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From: rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.music,net.music.classical
Subject: Re: Rosen on atonality, also Skriabin/musical academia/etc. (long)
Message-ID: <802@pyuxn.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 28-Jun-84 20:04:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxn.802
Posted: Thu Jun 28 20:04:07 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 30-Jun-84 04:17:48 EDT
References: <3876@tekecs.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway N.J.
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>>                             Even as the tonal centers "changed more
>> quickly" so that (as you put it) even I could not make any tonal sense out
>> of the piece, each moment still had a tonal sense about it.  It was the
>> overall tonal sense, the sense of "key", the requirement of a tonal order
>> called a "key" to imbue an entire piece, that was obliterated. [ROSEN]

> In other words, such a piece would be called "atonal" - even though harmonic
> motion was an important part of it. [WINSLOW]

The piece as a whole would have no "key", its individual moments would be
quite tonal.

>> While innovators like Debussy and Stravinsky (et al) were looking
>> towards NOT SO OBVIOUS (i.e., unheard of) *tonal* combinations and motions,
>> Schoenberg jumped to the same conclusion that Jeff made earlier:  that if
>> these chromatic harmonic motions with "fleeting" tonal centers were carried
>> to its logical conclusion, there would be no tonality!! 

> I can see Rich about the turn of the century - "While X, Y, and Z were making
> truly innovative advances in horse-drawn buggies, some wacko jumped to the
> conclusion that a gasoline engine just might achieve the same end in a more
> practical way." Not to downplay Debussy and Stravinsky, whose music I deeply
> admire, but to deny that Schoenberg was an innovator (after all, he made up
> a whole new sound of music) is to let one's prejudices get in the way of
> common sense.

Not denying Schoenberg's being "innovative", just questioning his path as
being an "inevitable outcome of chromaticism" and pointing out that there
were other alternatives.  Cute analogy, but a closer analogy might involve
people building roads closer and closer to the edge of a cliff.  Arnie,
thinking that advanced cantilevering techniques have reached their peak,
builds a road that leads right off of the cliff, since that's the inevitable
outcome...  A better analogy might involve multiprogramming.  Machines were
swapping processes in and out so fast you couldn't tell who was running at any
given time, so, while others were working to improve the efficiency of such a
system, Arnold the programmer designs a system where no process is ever
actually running.

>> Perhaps the reason that Schoenberg is still only widely accepted
>> as a musicological phenomenon (while his pupils have made strides into some
>> public acceptance) is because Schoenberg sought to avoid tonality, while
>> *they* sought new harmonic ideas from Schoenberg's system. 

> Hogwash. Webern's music avoids tonality far more uncompromisingly than S.'s
> does. And it is his ideals that have become the status quo, not Schoenberg's.

Webern avoided "Western" tonality, but despite the very different sound of
his music, it has always sounded to me like there was a tonality behind it,
albeit a non-Western and perhaps harsh one.  Are you familiar with the
concept of klangfarbenmelodie?

>> Both systems deny some very important facets that pertain to music:  that
>> it is a world of sound created by a human composer (where do I-IV-V-I
>> cadences occur in nature??), and that it is the sound that results, and how
>> it is heard by the listener, that is what ultimately matters.

> Just how does avoiding tonality deny that "it is the sound that results that
> matters"? Earth calling Rich, Earth calling Rich...

The aleatory nature of the system (I was referring, in part, to Cage) and
the notion of process in composing being more important than result were the
issues, not the avoidance of tonality.  (I've had a well-established and
working communications link with earth for some time now.  What about you,
Jeff? :-)

> All in all, Rich, I think you proved my point for me. Increasing chromaticism
> *did* lead to atonality, through the insight and reasoning of one Arnold
> Schoenberg. You said it yourself. Now, I will never say that it is the *only*
> possible result, as some fanatics do, just that it is a *reasonable* result.

Absolute agreement.  My only qualms about dodecaphony involve the notion that
it was inevitable.  (There, more absolute agreement!  What is happening to the
fabric of space-time...)

> Submitted regardless of your approval,
> (sorry, I couldn't resist)

Am I always going to have to provide annotated versions of my signature lines?
[The price of being eclectic is that no one understands anything you're
talking about.]
-- 
"So, it was all a dream!" --Mr. Pither
"No, dear, this is the dream; you're still in the cell." --his mother
				Rich Rosen    pyuxn!rlr