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From: rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.music,net.music.classical
Subject: Re: Misconceptions regarding atonality (2 of 2)
Message-ID: <756@pyuxn.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 18-Jun-84 14:58:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxn.756
Posted: Mon Jun 18 14:58:47 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Jun-84 09:00:48 EDT
References: <3852@tekecs.UUCP> <755@pyuxn.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway N.J.
Lines: 54
Keywords: Schoenberg, tone row, aleatory harmonic language, obvious tonalities

> Anyone who thinks 12-tone composers are unconcerned about harmonic motion,
> or try to avoid it, knows damn little about 12-tone composition.
> One attempts to avoid obvious tonal progressions, but that is only for 
> the same reason that one doesn't try to write like Beethoven - it would
> be an archaicism (is that a word?) that would only distract the listener
> from more important musical bits and pieces.

12-tone composition specifically requires certain composing behaviors (tone
rows, et al) because it is attempting to avoid what you refer to as "obvious
tonal progressions" (ones we have all already heard, like I-IV-V-I).  While
the 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!!  So, let's just pretend we can avoid
it from the start!!  Schoenberg's methodologies are a deliberate attempt to
compose outside of understood harmony in an effort to "avoid the obvious" in
tonal harmony (a goal I concur with).  Effectively, he predates Cage's aleatory
styles; in effect, Schoenberg is saying "I can no longer be satisfied with
composing in the tonal harmonic system, since there are no more original
tonal combinations (or tonal music) to be thought of.  Therefore, I will
seek a new harmonic language through specifically going out of my way to
avoid standard tonality."  It is akin to, while traveling, avoiding not only
the well-trodden roads but one's very sense of direction in trying to get to
a destination.  If, perchance, one should actually make progress, it would
surely be an original way of doing things, but it would come very rarely.

> Remember, historically, chromaticism did lead to "atonality". You can
> theorize all you want, but those theories (unsterbliche oder nicht) are going
> to have to account for that.

Now, there's a post hoc ergo propter hoc if ever I saw one. :-) Other composers
(Scriabin, Ives, plus those I've already mentioned) continued composing while
blazing new trails along the tonalist path. [WHAT AN OBSCURE METAPHOR! -ED.]
Somehow, amidst all the innovativeness that existed, Schoenberg's ideals
became the status quo amongst musical academia (perhaps because they themselves
had run out of creative gas?).  Again, others have used what Schoenberg
proscribed and came up with new harmonic ideas (Berg, Webern).  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.  (Just a wild speculation...)

If we take such aleatory ideas to their logical conclusion, one reaches the
compositional ideology of someone like John Cage, where specifically avoiding
intentional harmonic results is not enough, and avoiding ANY intentional
interference with the musical composition/performance process is the goal.
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.
-- 
This unit humbly and deeply apologizes for having and expressing opinions.
This will not occur again.  (BEEP)		Rich Rosen   pyuxn!rlr