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## Stavrogin

*wait, i need to find some popcorn*


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## Morimur

Woodduck said:


> The only problem 12-tone music was invented to solve was the personal problem of its inventor. Schoenberg took post-Wagnerian chromaticism as far as he could, realized he couldn't create coherently articulated forms without tonal organization, and had to think up some principle (the "tone row") other than tonality for giving his music enough internal relationships to seem coherent to the listener.
> 
> That this was Schoenberg's individual problem - that it was not a problem for music as a whole - is clear from the fact that numerous composers of the first rank went on writing tonal music of one sort or another, finding their own personal styles without having to "replace" tonality or make up out of whole cloth a completely new basis for holding music together. It's in this sense that the 12-tone method has been called "artificial": it was not a part of the general, gradual evolution of musical thought to which many people contributed new ideas and procedures, and it was not a concept implicit in the "vocabulary and grammar" of music as then known; it was rather the creation of one man whose attempts to use that existing vocabulary and grammar had reached an impasse, and who had the imagination and hubris to think that he could create a substitute for their basic function of making music coherent. That is, at the very least, a radical project, and quite an "artifice," whatever value one attaches to it.
> 
> The 12-tone method may have finally become just another technical device, but its early adherents attached much more importance to it. I think it was in accord with the spirit of the early 20th century that the triumph of the technological revolution affected music too: people bought into dual ideologies of revolution and "historical inevitability," artists wanted to create a new art for a new age, architects began erecting naked boxes with exposed plumbing ("machines for living," according to Le Corbusier), and the technology of 12-tone composition and its spawn, "total serialism," seemed the very essence of things modern. It's all rather amusing now, although I can't help wondering how amused all the now-geriatric 12-tone composers who filled the conservatories in the 1950s are at having produced truckloads of "machines for listening" that no one except their fellow technicians ever did want to listen to.


In the end it isn't the composer's method that matters, but the quality of his output; his music-that's what's truly important. Who could convincingly argue, even if one doesn't necessarily appreciate Schoenberg's aesthetic, that he was anything but a first rate composer?


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## isorhythm

Woodduck said:


> That this was Schoenberg's individual problem - that it was not a problem for music as a whole - is clear from the fact that numerous composers of the first rank went on writing tonal music of one sort or another, finding their own personal styles without having to "replace" tonality or make up out of whole cloth a completely new basis for holding music together.


It wasn't a _universal _problem as Schoenberg might have believed, but it certainly wasn't his _individual_ problem either - otherwise his method wouldn't have been adopted by so many others, and their music wouldn't have attracted the interest of so many musicians.

"Of one sort or another" is the key phrase - even the first rank composers who continued to write tonal music no longer followed a common tonal practice. For the most part, their music didn't give rise to new common practices or even really identifiable schools.


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## Woodduck

Morimur said:


> 12-tone & Serialism: In the end it isn't the composer's method that matters, but the quality of his output; his music-that's what's truly important. Who could convincingly argue, even if one doesn't necessarily appreciate Schoenberg's aesthetic, that he was anything but a first rate composer?


I wouldn't argue about Schoenberg's stature as a composer, though in my own mind I probably come down somewhere in the middle of prevailing judgments (how's that for cryptic?). But this isn't ultimately about Schoenberg. Serialism left its inventor far behind, and produced a vast quantity of music different in basic respects from any created before, music which even this far down the pike meets not so much with the expected indifference accorded the mediocre products of all ages as with widespread incomprehension, loathing and an almost personal hostility. This is fascinating! I'm most interested in the atonality/12-tone "phenomenon" from a cultural perspective: how it's evolved from being the salvation of Western music to just a "technique" that someone here actually compared to canon (a bizarre comparison, a moment's thought will make clear). How our world-view must have changed!

Of course I agree that it's the musical result that matters to the listener. And listeners are history's court of final appeal. The trial is still in progress.


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## Woodduck

isorhythm said:


> It wasn't a _universal _problem as Schoenberg might have believed, but *it certainly wasn't his individual problem either - otherwise his method wouldn't have been adopted by so many others*, and their music wouldn't have attracted the interest of so many musicians.
> 
> "Of one sort or another" is the key phrase - even the first rank composers who continued to write tonal music no longer followed a common tonal practice. For the most part, their music didn't give rise to new common practices or even really identifiable schools.


Of course music continues to change, sometimes gradually, sometimes more rapidly, and after Wagner in particular many composers had to take stock of where they stood. Inevitably some composers, particularly in the German Romantic tradition, empathized with Schoenberg's dilemma and his solution - but then "the method" appealed to others for a variety of reasons, not always for Schoenberg's reasons. There were, and are, plenty of other options.


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## Chordalrock

It's good to remember that the best stuff in any genre or medium is usually obscure or relatively little appreciated. Even when people sometimes read through something like a Shakespeare play due to its cultural status, doesn't mean they become genuine admirers.

On the other hand, popularity among the connoisseurs of an art does often correlate with something meaningful. But here we find that 12-tone music is actually not an obscure passion at all, in that context. Many fine musicians have recorded such music, many reputable critics and academicians have praised it, books have been written about composers of it, and, not at all insignificantly, many composers have composed such music out of a genuine interest - I've been reading a Rautavaara biography and he composed some 12-tone works, not out of any sort of pressure to do so as I had once believed, but out of genuine interest in such music. All that doesn't exactly count as obscurity. I'd say it's about on the level of Renaissance music in how much it's generated interest and enjoyment among the musical elite, somewhat lower than Renaissance music in mass appeal.

At any rate, if you start ignoring composers or writers because they don't sell much, you're depriving yourself of over half of the Western canon. That would be about as intellectually and artistically lazy as you can get.


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## isorhythm

Woodduck said:


> Of course music continues to change, sometimes gradually, sometimes more rapidly, and after Wagner in particular many composers had to take stock of where they stood. Inevitably some composers, particularly in the German Romantic tradition, empathized with Schoenberg's dilemma and his solution - but then "the method" appealed to others for a variety of reasons, not always for Schoenberg's reasons. There were, and are, plenty of other options.


I probably like more of this music than you do, but it sounds like we're largely in agreement.

It doesn't really bother me that serialism is the product of early 20th century faith in progress, science and mechanization (and simultaneously a product of anxiety about those things). Most classical music is the product of some worldview that's pretty foreign to my own. I take it as it comes.


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## Chordalrock

Woodduck said:


> I wouldn't argue about Schoenberg's stature as a composer, though in my own mind I probably come down somewhere in the middle of prevailing judgments (how's that for cryptic?). But this isn't ultimately about Schoenberg. Serialism left its inventor far behind, and produced a vast quantity of music different in basic respects from any created before, music which even this far down the pike meets not so much with the expected indifference accorded the mediocre products of all ages as with widespread incomprehension, loathing and an almost personal hostility. This is fascinating! I'm most interested in the atonality/12-tone "phenomenon" from a cultural perspective: how it's evolved from being the salvation of Western music to just a "technique" that someone here actually compared to canon (a bizarre comparison, a moment's thought will make clear). How our world-view must have changed!
> 
> Of course I agree that it's the musical result that matters to the listener. And listeners are history's court of final appeal. The trial is still in progress.


You shouldn't conflate 12-tone music and total serialism. They are a completely different thing.

And my comparison of the method to canon was valid in the context in which I made it. If you are interested in doing more than taking potshots, you are free to go back to that message and argue your case properly if you think you can.

Also, this is almost a century after Schoenberg's first 12-tone works. You don't think a century of interest and enjoyment among the musical elite is an adequate judge of artistic merit?


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## Woodduck

Chordalrock said:


> You shouldn't conflate 12-tone music and total serialism. They are a completely different thing.
> 
> And my comparison of the method to canon was valid in the context in which I made it. If you are interested in doing more than taking potshots, you are free to go back to that message and argue your case properly if you think you can.
> 
> Also, this is almost a century after Schoenberg's first 12-tone works. You don't think a century of interest and enjoyment among the musical elite is an adequate judge of artistic merit?


I wasn't shooting at pots, honest! I had no recollection of how that comparison came up. Checking back, I see that it has to do with KenOC's calling serialism an "artificial" method of composition. Granted, all musical procedures are human inventions and thus artificial. But words have more than one meaning. Tonal organization of music, in the broadest sense, appears to be "natural," rather than "artificial," in that it manifests itself in most of mankind's music, has felt "natural" to most people, and was not invented by someone sitting at his piano looking for a way out of an artistic dilemma. Canon, as a specific formal procedure and not a basic premise of musical coherence designed to do duty for an existing one, is not comparable to serialism, and no one would need to point out its artificiality except in a musical context where its use seemed contrived or inappropriate.

I didn't conflate 12-tone music with total serialism. I said that the latter was the "spawn" of the former, fertilized by the technological mind-set of the time.

It doesn't normally take a century - nowhere near it, in most cases - for the artistic judgment of history to weigh in, granting periodic reassessments as tastes change. That sounds too much like the "great art is always rejected in the artist's own time" canard. Besides, I'm not generalizing about all music using serial techniques, so no one need get defensive. I'd attend a performance of _Wozzeck_ in a New York minute. Of course Berg's idiom isn't entirely serial...


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## Chordalrock

Woodduck said:


> I wasn't shooting at pots, honest! I had no recollection of how that comparison came up. Checking back, I see that it has to do with KenOC's calling serialism an "artificial" method of composition. Granted, all musical procedures are human inventions and thus artificial. But words have more than one meaning. Tonal organization of music, in the broadest sense, appears to be "natural," rather than "artificial," in that it manifests itself in most of mankind's music, has felt "natural" to most people, and was not invented by someone sitting at his piano looking for a way out of an artistic dilemma.


Perhaps the listener has an innate inclination to take the first note of a melody as a reference, but already taking harmony as a reference requires some practice. And this type of "tonality" is so wide a concept that it applies to everything from jazz to Sessions.

In sophisticated music, including Beethoven and Mozart, tonal tension and the use of cadences is something the listener learns to notice and appreciate through exposure to compositional habits. People have no magic sixth sense that would tell them, in the absence of experience, that a leading tone should lead to a resolution by an uwpards half-step. That is something you learn to expect by listening to a certain type of music.

Common practice tonality seems more "natural" than it is, just consider the typical closing cadence of early 15th century, often used by Dufay in his isorhythmic motets: the harmonic movement from, say, C sharp minor chord to D minor chord. That is the cadence. When these cadences were discovered in modern times, musicologists couldn't believe they were genuine and tried to correct them in their editions. So much for natural.



Woodduck said:


> Canon, as a specific formal procedure and not a basic premise of musical coherence designed to do duty for an existing one, is not comparable to serialism, and no one would need to point out its artificiality except in a musical context where its use seemed contrived or inappropriate.


I didn't intend to draw a perfect conceptual analogy, just an adequate analogy for pointing out that dodecaphonic music isn't particularly restrictive or uniquelly artificial a method of composition. The tone row can be divided between parts (used as harmony, counterpoint, and so on), note durations are decided by the composer, and part of the method is that sometimes you break its rules when the music benefits.

And I could make a closer analogy: I believe that the Renaissance composers liked imitative texture so much because they did lack the organising principle of common practice period tonality. They didn't have that harmonic framework, they almost didn't have harmonic progression (although a truly polyphonic perspective is always in conflict to some extent with the harmonic perspective).

Also, they didn't have that framework, so early Renaissance composers used cantus firmus - a slowed down and modified melody in the tenor, sometimes divided between voices - to give structure to the sections that weren't imitative. These were the composers who were starting to use big forms, the cyclical mass. They needed some method of unification. And when their music had moments that lacked that structural element, they turned to imitation. Late Dufay is a perfect example.

Basing the sturcture of your music on a slowed down tune in the tenor rather than some sort of natural harmonic plan or unfettered artistic intuition is certainly restrictive and artificial. These composers did sit down and invent this method to solve the problem of how they could unify a large scale composition. Instead of the sonata form, which is about harmonic movement from stability to the dominant to increasing instability (development section) and back to stability again (recap), they came up with the idea of using just some long notes from an existing tune as the background.

Art, especially music and poetry, has always thrived on artificial forms and limitations that the composer has imposed on himself.


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## Woodduck

Chordalrock said:


> It's good to remember that the best stuff in any genre or medium is usually obscure or relatively little appreciated. Even when people sometimes read through something like a Shakespeare play due to its cultural status, doesn't mean they become genuine admirers.
> 
> On the other hand, *popularity among the connoisseurs of an art does often correlate with something meaningful.* But here we find that 12-tone music is actually not an obscure passion at all, in that context. Many fine musicians have recorded such music, many reputable critics and academicians have praised it, books have been written about composers of it, and, not at all insignificantly, many composers have composed such music out of a genuine interest - I've been reading a Rautavaara biography and he composed some 12-tone works, not out of any sort of pressure to do so as I had once believed, but out of genuine interest in such music. All that doesn't exactly count as obscurity. I'd say it's about on the level of Renaissance music in how much it's generated interest and enjoyment among the musical elite, somewhat lower than Renaissance music in mass appeal.
> 
> *At any rate, if you start ignoring composers or writers because they don't sell much, you're depriving yourself of over half of the Western canon. *That would be about as intellectually and artistically lazy as you can get.


I doubt that many people here ignore composers because they don't sell much. I think we ignore composers mainly because we don't like the sound of their music.

I agree that the esteem of connoisseurs for works of music means _something_. We do need, though, to know who these connoisseurs are, and what the nature of their interest is. We can't automatically assume that music, or any cultural artifact, which various experts consider "important" or "interesting," is of any particular intrinsic value. People with specialized knowledge or skills often quite naturally find things interesting which have little appeal to people without such knowledge, or even to themselves. I've known fine musicians who play contemporary music mainly because they enjoy the technical challenge, and I'm sure that many composers have used serial techniques for the same reason. There's no doubt that connoisseurs of the arts support a great deal of art, not because they're fond of it, but because it's art, because artists are producing it, and because supporting the arts is what they've devoted themselves to doing.

Once an artistic phenomenon has achieved, by whatever means, a degree of prominence and influence in the proper circles - among some group of "connoisseurs" - and is given a catchy name by critics and academics in positions of prestige, it becomes an ineradicable part of "art history," generating books, lectures, and concerts, and thus acquiring an importance which other "connoisseurs" owe it to their reputations not to question. That aura of importance, reflecting its glow back upon even some less distinguished artists and works making up the phenomenon, engages the attention of the connoisseurs of the future who have their own prestige to sustain, and so the circle of consensus and mutual admiration goes round and round and rolls unimpeded through the generations. Outside that circle is only public opinion - the collective judgment of the non-connoisseurs - which is, as we know, a mere expression of ignorance and officially worthless.

Well, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. And history has a way of changing the minds of connoisseurs, and paintings with recognizable subjects find their way back into the sanctuaries of Modernism, and everyone smiles knowingly over cocktails and pretends that those Pollocks and Warhols in the basement were never all over the living room walls.


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## Strange Magic

P


Chordalrock said:


> You don't think a century of interest and enjoyment among the musical elite is an adequate judge of artistic merit?


A: Who are the musical elite?

B: Quantify the level of interest and enjoyment of the musical elite in question. To what is comparison made?

C: Is artistic merit defined as that which interests and pleases the musical elite?

D: Define tautology.


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## Chordalrock

Woodduck said:


> I doubt that many people here ignore composers because they don't sell much. I think we ignore composers mainly because we don't like the sound of their music.
> 
> I agree that the esteem of connoisseurs for works of music means _something_. We do need, though, to know who these connoisseurs are, and what the nature of their interest is. We can't automatically assume that music, or any cultural artifact, which various experts consider "important" or "interesting," is of any particular intrinsic value. People with specialized knowledge or skills often quite naturally find things interesting which have little appeal to people without such knowledge, or even to themselves. I've known fine musicians who play contemporary music mainly because they enjoy the technical challenge, and I'm sure that many composers have used serial techniques for the same reason. There's no doubt that connoisseurs of the arts support a great deal of art, not because they're fond of it, but because it's art, because artists are producing it, and because supporting the arts is what they've devoted themselves to doing.
> 
> Once an artistic phenomenon has achieved, by whatever means, a degree of prominence and influence in the proper circles - among some group of "connoisseurs" - and is given a catchy name by critics and academics in positions of prestige, it becomes an ineradicable part of "art history," generating books, lectures, and concerts, and thus acquiring an importance which other "connoisseurs" owe it to their reputations not to question. That aura of importance, reflecting its glow back upon even some less distinguished artists and works making up the phenomenon, engages the attention of the connoisseurs of the future who have their own prestige to sustain, and so the circle of consensus and mutual admiration goes round and round and rolls unimpeded through the generations. Outside that circle is only public opinion - the collective judgment of the non-connoisseurs - which is, as we know, a mere expression of ignorance and officially worthless.
> 
> Well, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. And history has a way of changing the minds of connoisseurs, and paintings with recognizable subjects find their way back into the sanctuaries of Modernism, and everyone smiles knowingly over cocktails and pretends that those Pollocks and Warhols in the basement were never all over the living room walls.


Your critique may well apply to large parts of the establishment and whatnot, but it seems that you want to take it further than that, you don't only want to criticise conformism as such or the over-emphasis on serialism in the 1960s in particular, you also want to say that people who love this music are faking it or are such a small minority that they don't matter much. I know enough such people that I know they aren't faking it, so that leaves the strange argument that minority passions - even well-informed and highly smart - don't matter much, a topic I've already dealt with.


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## isorhythm

I don't think critical esteem for abstract expressionist painting is going anywhere.


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## EdwardBast

Chordalrock said:


> Common practice tonality seems more "natural" than it is, just consider the typical closing cadence of early 15th century, often used by Dufay in his isorhythmic motets: the harmonic movement from, say, C sharp minor chord to D minor chord. That is the cadence. When these cadences were discovered in modern times, musicologists couldn't believe they were genuine and tried to correct them in their editions. So much for natural.


A double leading tone cadence on D is not a C-sharp minor chord to a D minor chord. The resolution is to an open 5th and octave, and no one was thinking of "chords" in the sense you are using the term. In any case, there is nothing unnatural about it. It has ti and re resolving outward like any other cadence. The #4 is just a bonus tendency tone. (You need to check those modern ears at the door!) Many of these cadences were clearly notated and the general phenomenon was never in doubt. Individual cases, on the other hand, when musica ficta is in play, can be ambiguous, especially in transitional periods when the double leading tone cadence was coming into or going out of style.



Chordalrock said:


> Also, they didn't have that framework, so early Renaissance composers used cantus firmus - a slowed down and modified melody in the tenor, sometimes divided between voices - to give structure to the sections that weren't imitative. These were the composers who were starting to use big forms, the cyclical mass. They needed some method of unification. And when their music had moments that lacked that structural element, they turned to imitation. Late Dufay is a perfect example.
> 
> Basing the sturcture of your music on a slowed down tune in the tenor rather than some sort of natural harmonic plan or unfettered artistic intuition is certainly restrictive and artificial. These composers did sit down and invent this method to solve the problem of how they could unify a large scale composition. Instead of the sonata form, which is about harmonic movement from stability to the dominant to increasing instability (development section) and back to stability again (recap), they came up with the idea of using just some long notes from an existing tune as the background.
> 
> Art, especially music and poetry, has always thrived on artificial forms and limitations that the composer has imposed on himself.


There were several factors that went into the use of cantus firmi, not all of them "unnatural." Often a chant related to the subject of the text or appropriate to the day or feast for which a sacred work was composed was used as a tenor. From its roots in liturgical practice, the use of cantus firmi later expanded to include secular tunes and other freely chosen material, in part, as you say, to provide an organizing principle for new large-scale experiments in form. But no one sat down and planned this practice from scratch. It had roots in long-standing traditions and its expanded use was more organic than you seem to be indicating.


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## Stavrogin

Woodduck said:


> .. was not invented by someone sitting at his piano looking for a way out of an artistic dilemma.


If this is the origin of dodecaphony, I wonder what is that of tonality instead? 
I understand that the theorization of tonality came well after its actual use, but how did the use itself start?

This question is not only for Woodduck of course but also for other experts willing to contribute.


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## Chordalrock

EdwardBast said:


> A double leading tone cadence on D is not a C-sharp minor chord to a D minor chord. The resolution is to an open 5th and octave, and no one was thinking of "chords" in the sense you are using the term. In any case, there is nothing unnatural about it. It has ti and re resolving outward like any other cadence. The #4 is just a bonus tendency tone. (You need to check those modern ears at the door!) Many of these cadences were clearly notated and the general phenomenon was never in doubt. Individual cases, on the other hand, when musica ficta is in play, can be ambiguous, especially in transitional periods when the double leading tone cadence was coming into or going out of style.


The fact remains there are examples of C sharp minor chord to D and A notes. If someone wants to check, "Ecclesiae militantis" is an example, and the score can be found on Choralwiki.

They apparenlty didn't think of chords, but that was because they were composing polyphonic music: the natural thing to do was to focus on individual lines and how they interacted in terms of intervallic relationships having to do with consonance and dissonance. The important thing was to keep the flow of polyphony from getting ugly, i.e. dissonant. No harmonic police required beyond spying on intervals.

If you want an example of a cadence that doesn't even involve moving away from the tonic: the plagal cadence, used as recently as in Brahm's 4th symphony. An obvious case of "learning" a cadence rather than "being born with it", and a cadence that doesn't conform to any of our conceptions about natural or innate in the harmonic world.


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## Mahlerian

Stavrogin said:


> If this is the origin of dodecaphony, I wonder what is that of tonality instead?
> I understand that the theorization of tonality came well after its actual use, but how did the use itself start?
> 
> This question is not only for Woodduck of course but also for other experts willing to contribute.


Tonality came into music beginning in the 17th century with new trends that emphasized homophony and compelling bass lines outlining harmony over the polyphonic music of earlier times, which emphasized smooth voice leading and preparation of dissonances. The first music of the Baroque era was intended as a speculative recreation of ancient Greek theater, and as such was very much a product of rational speculation.

Post hoc defenses of tonality as something natural and separate from the "artificial" atonality are completely worthless and not deserving of any thought. No such distinction exists.


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## millionrainbows

For me, the change is clear: as soon as Beethoven started, the independent artist was born. Bach was brilliant, too, of course, but Western music up to the Romantic era had been serving an ideology. Any innovation that occurred was in this context. Even Bach was criticized for writing music which was difficult to sing, and most of his chorales were disposed of as scrap paper by the Church.

Why 12-tone music? If tonality represents and embodies the old Western tradition and its power institutions, then Schoenberg is confronting us with an alternative. After what he went through in WWII, I see it as a sort of "revenge" on the whole system. In this sense, he was very much an 'outsider.'


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## Woodduck

Stavrogin said:


> If this is the origin of dodecaphony, I wonder what is that of tonality instead?
> I understand that the theorization of tonality came well after its actual use, but how did the use itself start?
> 
> This question is not only for Woodduck of course but also for other experts willing to contribute.


The historical _origins_ of tonality as a broad phenomenon will never be recovered. But in the realms of human consciousness - of perception, conceptual thought, emotional integrity, moral choice - and physical existence alike, the existence of and need for hierarchy is inherent and fundamental in reality.

A (the _tonic_) is more important than B, which is more important than C.

A is needed to explain B, which in turn explains C.

A is the genus to which species B belongs, with B1 and B2 as subspecies.

A is foreground and B is background.

A is the ground on which B rests.

A is the pivot around which B resolves, or the stem from which it grows.

A is the stable state and B the movement away from it and back.

The universe we perceive and move about in is shot through with hierarchy, and we, centers of consciousness, are microcosms of the universe. It would be inexplicable if our music, through which we express with such intensity our sense of life as human beings, did not mimic in its structure what we perceive to be the deep structure of ourselves and our world.

I don't think tonality was invented, but rather discovered, and I think the discovery followed swiftly upon the discovery of music. It took different forms in different cultures, and common practice is a unique and elaborate form of it, but everywhere it's found it offers humans the incomparable satisfaction of coming home.


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## EdwardBast

Chordalrock said:


> The fact remains there are examples of C sharp minor chord to D and A notes. If someone wants to check, "Ecclesiae militantis" is an example, and the score can be found on Choralwiki.
> 
> They apparenlty didn't think of chords, but that was because they were composing polyphonic music: the natural thing to do was to focus on individual lines and how they interacted in terms of intervallic relationships having to do with consonance and dissonance. The important thing was to keep the flow of polyphony from getting ugly, i.e. dissonant. No harmonic police required beyond spying on intervals.
> 
> If you want an example of a cadence that doesn't even involve moving away from the tonic: the plagal cadence, used as recently as in Brahm's 4th symphony. An obvious case of "learning" a cadence rather than "being born with it", and a cadence that doesn't conform to any of our conceptions about natural or innate in the harmonic world.


The double leading tone cadence was common for a couple of centuries. No one doubts its existence. I know numerous examples of it. I just don't see anything particularly unnatural about it. The plagal cadence is commonplace in lots of non-classical and folk music. Nothing unnatural about that either. Brahms had no doubt heard it many times before.


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## Chordalrock

EdwardBast said:


> The double leading tone cadence was common for a couple of centuries. No one doubts its existence. I know numerous examples of it. I just don't see anything particularly unnatural about it. The plagal cadence is commonplace in lots of non-classical and folk music. Nothing unnatural about that either. Brahms had no doubt heard it many times before.


Maybe I'm misunderstanding the argument, but aren't some of the critiques of 12-tone music in this thread claiming that there is something about tonality that, when perceived by a human, unavoidably leads to a certain kind of experience involving tension and resolution due to physical and physiological facts alone, or something along these lines?

The point of mentioning the plagal cadence is that, when e.g. Brahms used it to end the first movement of his fourth symphony, there was nothing there in that cadence that would have created that sort of tension and resolution that could be said to be physical or objective - the top voice and the bass remain on E through the cadence. You can't have tension toward the tonic if you have no movement toward the tonic. This is logic, right? So, the plagal cadence is clearly a chord pattern that is simply learned through exposure and becomes an expectation and something we accept as a cadence through no other reason than that.

And if a double cadence on D and A can be heard as a double cadence or an odd chord progression depending on cultural background, then obviously there isn't much "natural" about that sort of thing either.


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## Stavrogin

Well. 
Woodduck's and Mahlerian's answers to my question are very different, and I don't think I am overreaching if I say that therein lies the very core of their (and their corresponding factions'  ) opposite views on modern music. 
In an attempt of cross-thread-fertilization with the Schoe vs Shost thread, I'd also think that a good question would be : Would you, Mahlerian, say that if someone stated that their dislike for 12-tone and serialism derives (to use one word only) from the inherent lack of the _tension_ that the tonal architecture is instead built upon, he'd be ill - informed?


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## Woodduck

The double leading tone seems a natural consequence of voices moving in parallel fifths, a practice which has arisen spontaneously in music around the world (no doubt suggested by the prominence of the second overtone). 

The plagal cadence arose in our common practice era, and conveys a particularly strong sense of "coming home," making its frequent use in religious music understandable. A sudden turn into the subdominant, which would elsewhere probably signal a modulation, creates at a final cadence an especially strong need to return to the tonic, which is thus very satisfying when it follows. Nothing "unnatural" there, eh?


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## Woodduck

Stavrogin said:


> Woodduck's and Mahlerian's answers to my question are very different, and I don't think I am overreaching if I say that therein lies the very core of their (and their corresponding factions'  ) opposite views on modern music.


Mahlerian is identifying "tonality" with "common practice tonality." I'm using the term more broadly, so our responses really can't be compared.


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## Stavrogin

Woodduck said:


> Mahlerian is identifying "tonality" with "common practice tonality." I'm using the term more broadly, so our responses really can't be compared.


When he writes :
Post hoc defenses of tonality as something natural and separate from the "artificial" atonality are completely worthless and not deserving of any thought. No such distinction exists.

It sounds to me as a reference to tonality in the broader sense, but let's ask him directly.


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## Mahlerian

Stavrogin said:


> Well.
> Woodduck's and Mahlerian's answers to my question are very different, and I don't think I am overreaching if I say that therein lies the very core of their (and their corresponding factions'  ) opposite views on modern music.
> In an attempt of cross-thread-fertilization with the Schoe vs Shost thread, I'd also think that a good question would be : Would you, Mahlerian, say that if someone stated that their dislike for 12-tone and serialism derives (to use one word only) from the inherent lack of the _tension_ that the tonal architecture is instead built upon, he'd be ill - informed?


I'd say to some degree no, to some degree yes.

It is true that, by consistently employing all 12 notes of the chromatic scale, one loses the possibility of changing from one scale type or identity to another in the same way that is true of modulation in the common practice period.

It's not true that this the only kind of tension available, or else a completely diatonic piece with no accidentals or alterations of the scale (though such a thing is rare in classical music) would have no tension whatsoever.

Every other kind of tension, including some that are not commonly employed in earlier music, such as relative changes in the harmonic density on the level of individual chords, is available to composers of such music, and a well-composed piece makes use of tension and resolution as music of an earlier era would.



Stavrogin said:


> When he writes :
> Post hoc defenses of tonality as something natural and separate from the "artificial" atonality are completely worthless and not deserving of any thought. No such distinction exists.
> 
> It sounds to me as a reference to tonality in the broader sense, but let's ask him directly.


What I mean by this is that if one conceives of music as divided into two categories, tonal and atonal, there is no non-ad hoc definition which will allow one to group all of the music classified as atonal as a completely separate category from tonal.

This is because not only do the various kinds of music called atonal have absolutely nothing in common aside from their lack of adherence to common practice tonality, but the music called tonal also would not have any commonalities that are not also present in atonal music.

It is for that reason a distinction that has no real explanatory power.


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## Woodduck

Mahlerian said:


> It is true that, by consistently employing all 12 notes of the chromatic scale, one loses the possibility of changing from one scale type or identity to another in the same way that is true of modulation in the common practice period.
> 
> If one conceives of music as divided into two categories, tonal and atonal, there is no non-ad hoc definition which will allow one to group all of the music classified as atonal as a completely separate category from tonal. This is because...the music called tonal...would not have any commonalities that are not also present in atonal music.
> 
> It is for that reason a distinction that has no real explanatory power.


The first statement here, which is true, undermines the second statement and the conclusion.

Tonal music - all tonal music, whether common practice, modal, or any other kind - is defined by a tonal center, which in common practice we call its key note, and which makes a change of key possible. A change of "key" is possible in any kind of tonal music, meaning that the scale used in the music may choose any pitch as a tonal center (the first note of its scale), and that the tonal center may be moved from that pitch to a different pitch. Modulation, or change of key, is a primary structural resource in common practice music, if not in other tonal traditions, although it is theoretically possible in those traditions.

Modulation is not possible in atonal music, where no note of the chromatic scale serves as a tonic, and thus there is no key to change from or to.

This fact has many implications for the way tonal and atonal music are structured. If it didn't, Schoenberg would have had no need to invent the serial technique. These implications are the ways in which a tonic note, and the hierarchy of other scale steps which relate to the tonic in particular ways, suggest and permit certain formal structures and procedures. In most tonal systems, this hierarchy begins with the "dominant," the fifth note of the scale. The second overtone of a tone is at the interval of a fifth above it (the first overtone, the octave, is not easily heard as a different note from the fundamental), and the fifth note above the tonic is in most tonal music perceived as second in importance to it and is very prominently employed as a melody note. In common practice, it is the note heard as most consonant with the key note, and it therefore also serves as the top note of the tonic chord and the basis, or root, of the "dominant" key area. Similar principles apply with regard to other notes on the scale; their relative prominence in the hierarchy of keys derives basically from their perceived consonance with the tonic key note and with each other, and their structural prominence and functions follow.

Non-common-practice, melody-based tonal systems don't possess the same elaborate hierarchy of keys, but they do possess definite hierarchies of melody notes which help to determine the form of the music, and these hierarchies are rooted, with expressive cultural variations, in perceived acoustical phenomena and their harmonic implications. Whether in common practice or other tonal systems, the hierarchy which exists among the notes, or the tonal levels rooted in them, allows for the meaningful articulation of form, as the tonal hierarchies are established and kept in mind (at least subconsciously), and melody and harmony are heard to progress "logically" from one note or tonal area to another and to form in the end a coherently shaped, goal-directed entity.

None of these ramifications of the existence of a tonal hierarchy pertain to atonal music, which must achieve formal articulation by other, non-tonal means, and this is the justification of the term "atonal."


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## science

Avey said:


> Wait, so, Schoenberg is rarely played. Thus, people do not like his music. Namely, because he failed in bringing people pleasures. This was so, because his music was created without necessity, which suggests some more "natural" thing would have manifested in his place. Thus, under your arbitrary label, this music was "artificial."
> 
> So what instead? This feels like an argument for the status quo. But I don't know when the status quo was ever the side to take with respect to creating music, or any great art.
> 
> Also, what the heck is the end-game (conclusion) here; what is the purpose of pointing out how sad you think his music is? Are we to no longer talk about his repertoire? Stop listening to it. Stop recording it.
> 
> After finally catching up over these pages, it seems this has degenerated into a veiled diatribe of Schoenberg and his technique. Again.
> 
> ---
> 
> Also, because:


Hilary Hahn is interesting because she can advocate with apparently genuine enthusiasm both for Schoenberg and Higdon. The truth is, most of the professional musicians I've ever known seem to have been like that.

But very, very, very few fans of classical music are.


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## Chordalrock

science said:


> But very, very, very few fans of classical music are.


We need a poll on how many people here enjoy 12-tone music and to what degree. It seems to me there should be no reason why hobbyists should enjoy it less often than professionals, provided that their early childhood environment was musically modernist or up-to-date. If people grow up with nothing much except common practice tonality, then it is surely no wonder if later in their life they find it difficult to move beyond it. This is no fault of the music. It has always taken a genius to push boundaries (a genius like Schoenberg); the rest of the population follows only if they are made to through education.

(For me this wasn't a huge problem, because I grew up with no music at all, and I've always had to push myself to start appreciating much any music at all. 12-tone music was just another barrier to cross for me once I got past my ideological prejudice, and incidentally, for me that music is essentially no different from the Bartok string quartets, and it can have a sort of dark mysteriousness to it that you can't find in music earlier than Wagner, and perhaps not fully developed before Bartok. Of course, that's not its only selling point or anything like uniformly present, but it is an aspect that makes many of the passages uniquely valuable to me.)


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## science

Chordalrock said:


> We need a poll on how many people here enjoy 12-tone music and to what degree. It seems to me there should be no reason why hobbyists should enjoy it less often than professionals, provided that their early childhood environment was musically modernist or up-to-date. If people grow up with nothing much except common practice tonality, then it is surely no wonder if later in their life they find it difficult to move beyond it. This is no fault of the music. It has always taken a genius to push boundaries (a genius like Schoenberg); the rest of the population follows only if they are made to through education.
> 
> (For me this wasn't a huge problem, because I grew up with no music at all, and I've always had to push myself to start appreciating much any music at all. 12-tone music was just another barrier to cross for me once I got past my ideological prejudice, and incidentally, for me that music is essentially no different from the Bartok string quartets, and it can have a sort of dark mysteriousness to it that you can't find in music earlier than Wagner, and perhaps not fully developed before Bartok. Of course, that's not its only selling point or anything like uniformly present, but it is an aspect that makes many of the passages uniquely valuable to me.)


I didn't mean that fans of classical music don't like Schoenberg. I'm one that regards Schoenberg as one of the more popular composers. Compare this thread (for example) to the Enescu thread (for example).

I mean that those who like Schoenberg don't like Higdon.


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## Chordalrock

science said:


> I didn't mean that fans of classical music don't like Schoenberg. I'm one that regards Schoenberg as one of the more popular composers. Compare this thread (for example) to the Enescu thread (for example).
> 
> I mean that those who like Schoenberg don't like Higdon.


Oh. I'm not too familiar with Higdon. Do you mean that the more avant-gardist among us tend to find her music too populist, or something? If so, it's an interesting phenomenon. I wish I had some special insight into it.


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## science

Chordalrock said:


> Oh. I'm not too familiar with Higdon. Do you mean that the more avant-gardist among us tend to find her music too populist, or something? If so, it's an interesting phenomenon. I wish I had some special insight into it.


I don't know if "populist" is the right word, but something like that.


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## Becca

science said:


> I didn't mean that fans of classical music don't like Schoenberg. I'm one that regards Schoenberg as one of the more popular composers. Compare this thread (for example) to the Enescu thread (for example).
> 
> *I mean that those who like Schoenberg don't like Higdon.*


Now that is absolute nonsense ... either that or I don't exist.


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## Becca

A few thoughts...

- The fact that 20 orchestras did not perform any Schoenberg in a given concert year is irrelevant. Given how few pieces were possible in all the concerts of those orchestras in that period, compared to how many composers are out there which we discuss regularly, there are any number of composers who were not represented. I would hazard a guess that there are some names which are surprising absences in that list.

- There has been discussion as to whether classical music is market driven. That depends on how broadly you define market. In the US that 'market' mostly represents a small percentage of those with the highest income or net worth, i.e. those who contribute the majority of the income of orchestras and buy the most expensive season tickets.

- The question of what problem Schoenberg was trying to solve is probably not much different from what James Joyce was trying to do with such works as _Ulysses_, i.e. finding that they needed to take a 'sideways' step in order to express that which they wanted to express. It is interesting that Joyce and Schoenberg were 'doing there thing' at about the same time and seem to have generated a lot of similar reactions.

- Just because some composers (or authors) felt the need to shift or expand their artistic vocabulary does not mean that what came before had been exhausted. I find that argument, particularly with respect to [common practice] tonality to be ludicrous.


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## science

Becca said:


> Now that is absolute nonsense ... either that or I don't exist.


Or you're atypical. Which is probably something you can be proud of.


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## Chordalrock

Becca said:


> - Just because some composers (or authors) felt the need to shift or expand their artistic vocabulary does not mean that what came before had been exhausted. I find that argument, particularly with respect to [common practice] tonality to be ludicrous.


I would agree. I think composers, and many listeners, are hyper-sensitive about sounding like one of the classics. I don't know what would have to change for highly regarded contemporary composers to take a few stabs at composing in older languages from time to time beyond the very rare completion, like Berio's "Rendering" (actually I don't know how strongly or not it incorporated contemporary elements, but would recall reading that not very strongly).

I guess there's Schnittke's "Sonata in Olden Style". There's really very little that I know of, and apparently no serious attempts to rise to the level of Brahms or Beethoven in something resembling early 19th century tonal language. I don't mean anyone should copy Beethoven, just that some could try competing with him at his own game at times, so to speak.

Still, I'm not complaining. There's undeniably more variety in the kinds of new works being composed than ever before, and just tons of talent. The more I start getting into it, the less I care about the above paragraphs.


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## starthrower

KenOC said:


> Schoenberg's success in writing "pleasing music" with his 12-tone system is apparent, to me, in that not a single one of his 12-tone works was programmed by any of the top 20 or so US orchestras in the 2014-15 season. Others may draw different conclusions, though that might involve some reaching.


It's economics. That's why US orchestras keep playing the same old warhorses. Maybe if they had been programming Schoenberg and other neglected composers for decades, people could get used to hearing different harmonies? All I know is that the more I listen to 12 tone, the more I enjoy it. I can't same the same is true for Adams's Short Ride In A Fast Machine.


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## Guest

starthrower said:


> It's economics. That's why US orchestras keep playing the same old warhorses. Maybe if they had been programming Schoenberg and other neglected composers for decades, people could get used to hearing different harmonies? All I know is that the more I listen to 12 tone, the more I enjoy it. I can't same the same is true for Adams's Short Ride In A Fast Machine.


Ken has cited this kind of thing before, and I've countered with evidence that in other countries, Schoenberg is programmed by major orchestras. Dare I suggest that his analysis is distortingly US-centric?

From this years Proms...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/events/composers/691


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## KenOC

The new Boston SO stats for the 2015-2016 season are out. The orchestra coverage has been increased from 22 US orchestras to 89. Still, Schoenberg is programmed just 5 times out of the 3,864 pieces programmed in total. They are:

A Survivor from Warsaw
Chamber Symphony No. 1
Chamber Symphony No. 2
Pelleas and Melisande
Transfigured Night (1943 Revision)

Each programmed just one time. Astor Piazzolla gets twice that!

http://www.bsomusic.org/stories/what-data-tells-us-about-the-2015-16-orchestra-season.aspx


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## Crudblud

Gee, Ken, it's almost as if you have an ulterior motive here. I don't mean to hop on the bandwagon some people claim to have seen rolling around these parts, it's just getting kind of funny at this point to see you persist in this line of reasoning despite having been shown repeatedly why it doesn't really add up to a convincing case against Schoenberg or 12-tone music.


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## Stavrogin

Stavrogin said:


> Yeah, I meant "the contrary" as in "lovers of 20th music are generally considered very open-minded, therefore certainly without prejudices on earlier music". For my experience, of course.


Thinking again about this little bit of conversation with arpeggio.
You know, the "pro-modernists are inclusive, anti-modernists are exclusive" issue.
Regarding the first part, which I mostly agree with, I was thinking: What if we include _contemporary_ composers writing in the "old" style in the conversation?
Would the inclusiveness still be true for all pro-modernists?
It seems to me that there is a widespread indifference (at best) or outright contempt (at worst) for such composers, in the pro-modernist audience.
Is this correct?


----------



## Nereffid

Stavrogin said:


> Thinking again about this little bit of conversation with arpeggio.
> You know, the "pro-modernists are inclusive, anti-modernists are exclusive" issue.
> Regarding the first part, which I mostly agree with, I was thinking: What if we include _contemporary_ composers writing in the "old" style in the conversation?
> Would the inclusiveness still be true for all pro-modernists?
> It seems to me that there is a widespread indifference (at best) or outright contempt (at worst) for such composers, in the pro-modernist audience.
> Is this correct?


I examined the voting patterns in one of my a la carte polls - I won't say which one, to protect the innocent (so to speak). But anyway there were a couple of works by mid-20th-century composers in there that might be classed as "progressive" and "populist", respectively. I found that roughly half of the people who liked the progressive's work also liked the populist's work, and vice versa. This indicates that inclusivity vs exclusivity may not be related to modernism.
But then an interesting pattern struck me: the people who liked both composers tended to be posters who get involved in arguments such as the one going on in this thread!
So in terms of TC's regular defenders of modernism, I'd say yes, they are an inclusive bunch. But there's also a (usually) silent majority (or substantial minority, at any rate) who tend to stay in one camp.


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## Stavrogin

Nereffid said:


> I examined the voting patterns in one of my a la carte polls - I won't say which one, to protect the innocent (so to speak). But anyway there were a couple of works by mid-20th-century composers in there that might be classed as "progressive" and "populist", respectively. I found that roughly half of the people who liked the progressive's work also liked the populist's work, and vice versa. This indicates that inclusivity vs exclusivity may not be related to modernism.
> But then an interesting pattern struck me: the people who liked both composers tended to be posters who get involved in arguments such as the one going on in this thread!
> So in terms of TC's regular defenders of modernism, I'd say yes, they are an inclusive bunch. But there's also a (usually) silent majority (or substantial minority, at any rate) who tend to stay in one camp.


Interesting!
I think a lot of intriguing insights can come from the huge database of stated preferences you are building.


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## ArtMusic

Morimur said:


> In the end it isn't the composer's method that matters, but the quality of his output; his music-that's what's truly important. Who could convincingly argue, even if one doesn't necessarily appreciate Schoenberg's aesthetic, that he was anything but a first rate composer?


Schoenberg's music is well over half a century old. Contrast with Mozart in say 1850, the repertoire has well and truly stamped him as a music god. I don't think Schoenberg has quite achieved that tier yet, as great as he may be to many listeners.


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## Stavrogin

ArtMusic said:


> Schoenberg's music is well over half a century old. Contrast with Mozart in say 1850, the repertoire has well and truly stamped him as a music god. I don't think Schoenberg has quite achieved that tier yet, as great as he may be to many listeners.


Where is it possible to find structured information on the evolution of the composers' fame in history?
As in: how was Beethoven considered during his life? 25 years after his death? 50 years? 100 years after?
Etc.


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## EdwardBast

Chordalrock said:


> Maybe I'm misunderstanding the argument, but aren't some of the critiques of 12-tone music in this thread claiming that there is something about tonality that, when perceived by a human, unavoidably leads to a certain kind of experience involving tension and resolution due to physical and physiological facts alone, or something along these lines?
> 
> The point of mentioning the plagal cadence is that, when e.g. Brahms used it to end the first movement of his fourth symphony, there was nothing there in that cadence that would have created that sort of tension and resolution that could be said to be physical or objective - the top voice and the bass remain on E through the cadence. You can't have tension toward the tonic if you have no movement toward the tonic. This is logic, right? So, the plagal cadence is clearly a chord pattern that is simply learned through exposure and becomes an expectation and something we accept as a cadence through no other reason than that.
> 
> And if a double cadence on D and A can be heard as a double cadence or an odd chord progression depending on cultural background, then obviously there isn't much "natural" about that sort of thing either.


For the record, I haven't been trying to make a broader argument about tension and resolution in the context of 12-tone versus tonal music, but only attempting to make sure the theory and history is right.

Of course there is tension in the penultimate measure of Brahms 4/i! The fourth (A) above the tonic has been considered a dissonance since people started to catalog dissonances. (And in this context, even the C-sharp is heard as requiring resolution.) People have felt this tension intuitively since the beginning of recorded musical history. The plagal cadence has been standard in hymns and spirituals as well, as perhaps the most common way of setting the syllables "A-men." If you stopped that Brahms movement on the penultimate measure, I dare say that half the population of the world, including many who have never listened to classical music, would know exactly where those unresolved notes needed to go, and would recognize the rightness of the resolution Brahms provided.

Now, I wouldn't make the hypothetical claim in your first paragraph above as written. I would change one clause to read "when perceived by a human with normal childhood exposure to tonal music."


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## EdwardBast

Becca said:


> - Just because some composers (or authors) felt the need to shift or expand their artistic vocabulary does not mean that what came before had been exhausted. I find that argument, particularly with respect to [common practice] tonality to be ludicrous.


Yes, it is a ludicrous argument. Nevertheless, it was uncritically adopted as self-evident by some of the most widely used music history texts throughout the late 20thc, and a couple of generations were raised on it. The exhaustion and breakdown of tonality was invoked as if one were discussing a natural phenomenon, with the corollary that 12-tone and other "post-tonal" developments were part of the inevitable and natural course of history. In effect, the historians uncritically accepted the creation myth of a select group of composers and canonized it as the central course of music history.


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## Stavrogin

EdwardBast said:


> For the record, I haven't been trying to make a broader argument about tension and resolution in the context of 12-tone versus tonal music, but only attempting to make sure the theory and history is right.
> 
> Of course there is tension in the penultimate measure of Brahms 4/i! The fourth (A) above the tonic has been considered a dissonance since people started to catalog dissonances. (And in this context, even the C-sharp is heard as requiring resolution.) People have felt this tension intuitively since the beginning of recorded musical history. The plagal cadence has been standard in hymns and spirituals as well, as perhaps the most common way of setting the syllables "A-men." If you stopped that Brahms movement on the penultimate measure, I dare say that half the population of the world, including many who have never listened to classical music, would know exactly where those unresolved notes needed to go, and would recognize the rightness of the resolution Brahms provided.
> 
> Now, I wouldn't make the hypothetical claim in your first paragraph above as written. *I would change one clause to read "when perceived by a human with normal childhood exposure to tonal music.*"


This is really what all these discussions boil down to, isn't it?

Is the favour for hearing tension and resolution innate? Or is it cultural?


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## DeepR

Apparently this guy has the answer to your question


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## EdwardBast

Woodduck said:


> The double leading tone seems a natural consequence of voices moving in parallel fifths, a practice which has arisen spontaneously in music around the world (no doubt suggested by the prominence of the second overtone).


I think it more likely the double leading tone cadence arose out of a perceived need to avoid a tritone on the penultimate syllable, in part because there would have been no natural way to resolve it in the vocabulary of that age. Using Chordalrock's example of a resolution in Dorian mode: If one had, from the tenor up, E-G-C# on the penultimate syllable, the G would have to resolve up to A, since what we in modern times hear as its "natural" resolution, F, a third above the bass, was then unacceptable in a final cadence. And yet such an upward resolution of a tritone to a 4th seems to have been just as uncomfortable for their ears as for ours. Using E-G#-C# solves the problem, and indeed, our medieval forebears seem to have seen no reason the leading tone principle shouldn't extend to linear resolutions to the other cadencial perfect consonance, the 5th.


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## EdwardBast

Stavrogin said:


> This is really what all these discussions boil down to, isn't it?
> 
> Is the favour for hearing tension and resolution innate? Or is it cultural?


The proximate tendency is cultural. But it is also a step on the obvious path of least (or, at least, _a_ path of little) resistance from certain natural acoustical facts. And to get really speculative: If singing is parasitic on human verbal capacities, an analogy to verbal syntax - an approximation of punctuation, that is - would be a basic desideratum of any musical system in which words are sung. Tension and resolution as we conceive them would be a ready way to satisfy this need.


----------



## isorhythm

EdwardBast said:


> Yes, it is a ludicrous argument. Nevertheless, it was uncritically adopted as self-evident by some of the most widely used music history texts throughout the late 20thc, and a couple of generations were raised on it. The exhaustion and breakdown of tonality was invoked as if one were discussing a natural phenomenon, with the corollary that 12-tone and other "post-tonal" developments were part of the inevitable and natural course of history. In effect, the historians uncritically accepted the creation myth of a select group of composers and canonized it as the central course of music history.


But I said specifically the exhaustion of common practice tonality. This still seems self-evident to me. There is almost no important music in the modern era written according to pre-1900 common practice.


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## Mahlerian

Stavrogin said:


> This is really what all these discussions boil down to, isn't it?
> 
> Is the favour for hearing tension and resolution innate? Or is it cultural?


Of course it's innate. That's not what we're arguing about. The only thing that we're arguing about is whether one specific kind of tension/resolution dynamic, which only arose in a single culture's music after many centuries, is natural, while every single other way of hearing is unnatural.


----------



## Becca

isorhythm said:


> But I said specifically the exhaustion of common practice tonality. This still seems self-evident to me. There is almost no important music in the modern era written according to pre-1900 common practice.


Important music according to whom?


----------



## arpeggio

Stavrogin said:


> Thinking again about this little bit of conversation with arpeggio.
> You know, the "pro-modernists are inclusive, anti-modernists are exclusive" issue.
> Regarding the first part, which I mostly agree with, I was thinking: What if we include _contemporary_ composers writing in the "old" style in the conversation?
> Would the inclusiveness still be true for all pro-modernists?
> It seems to me that there is a widespread indifference (at best) or outright contempt (at worst) for such composers, in the pro-modernist audience.
> Is this correct?


I can only speak for myself but I know many members who think like I do.

We have no problem with contemporary tonal composers. Two of my personal favorites are David Maslanka and Richard Danielpour.


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## isorhythm

Becca said:


> Important music according to whom?


Well, what are the counterexamples? Maybe Rachmaninoff or Strauss. I can't think of anyone else.


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## Mahlerian

isorhythm said:


> Well, what are the counterexamples? Maybe Rachmaninoff or Strauss. I can't think of anyone else.


Both of whom were already mostly matured as composers before the 20th century even started. Perhaps Sibelius as a third example (whose personality was also already formed before 1900)?


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## isorhythm

Maybe people are having a problem because the word "exhausted" sound negative? I don't think there's anything wrong with an individual composer writing in an old style. It's just that, as a matter of objective fact, we find that most composers move on.

Take Thomas Tomkins (1562 - 1656) - he wrote absolutely beautiful music in the Tudor style. But despite that, it's fair to say that style was over. Almost all composers had moved on. Not a knock on Tomkins, just an observation.


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## Stavrogin

arpeggio said:


> I can only speak for myself but I know many members who think like I do.
> 
> We have no problem with contemporary tonal composers. Two of my personal favorites are David Maslanka and Richard Danielpour.


With this remark of yours and that of Nereffid based on his polls, I think we can dismiss the case.

I'd be curious to know if Someguy and Mahlerian include some "tonal" composer among their contemporary favourites.
Not that the contrary would be a sign of prejudice, of course. Just a curiousity regarding their tastes.


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## violadude

Mahlerian said:


> Both of whom were already mostly matured as composers before the 20th century even started. Perhaps Sibelius as a third example (whose personality was also already formed before 1900)?


Even then, one can't comfortably call much of Sibelius' mature work "common practice harmony".


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## Stavrogin

EdwardBast said:


> The proximate tendency is cultural. But it is also a step on the obvious path of least (or, at least, _a_ path of little) resistance from certain natural acoustical facts. And to get really speculative: If singing is parasitic on human verbal capacities, an analogy to verbal syntax - an approximation of punctuation, that is - would be a basic desideratum of any musical system in which words are sung. Tension and resolution as we conceive them would be a ready way to satisfy this need.


I am not sure I got the analogy.
Do you mean that tension and resolution are to music what punctuation is to written language?
Something necessary to connect the contents and establish the relation between them?
Mmm I will think about it.


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## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> Both of whom were already mostly matured as composers before the 20th century even started. Perhaps Sibelius as a third example (whose personality was also already formed before 1900)?


Don't forget a fair amount of late Bartok, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, and nearly all of Myaskovsky. (Yes, I know you don't agree this is common practice tonality, but there are enormous swaths of their music with perfectly traditional voice-leading and tonal progressions.)


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## Stavrogin

Mahlerian said:


> Of course it's innate. That's not what we're arguing about. The only thing that we're arguing about is whether one specific kind of tension/resolution dynamic, which only arose in a single culture's music after many centuries, is natural, while every single other way of hearing is unnatural.


Well yes, sure, let's rephrase it: is the favour for the tension and resolution dynamic as laid out in the tonal architecture innate?


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## Mahlerian

EdwardBast said:


> Don't forget a fair amount of late Bartok, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, and nearly all of Myaskovsky. (Yes, I know you don't agree this is common practice tonality, but there are enormous swaths of their music with perfectly traditional voice-leading and tonal progressions.)


Only if you stretch the boundaries of "traditional voice-leading" and "tonal progressions" so that they have nothing to do with what those terms mean in any other context. You would never be able to mistake any of that music for having been written in the 19th century.


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## Mahlerian

Stavrogin said:


> Well yes, sure, let's rephrase it: is the favour for the tension and resolution dynamic as laid out in the tonal architecture innate?


No, and it would be overly Western-centric to say so.

Because the only way one can speak of a single "tonal architecture" is by ignoring all other music outside of the Western tradition.


----------



## Stavrogin

EdwardBast said:


> Don't forget a fair amount of late Bartok, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, and nearly all of Myaskovsky. (Yes, I know you don't agree this is common practice tonality, but there are enormous swaths of their music with perfectly traditional voice-leading and tonal progressions.)


If we're looking for non common practice, but still tonal, works in the XX century, a lot of works by Britten also come to (my untrained) mind.


----------



## EdwardBast

Stavrogin said:


> I am not sure I got the analogy.
> Do you mean that tension and resolution are to music what punctuation is to written language?
> Something necessary to connect the contents and establish the relation between them?
> Mmm I will think about it.


I'm suggesting (well, guessing really) that if music was used in early societies to sing words, it is a fair bet that notes of relative tension and release would come to be correlated with similar moments of resolution and division in the text.


----------



## Stavrogin

Mahlerian said:


> No, and it would be overly Western-centric to say so.
> 
> Because the only way one can speak of a single "tonal architecture" is by ignoring all other music outside of the Western tradition.


One could argue that saying it is innate does not imply that it is the only one.
Just, the one that naturally responds best to the need.


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## Mahlerian

Stavrogin said:


> One could argue that saying it is innate does not imply that it is the only one.
> Just, the one that naturally responds best to the need.


I still disagree. Studies have shown that awareness of tonality and tonal resolution is learned and requires exposure to tonal music. The capacity for developing it is aware in all who are not tone deaf, to my knowledge, but I am sure the same could be said of sensitivity to any other kind of music.


----------



## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> Only if you stretch the boundaries of "traditional voice-leading" and "tonal progressions" so that they have nothing to do with what those terms mean in any other context. You would never be able to mistake any of that music for having been written in the 19th century.


Nonsense. Mistaking it for 19thc music or not is irrelevant. No one would mistake Brahms for Mozart or Mozart for Corelli either. Have you listened to Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony lately? Shostakovich's Tenth? One can stretch "traditional voice-leading" and "tonal progressions" a long way before they have nothing to do with earlier meanings of the terms. And much of the music I cited is well within the limits. It just depends on how good one is at analysis.

Edit: I just got out my scores to Prokofiev's piano sonatas - easier to see than miniature score of his symphonies. Look at the third movement of his Sixth Sonata and see if you can't work out the tonal progression involved in the principal theme. It is easy to be distracted by the chromatic neighbor chords and such, but everything about the underlying motion and voice-leading harks way back. Perhaps if I find time later I'll post an analysis - not promising anything.


----------



## Stavrogin

Mahlerian said:


> I still disagree. Studies have shown that awareness of tonality and tonal resolution is learned and requires exposure to tonal music.


This means that if I expose our friend Johnny The Unaware to a dominant seventh to tonic progression, he will not perceive the sense of resolution? 
Well, interesting.


----------



## Mahlerian

EdwardBast said:


> Nonsense. Mistaking it for 19thc music or not is irrelevant. No one would mistake Brahms for Mozart or Mozart for Corelli either. Have you listened to Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony lately? Shostakovich's Tenth? One can stretch "traditional voice-leading" and "tonal progressions" a long way before they have nothing to do with earlier meanings of the terms. And much of the music I cited is well within the limits. It just depends on how good one is at analysis.


I pulled out my score and recording of Prokofiev's Fifth, and what do I hear? Myriad unresolved dissonances, leaps from dissonant notes to other dissonant notes, harmonies that never resolve, an avoidance of any functional progressions, and an exposition that ends on a dissonant chord of F-C-D-G#-B.

You could rightly say that this is a foreground to a background that's mostly common practice, including a traditional symphonic form (moving from tonic to dominant, even), but common practice requires a coordination between the two.


----------



## Chordalrock

EdwardBast said:


> The fourth (A) above the tonic has been considered a dissonance since people started to catalog dissonances.


Ah, the dissonant fourth, the third most consonant interval according to acoustic analysis, after the octave and the perfect fifth. Good luck arguing that there is something "naturally" dissonant about it, especially when you consider the major and minor third examples of consonance.

Really, you couldn't have picked a better example of your cultural bias. The mathematical proof is there for all to see. There is absolutely nothing dissonant about the fourth except the cultural expectation during some periods in history that the upper voice should "resolve" to a third. This expectation came about because this sequence of notes was often used in certain situations where it was initially useful for some other reason (I'm sure a musicologist could explain exactly how it came about). There is no other reason to expect a fourth to "resolve" than mental habit.


----------



## Open Lane

I actually saw a performance if Berg's wozzeck and i found it amazing.

Honestly i think your assessment for value is a bit skewed. I am a big fan of death metal, which is also a genre generally not appreciated on a larger level. Also, even more so, perhaps - avantgarde jazz music is considered obscure by many.


Popularity is generally not a good criteria for assessing value of any art. I can name dozens of radio frequently broadcasted radio artists who play large venues, whose music i find little value in. Also, there are a lot of such listeners who would cringe and yawn at anything classical.


People who don't have the media or trends defining their definitions of 'good' or 'acceptance' are probably a bit better rounded if you ask me. However, i don't think anyone can rate such opinions as good or better definitively. There are always exceptions when trying to categorize such. It's all opinions and i don't see any reason to start trying to objectify such.


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## isorhythm

EdwardBast said:


> One can stretch "traditional voice-leading" and "tonal progressions" a long way before they have nothing to do with earlier meanings of the terms.


Who said anything about "nothing to do with"?

My point was that, starting in the early 20th century, there was no longer a _common tonal practice_, not that there was no more tonal music. So composers who really wanted there to be some kind of common practice were drawn to 12-tone for that reason. That's all!


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## Radames

Mahlerian said:


> But why *despise* him? That's what really baffles me about this whole thing. Classical music listeners think that Schoenberg is this sort of devil or antichrist who came in and willfully destroyed music. The hatred and bile directed towards a man who's been dead for over half a century who never hurt a single person in his entire life is disturbing to me.


His 12-tone technique kept people who only like tonal music it from getting new music that they like. It seemed like for the longest time new compositions were all 12-tone. That's why I have referred to him as The Abomination - only half jokingly. It didn't really destroy music. There have been enough tonal composers - and rock'n roll.


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## Mahlerian

Radames said:


> His 12-tone technique kept people who only like tonal music it from getting new music that they like. It seemed like for the longest time new compositions were all 12-tone. That's why I have referred to him as The Abomination - only half jokingly. It didn't really destroy music. There have been enough tonal composers - and rock'n roll.


Once again, I don't think you or anyone else here can tell by listening to a piece of music that it uses the 12-tone technique.

How does the existence of something you don't like (and most likely can't even identify) prevent you from getting something you do? It's far from true that a majority or even a significant plurality of compositions from any one year in the 20th century were 12-tone.


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## Radames

Mahlerian said:


> Once again, I don't think you or anyone else here can tell by listening to a piece of music that it uses the 12-tone technique.
> 
> How does the existence of something you don't like (and most likely can't even identify) prevent you from getting something you do? It's far from true that a majority or even a significant plurality of compositions from any one year in the 20th century were 12-tone.


If it doesn't sound like music to me it is most likely 12-tone. I've never heard any 12-tone music that I could stand.


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## Mahlerian

Radames said:


> If it doesn't sound like music to me it is most likely 12-tone. I've never heard any 12-tone music that I could stand.


That's actually irrelevant. You're assuming that all music that doesn't sound like music to you is 12-tone.

What about this, for example?






Not 12-tone by any definition of that term.


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## Stirling

People do buy tickets. A few pieces a even popular, such as the Berg violin concerto ( which was like by Britten and Shostakovich). so the argument that it is totally unpopular is quite frankly a myth. now there was a time where 12 tone music was widely popular in the conservatory system, where it was not appreciated largely at all by the public, and their was antithetical relationship between the composers and the listeners. but that has quieted down, and as Berlioz remarked, that which has a good effect stays in place, and that which has an unpleasant affect is used only sparingly. there are people who will be wild about 12 tone music- and will be heard voluminously, far larger than their number. but do not despair, 12 tone music will the heard in spite of, not because of, its wild supporters as the music listening population gets to know the really good pieces and reject the bad. 

to put matters into perspective, while I do not compose 12 tone music, I listen to it because it is all a style from the 20th century - or pieces aping that style - and when put in that context, it is a representative of the period. I am assuming that the original poster was not just trolling for a traditionalist vs. 12 tone fight, and would like some examples. but music has moved on from the 12 tone school, other than people who want to compose and listen to it - and in fact is fighting the next battle. this is the battle between obsessively rhythmic and consonant style of piece - Glass, Reich etc - who are aging quickly and merging in two battles yet to be named by audience members.


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## Radames

Mahlerian said:


> That's actually irrelevant. You're assuming that all music that doesn't sound like music to you is 12-tone.
> 
> What about this, for example?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ^^
> Not great - but it has some good ideas in it. Better than any 12-tone work I've ever heard. Why don't you post a link to the best 12-tone work you know of.


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## Stirling




----------



## Dim7

Radames said:


> Not great - but it has some good ideas in it. Better than any 12-tone work I've ever heard. Why don't you post a link to the best 12-tone work you know of.


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## Mahlerian

Radames said:


> ^^
> Not great - but it has some good ideas in it. Better than any 12-tone work I've ever heard. Why don't you post a link to the best 12-tone work you know of.


That's like asking the best work in D minor I know. There are so many different styles and different composers working that it's impossible to simply compare them to each other. I don't even know what I would choose for best Schoenberg work, because there are so many masterpieces in there.

This one has always been a favorite:





This movement's opening melody is famous and much-imitated:





Lucid in both texture and harmony:





I find all of these far less harsh sounding than the Varese personally, which is more brash and less melodic.


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## Chordalrock

Radames said:


> ^^
> Not great - but it has some good ideas in it. Better than any 12-tone work I've ever heard. Why don't you post a link to the best 12-tone work you know of.


I don't know about best, but I'm curious what you think about the first minute or so of this string quartet from Schoenberg's 12-tone period:


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## Radames

Stirling said:


>


I know the Berg concerto. Berg cheated and put in passages written in a freer, more tonal style. Wiki: "The score integrates serialism and tonality in a remarkable fashion. "


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> The first statement here, which is true, undermines the second statement and the conclusion.
> 
> Tonal music - all tonal music, whether common practice, modal, or any other kind - is defined by a tonal center, which in common practice we call its key note, and which makes a change of key possible. A change of "key" is possible in any kind of tonal music, meaning that the scale used in the music may choose any pitch as a tonal center (the first note of its scale), and that the tonal center may be moved from that pitch to a different pitch. Modulation, or change of key, is a primary structural resource in common practice music, if not in other tonal traditions, although it is theoretically possible in those traditions.
> 
> Modulation is not possible in atonal music, where no note of the chromatic scale serves as a tonic, and thus there is no key to change from or to.


I think you are applying tonal terms (modulation, tonic) to non-tonal music. The OP cites a very simple case in Bartok where the tone center is created by simply moving a melodic figuration so that it starts on different notes. Since the melody has an independent identity on its own, even the ear can hear this...not much brain required. This is the same principle that tone rows operate on, and that's why there are "transpositions" of the row starting on each possible note.



Woodduck said:


> This fact has many implications for the way tonal and atonal music are structured. If it didn't, Schoenberg would have had no need to invent the serial technique. These implications are the ways in which a tonic note, and the hierarchy of other scale steps which relate to the tonic in particular ways, suggest and permit certain formal structures and procedures. In most tonal systems, this hierarchy begins with the "dominant," the fifth note of the scale. The second overtone of a tone is at the interval of a fifth above it (the first overtone, the octave, is not easily heard as a different note from the fundamental), and the fifth note above the tonic is in most tonal music perceived as second in importance to it and is very prominently employed as a melody note. In common practice, it is the note heard as most consonant with the key note, and it therefore also serves as the top note of the tonic chord and the basis, or root, of the "dominant" key area. Similar principles apply with regard to other notes on the scale; their relative prominence in the hierarchy of keys derives basically from their perceived consonance with the tonic key note and with each other, and their structural prominence and functions follow.


I think the same principle applied to melodies or tone rows; the row on the fifth degree (OT5) could be said to be most closely related to the original (OT1). Fugues operate this way as well.



> Non-common-practice, melody-based tonal systems don't possess the same elaborate hierarchy of keys, but they do possess definite hierarchies of melody notes which help to determine the form of the music, and these hierarchies are rooted, with expressive cultural variations, in perceived acoustical phenomena and their harmonic implications. Whether in common practice or other tonal systems, the hierarchy which exists among the notes, or the tonal levels rooted in them, allows for the meaningful articulation of form, as the tonal hierarchies are established and kept in mind (at least subconsciously), and melody and harmony are heard to progress "logically" from one note or tonal area to another and to form in the end a coherently shaped, goal-directed entity.
> 
> None of these ramifications of the existence of a tonal hierarchy pertain to atonal music, which must achieve formal articulation by other, non-tonal means, and this is the justification of the term "atonal."


I think you are ignoring the harmonic factors which are common to all music. There can still be plenty of harmonic implications in rows and their relationships. The "tonal hierarchy" you speak of is not exclusive to CP tonality, or even generally. Any relationship of two or more notes is harmonic, and has harmonic implications. As long as there is a reference, there is a "tonic," so to speak, even in serialism. This is what I tried to articulate in the "Sound is harmonic..." thread.


----------



## Mahlerian

Radames said:


> I know the Berg concerto. Berg cheated and put in passages written in a freer, more tonal style. Wiki: "The score integrates serialism and tonality in a remarkable fashion. "


Everyone "cheats" from time to time. The myth of the strict rules of the 12-tone method is just that, a myth without much basis in reality.

What Berg actually did, save for one passage in the second half, is recreate a pseudo-tonal texture using the serial method.


----------



## Radames

Chordalrock said:


> I don't know about best, but I'm curious what you think about the first minute or so of this string quartet from Schoenberg's 12-tone period:


Now I've got a headache. I'll try some of Mahlerian's suggestions tomorrow.


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## Woodduck

Mahlerian said:


> Of course it's innate. That's not what we're arguing about. The only thing that we're arguing about is whether one specific kind of tension/resolution dynamic, which only arose in a single culture's music after many centuries, is natural, while every single other way of hearing is unnatural.


Good grief, Mahlerian! Who has ever argued that "one specific kind of tension/resolution dynamic" - by which I assume you mean common practice tonality - is "natural," while all other musical systems, worldwide and throughout all time, are "unnatural"? Absolutely no one I have ever heard or read on the subject. If you think this is the position of the people you're arguing about tonality with, it's no wonder you keep saying the same things again and again and complaining that no one ever listens to you. It seems you aren't listening to them either.

Or do I misunderstand your statement here completely?


----------



## millionrainbows

What I have maintained all along is that "tension/resolution" is simply a ratio between any two notes, and this has always existed in the relationships of partials to a fundamental, and no movement in time is necessary. Harmony is now, as being-in-time, as our consciousness exists in this moment.


----------



## Woodduck

Mahlerian said:


> Both of whom were already mostly matured as composers before the 20th century even started. Perhaps Sibelius as a third example (whose personality was also already formed before 1900)?


This seems a rather careless dismissal of the stylistic development of Rachmaninoff and Sibelius. The inquiry was, who were some composers of important music in the modern era written according to pre-1900 common practice? Whether their late works conform entirely to "common practice" might be an interesting subject for discussion, but some of Sibelius's harmonic practices in, for example, his fourth symphony and _Tapiola_ at least represent uncommon and original takes on it, and the subtle and fluid chromaticism of Rachmaninoff's _Symphonic Dances_ is miles beyond the harmony of his second symphony. I for one am not willing to dismiss these work as "unimportant." But of course these composers are little more than footnotes for the music historians because they didn't start movements or renounce their musical past. After all, how can you be truly modern if you aren't a Modernist?


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## millionrainbows

"Why 12-tone music?" Because I want to enter into listening with a sense of adventure, to discover new things.

Someone who just sits around listening to Beethoven is, to me, simply seeking affirmation of things they already know. That's OK, but I want new challenges, new adventures.


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## Stirling

*Everyone "cheats" from time to time. The myth of the strict rules of the 12-tone method is just that, a myth without much basis in reality.

What Berg actually did, save for one passage in the second half, is recreate a pseudo-tonal texture using the serial method.*

Or you could say that he created a serial aspect to a tonal music Center, there are fights about this in conservatories all over the world.


----------



## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> This seems a rather careless dismissal of the stylistic development of Rachmaninoff and Sibelius. The inquiry was, who were some composers of important music in the modern era written according to pre-1900 common practice? Whether their late works conform entirely to "common practice" might be an interesting subject for discussion, but some of Sibelius's harmonic practices in, for example, his fourth symphony and _Tapiola_ at least represent uncommon and original takes on it, and the subtle and fluid chromaticism of Rachmaninoff's _Symphonic Dances_ is miles beyond the harmony of his second symphony. I for one am not willing to dismiss these work as "unimportant." But of course these composers are little more than footnotes for the music historians because they didn't start movements or renounce their musical past. After all, how can you be truly modern if you aren't a Modernist?


In this sense, many listeners approach music as wine-tasting; it's the subtle differences, and nuances, which make it new and exciting. I'm a modernist, but I can also appreciate the fine differences between Beethoven and whomever else.


----------



## isorhythm

Woodduck said:


> This seems a rather careless dismissal of the stylistic development of Rachmaninoff and Sibelius. The inquiry was, who were some composers of important music in the modern era written according to pre-1900 common practice? Whether their late works conform entirely to "common practice" might be an interesting subject for discussion, but some of Sibelius's harmonic practices in, for example, his fourth symphony and _Tapiola_ at least represent uncommon and original takes on it, and the subtle and fluid chromaticism of Rachmaninoff's _Symphonic Dances_ is miles beyond the harmony of his second symphony. I for one am not willing to dismiss these work as "unimportant." But of course these composers are little more than footnotes for the music historians because they didn't start movements or renounce their musical past. After all, how can you be truly modern if you aren't a Modernist?


I never said they weren't important! That's not the point. The point is that there are two of them.


----------



## EdwardBast

isorhythm said:


> Who said anything about "nothing to do with"?
> 
> My point was that, starting in the early 20th century, there was no longer a _common tonal practice_, not that there was no more tonal music. So composers who really wanted there to be some kind of common practice were drawn to 12-tone for that reason. That's all!


I was quoting Mahlerian, who said literally that. I'm not sure about there being no common tonal practice. All of the Russians I mentioned use a lot of similar devices and extended harmonies, those based on altered mediant and submediant relationships being particularly prominent.


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## Stirling

It's clear that the OP wants to fight... So I will listen to music instead.


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## Mahlerian

EdwardBast said:


> I was quoting Mahlerian, who said literally that. I'm not sure about there being no common tonal practice. All of the Russians I mentioned use a lot of similar devices and extended harmonies, those based on altered mediant and submediant relationships being particularly prominent.


Which elements of common practice voice leading are retained in this music? Which elements of common practice functional harmony? Are they contextual or applicable between works?


----------



## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> I pulled out my score and recording of Prokofiev's Fifth, and what do I hear? Myriad unresolved dissonances, leaps from dissonant notes to other dissonant notes, harmonies that never resolve, an avoidance of any functional progressions, and an exposition that ends on a dissonant chord of F-C-D-G#-B.
> 
> You could rightly say that this is a foreground to a background that's mostly common practice, including a traditional symphonic form (moving from tonic to dominant, even), but common practice requires a coordination between the two.


The exposition ends on an open fifth, F-C, which alternates with another chord (Ab-C-D-B) This is just the dominant in its simplest form - which is exactly where one would expect a tonal exposition to end. The opening theme is just tonics, subdominants and dominants, with a contrasting phrase in the tonic minor - perfectly normal and rather simple harmonic functions. The immediate modulation down a half-step thereafter is odd, but typical of Prokofiev. In the transition several secondary centers are tonicized pretty clearly. Haven't analyzed the second theme yet, but suspect it also is exactly where it should be.


----------



## EDaddy

Mahlerian said:


> "'Atonal' became a useful missile of critical abuse, hurled first at Schoenberg and his school and then, increasingly indiscriminately, whenever a critic's ears were outraged by too uncomfortable a degree of dissonance in Bartok, Milhaud, Prokofiev, Britten....So widely was it used that it gradually lost some of its pejorative sting, became enshrined in dictionaries of music, and finally gained acceptance in both popular and scholarly parlance as the word that supposedly describes 'music without a key.' Yet *it is still a nonsense-word that completely misrepresents the works to which it is so blithely applied.*" - Malcolm MacDonald
> 
> This is why I don't call it atonal. Because it's not atonal at all, so far as that term is normally understood. Because atonality is a chimera invented in the minds of critics, and perpetuated in the minds of some audiences, without any real descriptive power or relevance to music as I hear or as I write it.


A very clear cut example of how atonal as a descriptive for Schoenberg's later works is far more than a mere "chimera invented in the minds of critics" that lacks any "real descriptive power or relevance to music" was demonstrated in a musical experiment of sorts that Woodduck recently conducted in a separate post whilst sitting at his piano for the entire duration of the Chamber Symphony 1. In this experiment he explains how he repeatedly played a simple E triad (Emaj being the declared key by its composer, Mr. Schoenberg) and how he noticed that, other than for one fleeting moment in the beginning (a matter of mere seconds), and then not again until the very final chord of the 20-something minute piece, does the chord of E have any discernible lasting relationship or tonal relevance to the work in any conceivable/ perceivable - not to mention theoretical - way, shape or form.

That's because a) The CS1 is not really in the key of E at all, and: b) It is a composition that simply does not have a defining tonicity. Hence the word _atonal _which simply describes the piece's a-tonicity, that is to say lack of a tonal center.

So I beg to differ that the word _atonal_ has no music theory-based or descriptive value other than being derogatory in nature. It is only as derogatory as the intention of the writer wielding it. From a purely logical, theoretical standpoint, atonal is a very accurate descriptive of music like Schoenberg's CS1 that very clearly and provably lacks a tonal center.


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## Mahlerian

EdwardBast said:


> The exposition ends on an open fifth, F-C, which alternates with another chord (Ab-C-D-B, which looks like some kind of an altered mediant 7th chord.) This is just the dominant in its simplest form - which is exactly where one would expect a tonal exposition to end. The opening theme is just tonics, subdominants and dominants, with a contrasting phrase in the submediant minor - perfectly normal and rather simple harmonic functions. The immediate modulation down a half-step thereafter is odd, but typical of Prokofiev. Haven't analyzed the second theme yet, but suspect it also is exactly where it should be.


Yes, if you take out the foreground texture, you can reduce it this way. I already commented that the exposition ends in the dominant key, it's just that that dissonance (and it is spelled with G# in the score I have) you're referring to isn't resolved in any way. It is in fact the implied harmony that the section resolves to.

You can say that the harmonies have simple functions, but every single harmony is altered. Do you call the harmony in bars 8-10 a dominant (of F, most likely, but a variant of the B-flat minor scale is sounded in the violas)?


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## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, if you take out the foreground texture, you can reduce it this way. I already commented that the exposition ends in the dominant key, it's just that that dissonance (and it is spelled with G# in the score I have) you're referring to isn't resolved in any way. It is in fact the implied harmony that the section resolves to.
> 
> You can say that the harmonies have simple functions, but every single harmony is altered. Do you call the harmony in bars 8-10 a dominant (of F, most likely, but a variant of the B-flat minor scale is sounded in the violas)?


No, it isn't the implied harmony the exposition resolves to. The open fifth is. The two are quite clearly separate harmonies, the more dissonant one just emphasizing the stability of the other.

The harmony in 8-10, C-Eb-Gb-Bb, is just a ii7 (diatonic, unaltered) in the tonic minor, once the F gets out of the way.


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## Mahlerian

EdwardBast said:


> No, it isn't the implied harmony the exposition resolves to. The open fifth is. The two are quite clearly separate harmonies, the more dissonant one just emphasizing the stability of the other.


But the dissonant chord doesn't resolve, does it? It's just a coloration placed on top of the F-C dyad, not separate from it at all.



EdwardBast said:


> The harmony in 8-10, C-Eb-Gb-Bb, is just a ii7 in the tonic minor, once the F gets out of the way.


I can see that (although a dominant without a leading tone is non-functional), but what about the B-flat minor scale played on top of it? The D-flat resolves by leap to A-flat, which is dissonant against the held B-flat in the horn (which doesn't resolve), which is itself dissonant against the bass of F.

You can cut all of this out to try to prove that it's really common practice, but does any of this have any justification in traditional voice leading or harmonic procedure? It's this kind of thing which gives Prokofiev's music its specific character.


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## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> Which elements of common practice voice leading are retained in this music? Which elements of common practice functional harmony? Are they contextual or applicable between works?


Can't really do this without many examples. Perhaps I should start a thread in the theory section, although probably only you and I would care? But, in general, all of the Russians I cited (as well as everyone back to Rimsky-K) extensively exploited altered mediant and submediant relationships, often using such chords in lieu of dominants, especially in passing and neighbor-chord functions, and even as large scale multiple suspensions. (I illustrated the simplest of these relationships in the thread "What did Beethoven Mean," in the theory subforum.) Neighboring relations were often executed with sliding half-step related chords. Here is an example illustrating some of these functions, the first page of Prokofiev's Piano Sonata no. 6/iii:

View attachment 78749


The main theme is a 12-measure phrase starting and ending on the tonic triad, C major. The third beat of m. 1 illustrates a typical move to an altered submediant chord (flat VI7, spelled enharmonically with sharps) used in lieu of a more typical passing chord. On the downbeat of m. 2 the root C returns and the tangled profusion of nonharmonic tones sorts itself out with the return to the tonic chord on beat 2. The next two measures see a fairly normal progression (vi-vill-ii-vii-ii) before the next big event, a D major triad (m. 5), which turns out to be V/V. But it is elaborated by sliding neighbor motion to C# major in m. 5-6 before it moves to its expected resolution on the dominant (but in 6/4 inversion) in m. 9. The dominant too is elaborated with sliding chromatic neighbor chords, although a dominant pedal tone hangs in the top voice in mm. 11-12. A V-I cadence on the tonic brings the phrase to a close in m. 12. The subtleties in the treatment of nonharmonic tones deserve a lot more attention than I have given them.

The underlying structure is quite straightforward and functionally tonal. It just takes some work to weed through the foreground diversions. There is a lot of music by Prokofiev of which this is true.


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## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> But the dissonant chord doesn't resolve, does it? It's just a coloration placed on top of the F-C dyad, not separate from it at all.


Its resolution is to the dominant! The alternation serves the same purpose as a move between V/V and V would at a similar juncture in Mozart. In this case, however, the resolutions are just stepwise motions (Ab to the implied A in the dominant chord, B and D to C). Because the dominant is now functioning as tonic in the new key, the leading tone is unnecessary.



Mahlerian said:


> I can see that (although a dominant without a leading tone is non-functional), but what about the B-flat minor scale played on top of it? The D-flat resolves by leap to A-flat, which is dissonant against the held B-flat in the horn (which doesn't resolve), which is itself dissonant against the bass of F.


B-flat minor scale makes perfect sense over ii7. The B-flat in the horn is a tonic pedal, the other notes are a v7 chord (minor-minor 7th) that moves quickly back to the ii7. The A-flat is emphasized to prepare for the G#, the enharmonic reinterpretation allowing the sliding pivot down to E major when the theme is restated in that key(!)



Mahlerian said:


> You can cut all of this out to try to prove that it's really common practice, but does any of this have any justification in traditional voice leading or harmonic procedure? It's this kind of thing which gives Prokofiev's music its specific character.


Nothing needs to be cut out! It is all accounted for in tonal functional terms as is. Now I am not promising this will work for the whole movement because I haven't completely analyzed it. But I think my point is clear: The traditional underpinnings of Prokofiev's music aren't easy to untangle. But the assertion that he made a complete break from traditional tonality is not tenable for a large portion of his music.

Edit: Oops. I wrote i7 above when I should have written v7. I fixed it.


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## Mahlerian

EdwardBast said:


> It's resolution is to the dominant! The alternation serves the same purpose as a move between V/V and V would at a similar juncture in Mozart. In this case, however, the resolutions are just stepwise motions (Ab to the implied A in the dominant chord, B and D to C). Because the dominant is now functioning as tonic in the new key, the leading tone is unnecessary.


So voice leading doesn't matter to you here? The fact that the resolution is implied rather than stated doesn't matter?

I'd say both of those things are important in distinguishing common practice.



EdwardBast said:


> B-flat minor scale makes perfect sense over ii7. The B-flat in the horn is a tonic pedal, the other notes are a i7 chord (a minor-minor 7th) that moves quickly back to the ii7. The A-flat is emphasized to prepare for the G#, the enharmonic reinterpretation allowing the sliding pivot down to E major when the theme is restated in that key(!)


I didn't say it didn't make sense, I said it wasn't something that fits within common practice dissonance treatment. The B-flat is not in fact a pedal, as it was not stated before the new harmony and appears after B-flat has already been left behind.



EdwardBast said:


> Nothing needs to be cut out! It is all accounted for in tonal functional terms as is. Now I am not promising this will work for the whole movement because I haven't completely analyzed it. But I think my point is clear: The traditional underpinnings of Prokofiev's music aren't easy to untangle. But the assertion that he made a complete break from traditional tonality is not tenable for a large portion of his music.


I never said he made a complete break from traditional tonality. I said that his music is not common practice by any stretch of the imagination and therefore cannot be cited in a list of composers who continued to use common practice tonality as before. The fact that you need to untangle the dissonances to find the traditional core is proof of that.

Schoenberg never made a complete break from traditional patterns either, and similar analyses of his works have been written.


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## EdwardBast

isorhythm said:


> "Of one sort or another" is the key phrase - even the first rank composers who continued to write tonal music no longer followed a common tonal practice. For the most part, their music didn't give rise to new common practices or even really identifiable schools.


Don't know how I missed this. This is simply incorrect. The Russians in the 20thc form a coherent school and evolving tradition with a shared harmonic vocabulary and shared formal/narrative traditions. Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Miaskovsky, Weinberg, and probably numerous others. In addition, they all came through the same conservatory system, and knew the same theorists and critics and teachers. Some hints about the nature of the shared vocabulary can be found just above in this thread.

Edit: Oops. I did answer this before; but afterward apparently I got worked up and just gratuitously did it again. Sorry!


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## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> So voice leading doesn't matter to you here? The fact that the resolution is implied rather than stated doesn't matter?
> 
> I'd say both of those things are important in distinguishing common practice.


There is nothing particularly wrong with the voice leading. Displacements of resolutions by octaves are not at all unusual in orchestral music … or indeed any kind, except maybe Bach chorales. Leaving out the third in the dominant? Absolutely trivial.

No one is claiming that Prokofiev's music is identical to earlier common practice tonality. What I am claiming is far more radical: That common practice tonal music continued without break throughout most of the 20thc; Schoenberg and his German contemporaries, to the extent they thought traditional tonal grammar was exhausted, were simply wrong and proved so by practitioners of the continuing tradition. The historical view you are promulgating is Germano-centrically warped. Tonality wasn't exhausted, a few German's were exhausted in their use of it. There was a gradual and unbroken incremental process in the evolution of common practice tonality in the Russian School (Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Myaskovsky, Weinberg, even Stravinsky less centrally) with its branch off of the Germanic trunk taking place at the nexus of Wagner, Liszt, Rimsky-Korsakoff and Mussorgsky in the late 19thc. The essence of this language has been most clearly captured in recent neo-Riemannian theory. (See Richard Cone's "Maximally Smooth Cycles, Hexatonic Systems, and the Analysis of Late-Romantic Triadic Progressions," Music Analysis 15 (1996), 9-40, and Brian Hyer, "Reimag(in)ing Riemann," Journal of Music Theory 29 (2006) 101-38.) These theorists trace a language based on altered mediant and submediant relationships to its roots in the four nexus composers listed above, among others. Among the consequences of these 3rd relationships are pervasively symmetrical divisions of the octave which gave birth to whole tone, octatonic, and hexatonic (Bartok) scales. (See the work of Van den Toorn and Antokoletz on their use by Stravinsky and Bartok respectively.) The Russians systematically followed up these leads and all of the principles of altered third relationships. *The result of this work is 20thc common practice tonality*, which is just as organically connected to the tradition as the language of Brahms and Wagner was in its day.



Mahlerian said:


> I didn't say it didn't make sense, I said it wasn't something that fits within common practice dissonance treatment. The B-flat is not in fact a pedal, as it was not stated before the new harmony and appears after B-flat has already been left behind.


It is perfectly in tune with common practice dissonance treatment - the notes of the scale are, obviously, either chord tones or passing tones. Of course it is a pedal. It is a chord tone, the 7th in the ii7 chord, it persists through the v7 and is continued in the subsequent ii7.



Mahlerian said:


> I never said he made a complete break from traditional tonality. I said that his music is not common practice by any stretch of the imagination and therefore cannot be cited in a list of composers who continued to use common practice tonality as before. The fact that you need to untangle the dissonances to find the traditional core is proof of that.


This is simply wrong. Prokofiev is a central figure of 20thc common-practice tonality. That is how common-practice music looks in the 20thc. (One of the ways.) See above.

Edit: I didn't pay attention to your use of "before" in this last quotation: No one at any point in the history of common practice tonality ever did it as the generation before did. Why should the composers I mentioned be an exception?


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## isorhythm

Edward,

You obviously know far more about music than I do. But I have to say, you're using ordinary English words in ways that I don't understand here. Surely "common practice" means a practice that is held in common, no? What's the common practice of Debussy, Hindemith and Prokofiev, other than being in some sense tonal?

This all started because I made what I thought was a really narrow and almost trivial point - that starting in the early 20th century, the common tonal practice dissolved, and composers who hungered for a new common practice were drawn to 12-tone. Was a new common practice actually _necessary_ for music, as some people claimed? No! But that's never what I said. I was only positing one possible reason for the popularity of 12-tone composition.


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## Mahlerian

I don't see the point of cutting Schoenberg and his followers out of a discussion on common practice in the 20th century. They did extend traditional methods of harmonic organization just as everyone else was doing, and the composers you're touting as having rejected their claims that traditional harmony was dead didn't use traditional harmony any more than they did.

If you think Bartok, Russian Period/Neoclassical Stravinsky, and Shostakovich didn't learn from Schoenberg, you really are blinded by bias.


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## isorhythm

Mahlerian said:


> They did extend traditional methods of harmonic organization just as everyone else was doing, and the composers you're touting as having rejected their claims that traditional harmony was dead didn't use traditional harmony any more than they did.


I have to admit I still don't understand this position. Either you can do a meaningful Roman numeral analysis of something or you can't....


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## Mahlerian

isorhythm said:


> I have to admit I still don't understand this position. Either you can do a meaningful Roman numeral analysis of something or you can't....


I don't think that traditional harmony, let alone extensions thereof, can be limited entirely to those things which one can analyze with Roman numerals. There are passages or chords that are ambiguous in function/tonal perspective everywhere in the Late Romantic era, and Roman numerals, even where they can be assigned, fail to do much good in the case of some pieces by contemporaries such as Debussy and Stravinsky, whom you cited as more or less tonal, but whom I hear as less immediately connected to tonal harmony than late Schoenberg.

Ethan Haimo has argued that Schoenberg's true break with tradition was not in the changes he made to harmony (which were incremental), but rather in getting away from clear motivic development, as in the third piece of op. 11, the fifth of op. 16, or Erwartung, and this is something to which he returned immediately afterwards, although this brief burst of unfettered creativity left its mark on his subsequent music as well.


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## EdwardBast

isorhythm said:


> Edward,
> 
> You obviously know far more about music than I do. But I have to say, you're using ordinary English words in ways that I don't understand here. Surely "common practice" means a practice that is held in common, no? What's the common practice of Debussy, Hindemith and Prokofiev, other than being in some sense tonal?
> 
> This all started because I made what I thought was a really narrow and almost trivial point - that starting in the early 20th century, the common tonal practice dissolved, and composers who hungered for a new common practice were drawn to 12-tone. Was a new common practice actually _necessary_ for music, as some people claimed? No! But that's never what I said. I was only positing one possible reason for the popularity of 12-tone composition.


I think the reason you posed for the popularity of 12-tone composition makes good sense, especially for those who believed tonality was played out. And, of course, musical language did splinter significantly around the turn of the 20thc. But I believe those who continued to compose tonal, triadically based music were a significant force with enough shared language to justify seeing them as a mainstream organic continuation of common practice harmony. In addition to nearly all of the major Russians, Strauss, especially the Strauss of Elektra and Salome (and even Rosenkavalier) early Stravinsky and some Bartok and Janacek fit the bill. I'm not sure if Hindemith is in the fold because I just don't know enough of his music intimately. And I haven't looked closely enough at Sibelius with an analytical eye. Nevertheless, I believe the widely held opinion that "common tonal practice dissolved" in the early twentieth century is an untenable myth, and a self-serving one for those who saw no path forward within its bounds. On the other hand, whether enough of a critical mass survived to justify the term common practice as I have used it is certainly open to question. It is possible I overreached. It is also possible that as I analyze more music with these issues in mind, I might find the commonalities broader than I expected. More research is needed …


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## millionrainbows

isorhythm; said:


> I have to admit I still don't understand this position. Either you can do a meaningful Roman numeral analysis of something or you can't....


But this assumes that a sense of tonality is dependent upon "function" which is a structural feature of CP Tonality, not the subjective harmonic experience of our ears, which tells us the degree of tone-centricity as we experience it.



Mahlerian said:


> I don't think that traditional harmony, let alone extensions thereof, can be limited entirely to those things which one can analyze with Roman numerals. There are passages or chords that are ambiguous in function/tonal perspective everywhere in the Late Romantic era, and Roman numerals, even where they can be assigned, fail to do much good in the case of some pieces by contemporaries such as Debussy and Stravinsky, whom you cited as more or less tonal, but whom I hear as less immediately connected to tonal harmony than late Schoenberg.


I also hear Debussy as more tonal than Schoenberg, but it is good to hear Mahlerian say that tonality is not limited to structural practices of CP Tonality, just as tonality is not limited to any other structural system, even 12-tone.

Perhaps the reason is that Debussy was more harmonically oriented in his music, and Schoenberg was more linear and contrapuntal.


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## ArtMusic

EdwardBast said:


> This is simply wrong. Prokofiev is a central figure of 20thc common-practice tonality. That is how common-practice music looks in the 20thc. (One of the ways.) See above.
> 
> Edit: I didn't pay attention to your use of "before" in this last quotation: No one at any point in the history of common practice tonality ever did it as the generation before did. Why should the composers I mentioned be an exception?


I agree entirely. Prokofiev was very a tonal composer in a 20th century setting. That was what makes him still popular today.


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## Flamme

Stirling said:


> It's clear that the OP wants to fight... So I will listen to music instead.


KenOc? No way...He is one of most peaceful contributors!


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## isorhythm

ArtMusic said:


> I agree entirely. Prokofiev was very a tonal composer in a 20th century setting. That was what makes him still popular today.


No he's still popular because his music is good.


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## EdwardBast

Mahlerian said:


> If you think Bartok, Russian Period/Neoclassical Stravinsky, and Shostakovich didn't learn from Schoenberg, you really are blinded by bias.


I don't hear any significant Schoenberg influence in Shostakovich. One would have to sort through the more obvious influences of Mussorgsky, Mahler, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Stravinsky, the whole Russian school, and even Beethoven, first, I think. Even his twelve-tone tending work doesn't sound like Schoenberg. Bartok? Hmm. His emphasis on symmetrical divisions of the octave in both scale material and harmonic progression indicates he was to some extent mining the same veins as the Russians and, rhythmically speaking, his closer alignment with them is obvious as well. As for his emphasis on symmetry in the treatment of themes, motives, and larger structures: this is really his own thing and related to his interest in symmetrical scales and harmonic language. Guess you will have to explain what influences you are talking about.


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## Mahlerian

EdwardBast said:


> I don't hear any significant Schoenberg influence in Shostakovich. One would have to sort through the more obvious influences of Mussorgsky, Mahler, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Stravinsky, the whole Russian school, and even Beethoven, first, I think. Even his twelve-tone tending work doesn't sound like Schoenberg. Bartok? Hmm. His emphasis on symmetrical divisions of the octave in both scale material and harmonic progression indicates he was to some extent mining the same veins as the Russians and, rhythmically speaking, his closer alignment with them is obvious as well. As for his emphasis on symmetry in the treatment of themes, motives, and larger structures: this is really his own thing and related to his interest in symmetrical scales and harmonic language. Guess you will have to explain what influences you are talking about.


Schoenberg was not especially interested in symmetry, at least not any more than the general interest of composers of his time, and not nearly as much as Webern or Berg were.

As for Shostakovich, he tells us himself in the 1930s that Schoenberg is up there with Hindemith, Stravinsky, Krenek, and Berg as one of his favorite composers. The work of this period that most clearly reveals that influence is the Five Fragments for Orchestra, which is itself something of a study for the Fourth Symphony (which does sound closer to Hindemith often). His increased clarity of orchestration starting around this time owes as much to Schoenberg as Mahler (whose orchestration, while frequently soloistic, also frequently uses lush Straussian sonorities), and certainly more than Stravinsky (whose orchestration is based more on winds than the string-focused Schoenberg or Shostakovich). One of the climaxes in the Eighth Symphony seems ripped out of Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces.

Bartok's style was pretty fully formed before he became aware of Schoenberg, but the later string quartets, at the least, display Berg's influence. You are mistaken to attribute his rhythm to an interest in Russian music; his earliest influences were much the same as Schoenberg's: Brahms and Strauss. His characteristic rhythmic impulse came after his study of folk music, and before any awareness of Stravinsky, for example.


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## science

Nereffid said:


> I examined the voting patterns in one of my a la carte polls - I won't say which one, to protect the innocent (so to speak). But anyway there were a couple of works by mid-20th-century composers in there that might be classed as "progressive" and "populist", respectively. I found that roughly half of the people who liked the progressive's work also liked the populist's work, and vice versa. This indicates that inclusivity vs exclusivity may not be related to modernism.
> But then an interesting pattern struck me: the people who liked both composers tended to be posters who get involved in arguments such as the one going on in this thread!
> So in terms of TC's regular defenders of modernism, I'd say yes, they are an inclusive bunch. But there's also a (usually) silent majority (or substantial minority, at any rate) who tend to stay in one camp.


Wow, that is good work!


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## Phil loves classical

Mahlerian said:


> I don't think that traditional harmony, let alone extensions thereof, can be limited entirely to those things which one can analyze with Roman numerals. There are passages or chords that are ambiguous in function/tonal perspective everywhere in the Late Romantic era, and Roman numerals, even where they can be assigned, fail to do much good in the case of some pieces by contemporaries such as *Debussy and Stravinsky, whom you cited as more or less tonal, but whom I hear as less immediately connected to tonal harmony than late Schoenberg.*
> 
> Ethan Haimo has argued that *Schoenberg's true break with tradition was not in the changes he made to harmony (which were incremental), but rather in getting away from clear motivic development,* as in the third piece of op. 11, the fifth of op. 16, or Erwartung, and this is something to which he returned immediately afterwards, although this brief burst of unfettered creativity left its mark on his subsequent music as well.


Wow, these are some claims...


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## EdwardBast

Phil loves classical said:


> Wow, these are some claims...


Mahlerian no longer posts on this forum, so no answer is likely to be forthcoming.


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## Larkenfield

"Debussy and Stravinsky... I hear as less immediately connected to tonal harmony than late Schoenberg."

This particular gentleman has been making statements like this for years on a number of different forums, including the now defunct Amazon classical music forum. He has also flatly stated that he doesn't hear anything as atonal, which is not helpful to the average listener who is not a musician and can hear an obvious difference between Debussy and late Schoenberg, and created endless conjecture and confusion all over the map with people who are trying to understand traditional tonality and the radical departure that happened with Schoenberg. Supposedly it was all just a gradual change with no revolutionary and sudden break from the past-and that's simply not true or the public still wouldn't be upset about the radical break that undoubtedly took place with Pierrot Lunaire and other works.

Ultimately, the 12-tone system represented the radical breakdown of tonal centers in the same way that cubism represented the radical breakdown of forms. But it's simply impossible to convince certain people of this obvious fact of what even the average non-technical listener can obviously hear and see took place. Nevertheless, Schoenberg said something very true about his system-that it was about expressing the unconscious-and that it did. It was absolutely necessary as a new vocabulary because the 19th-century vocabulary seemed unable to do so during the time when Freud and the exploration of the unconscious and the abnormal were on the ascent. It could also represent beauty as well as in an abstract painting, especially in some of Webern's incredibly delicate and subtle works. In the meantime, the subject of tonality or the lack of it has become a complete mess with explanations by those who supposedly don't hear anything as atonality in the first place. Thanks a'bunch.


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## janxharris

Larkenfield said:


> "Debussy and Stravinsky... I hear as less immediately connected to tonal harmony than late Schoenberg."
> 
> This particular gentleman has been making statements like this for years on a number of different forums, including the now defunct Amazon classical music forum. He has also flatly stated that he doesn't hear anything as atonal, which is not helpful to the average listener who is not a musician and can hear an obvious difference between Debussy and late Schoenberg, and created endless conjecture and confusion all over the map with people who are trying to understand traditional tonality and the radical departure that happened with Schoenberg. Supposedly it was all just a gradual change with no revolutionary and sudden break from the past-and that's simply not true or the public still wouldn't be upset about the radical break that undoubtedly took place with Pierrot Lunaire and other works.
> 
> Ultimately, the 12-tone system represented the radical breakdown of tonal centers in the same way that cubism represented the radical breakdown of forms. But it's simply impossible to convince certain people of this obvious fact of what even the average non-technical listener can obviously hear and see took place. Nevertheless, Schoenberg said something very true about his system-that it was about expressing the unconscious-and that it did. It was absolutely necessary as a new vocabulary because the 19th-century vocabulary seemed unable to do so during the time when Freud and the exploration of the unconscious and the abnormal were on the ascent. It could also represent beauty as well as in an abstract painting, especially in some of Webern's incredibly delicate and subtle works. In the meantime, the subject of tonality or the lack of it has become a complete mess with explanations by those who supposedly don't hear anything as atonality in the first place. Thanks a'bunch.


I'm unclear as to why you take offence. It's just an opinion isn't it?

Do you hear a breakdown of tonality in this section of Sibelius's 4th symphony (4th movement)?


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## janxharris

KenOC said:


> Why invent a whole new set of rules for composing music? What problems does it solve?
> 
> Certainly it is not much liked. It is next to never heard on the radio because people will change the station. It is next to never encountered in the concert hall because people won't buy tickets. In fact, probably the most popular (if that's the word) 12-tone piece, Berg's Violin Concerto, was programmed exactly twice by major US orchestras in the 2014-2015 season.
> 
> So, I ask again...what's the point?


You do accept that even without the invention of the 12-tone technique, tonality would have continued to break down as was increasingly the case with the late Romantics?


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## eugeneonagain

Larkenfield said:


> "Debussy and Stravinsky... I hear as less immediately connected to tonal harmony than late Schoenberg."
> 
> This particular gentleman has been making statements like this for years on a number of different forums, including the now defunct Amazon classical music forum. He has also flatly stated that he doesn't hear anything as atonal, which is not helpful to the average listener who is not a musician and can hear an obvious difference between Debussy and late Schoenberg..


I don't follow the travails of super-members, so I've never seen these posts, but there is some truth in what he is saying. Schoenberg's break is practical and true to his conception of artistic honesty, but he is almost crying to get back to tonality. Debussy, on the other hand, was aching to break out of the tonal hierarchies. You can hear it in his preludes.

Webern wasn't strict in his use of serial composition, so there are 'tonal moments'. I think this all comes down to the fact that 12-tone approaches and the previous tonal system have met somewhere in the middle.

I have a particular problem with self-appointed 'new art' gurus who parade themselves on forums as being unusually resistant to the difficulties and shocks of changes in art. They tend to make outlandish claims when forging their reputation as someone who 'gets it' all.


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## Phil loves classical

janxharris said:


> I'm unclear as to why you take offence. It's just an opinion isn't it?
> 
> Do you hear a breakdown of tonality in this section of Sibelius's 4th symphony (4th movement)?


I don't hear that as a breakdown of tonality, but that it became weaker by going to more distant chords from the tonal center before returning.


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## janxharris

Phil loves classical said:


> I don't hear that as a breakdown of tonality, but that it became weaker by going to more distant chords from the tonal center before returning.


Whether it is absolute or just a degree of breakdown is, perhaps, not important. Surely, such moments establish a link to the atonal music that followed?


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## Guest

Larkenfield said:


> He has also flatly stated that he doesn't hear anything as atonal, which is not helpful


It doesn't have to be helpful. He hears what he hears, and there's an end to it. My take on what he said was that since all the music under discussion (especially Schoenberg) is comprised of tones, how can anything be described as 'atonal'. It may have been a purist approach, but it wasn't difficult to understand. However, others would repeat the point that to many ears, Pierrot Lunaire did sound radically different, even ugly, when compared with CP tonality.

But, so what? He wasn't telling us what we must hear, but he did want us to reconsider what we thought about what we hear.



Larkenfield said:


> Supposedly *it *was all just a gradual change with no revolutionary and sudden break from the past-and that's simply not true or the public still wouldn't be upset about the radical break that undoubtedly took place with Pierrot Lunaire and other works.


"It"...? If Schoenberg represented the sole line of musical development and that everyone who followed afterwards had no choice but to move in the same direction, you might be right. If your 'it' refers explicitly to 12-tone (and not just 'atonality' or 'the progress of music') you could argue that it did represent a significant break from past practice.

But since Schoenberg was not the only composer busy at the time, and not all composers were pushing at musical boundaries, and 12-tone was not the only compositional method moving forward during the 20th C, it seems clear to me that the overall changes _were _gradual: Schoenberg's "break with the past" was not everyone else's.


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## Phil loves classical

eugeneonagain said:


> I don't follow the travails of super-members, so I've never seen these posts, but there is some truth in what he is saying. Schoenberg's break is practical and true to his conception of artistic honesty, but he is almost crying to get back to tonality. Debussy, on the other hand, was aching to break out of the tonal hierarchies. You can hear it in his preludes.
> 
> Webern wasn't strict in his use of serial composition, so there are 'tonal moments'. I think this all comes down to the fact that 12-tone approaches and the previous tonal system have met somewhere in the middle.
> 
> I have a particular problem with self-appointed 'new art' gurus who parade themselves on forums as being unusually resistant to the difficulties and shocks of changes in art. They tend to make outlandish claims when forging their reputation as someone who 'gets it' all.


If Schoenberg is more connected to tonal harmony than Debussy or Stravinsky, then he failed big time in doing what he tried to do with the 12-tone technique. Debussy did stretch tonality by constantly modulating, where the tonal center was ambiguous or shifting (Bernstein did a great lecture on Prelude of an Afternoon...), but more or less followed a more tonal context, as did Stravinsky. Their music contained a lot of harmonic flow and context, much more than later Schoenberg, who most think succeeded in dissolving the context, through its organization. I wouldn't doubt you can hear some tonal moments now and then, as Schoenberg broke his own rules, and more familiar interval combinations may creep up. Scriabin and Bartok also experimented with different ways of organizing tones that involved all 12, but none were as set on destroying tonality as Schoenberg.

To state that those other composers named more less connected to tonal harmony than Schoenberg is like rejecting accepted musical principles and harmonic hierarchies to me. But maybe those principles are not that airtight, and it could still be heard that way, I wonder.


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## MarkW

For years I mis-read it as "twelve-ton" music and thought it had something to do with Mack trucks.


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## eugeneonagain

Phil loves classical said:


> If Schoenberg is more connected to tonal harmony than Debussy or Stravinsky, then he failed big time in doing what he tried to do with the 12-tone technique. Debussy did stretch tonality by constantly modulating, where the tonal center was ambiguous or shifting (Bernstein did a great lecture on Prelude of an Afternoon...), but more or less followed a more tonal context, as did Stravinsky. Their music contained a lot of harmonic flow and context, much more than later Schoenberg, who most think succeeded in dissolving the context, through its organization. I wouldn't doubt you can hear some tonal moments now and then, as Schoenberg broke his own rules, and more familiar interval combinations may creep up. Scriabin and Bartok also experimented with different ways of organizing tones that involved all 12, but none were as set on destroying tonality as Schoenberg.
> 
> To state that those other composers named more less connected to tonal harmony than Schoenberg is like rejecting accepted musical principles and harmonic hierarchies to me. But maybe those principles are not that airtight, and it could still be heard that way, I wonder.


Ah, but I never said Schoenberg's actual musical results were 'more connected with tonal harmony' than Debussy and Stravinsky. I was talking about Debussy wanting to break out of it - clearly why he favoured the whole-tone scale - and is quoted as saying it (standard tonality) should be dismantled. But Debussy had no other system in which to proceed. Schoenberg was clearly torn between his late romantic sensibilities and his vision as a modern artist true to the epoch around him.

I did not say that I was in agreement with the conclusions from Mahlerian's superhuman sense of hearing.


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## DaveM

MacLeod said:


> It doesn't have to be helpful. He hears what he hears, and there's an end to it. My take on what he said was that since all the music under discussion (especially Schoenberg) is comprised of tones, how can anything be described as 'atonal'. It may have been a purist approach, but it wasn't difficult to understand...


Those endless discussions with the person in question went round and round largely because canards were introduced such as the alleged meaningless of the term 'atonal'. For me the frustration was that someone seemed to be trying to convince me that there was no such thing as atonal when my ears and brain were crying out that there was.


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## Bluecrab

DaveM said:


> Those endless discussions with the person in question went round and round largely because canards were introduced such as the alleged meaningless of the term 'atonal'. For me the frustration was that someone seemed to be trying to convince me that there was no such thing as atonal when my ears and brain were crying out that there was.


Don't worry, your ears and brain are fine. There definitely is such a thing as atonal music.


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