Atonal Music Sucks

Sympathy for the Serialists

Good gravy. This is going to take a while. Bear with me, gentle readers!

Sympathy for the Serialists

You probably hate serialism. Am I right?

It’s probably a truism to say that there are only two kinds of music: good and bad,

A truism. Hmm. Art appreciation is not subjective? Oh, you’re beholden to the canon. I bet you really, really like music written in the 18^th-19^th century German tradition. Me too! But I also allow for other music. To be, you know, good or bad.

but now that tonality is back in vogue

It is!?

and the serialists are on the retreat,

They are!?

it may be a good time to step back and take stock.

It may!?

My principal motivation has been the audition of a number of new releases and reissues by some mediocre-to-truly-miserable 20th century tonal composers,

You…found some bad tonal composers? Awesome. There are tons. (Now who’s being subjective?! Hint: It’s me! Aesthetics are subjective. See?) I totally want to hear more about these composers.

an experience which has driven home just how desperate the situation must have seemed at the turn of the last century if you happened to be working within the German classical tradition.

Wait, what? There was lots of…bad tonal music written because…the situation was desperate…because those atonal freaks were taking over? Also, and not for nothing: the German classical tradition, by the turn-of-the-century, was only one of many things happening in the world of music. Right? The Javanese gamelan orchestra came to Paris in the 1889 World’s Fair, where Debussy was in attendance. See? German classical tradition is one of many, many musical things that were happening. 100 years ago. And even now! It is (while awesome) not the best, or most important, or anything. At all!

It has also become clear just how inadequate traditional music history is in describing (never mind explaining) exactly what was going on at the time.

You are now going to correct this inadequacy once and for all. I can’t fucking wait.

First of all, there is the obvious and somewhat artificial distinction between “tonal” and “atonal” music.

I…can’t even begin. You are wrong. Please bear with me, as this is going to get technical for a minute. Well, a paragraph.

“Tonal” music takes one primary tone (the “tonic”) as the reference point for an entire piece. The harmony and melody all relate to this tone as primary. All of the other tones, or pitches, have specific harmonic or melodic functions in relation to the primary tone. The pitch one half-step below the tonic (the “leading tone”) has a strong tendency to “lead” to the tonic tone. Similarly, the chord built on the fifth tone above the tonic (“V”) also tends strongly to lead to that important structural note. Tonality is by nature a heirarchal system where one note is priveliged above the others, and their functions are subservient to, and predicated on, it.

“Atonal” music eschews this principle of heirarchy. The idea of one note being primary is cast away; this leads to new ideas about melody and harmony. The origins and history of this idea are beyond the scope of this…whatever this is. It is basically the opposite of what I wrote above this just now. I am already tired.

It is artificial because when most people think of music they don’t classify it on this basis at all.

They don’t?

What most of us really mean by “tonal” is “melodic,” which is a different matter entirely, although tonality certainly has its role to play.

This is false. Atonal music is often, if not mostly, highly melodic. The melodies are not conventional, but they are still melodies! The strategy of composition and/or function of pitches is very different. But melody is still a primary concern for atonal music.

The reason for the emphasis on music’s harmonic aspect is simple: it is the quality most easily analyzed and discussed by music theorists.

As a music theorist, I have to say that you are an idiot. There are numerable theories dealing with melody. Prioritizing harmony is the domain of a particular branch of theory. Or branches. Still, your unfounded assertion is…unfounded.

To date, no one has ever been able to quantify the expressive qualities of melody,

This is not true. Or, at least, many have tried. Like this guy. Or this one.

but harmony can be addressed systematically in wholly technical terms.

It can, yes, sort of. But that fails to address any other aspect of music.

Still, the fact is, there’s plenty of atonal music that is quite melodic, indeed ravishingly so (think: Berg).

I…yes! You are correct. Why are you contradicting yourself? Stop contradicting yourself!

All of the generally acknowledged great composers were, in some form or another, melodists, able to express in just a few bars of tune those personal qualities found nowhere else.

“Generally acknowledged” = the canon canon canon canon canon. Also, Beethoven is often derided for his melodies. (Not by me.) We’re back to your “two kinds of music, good and bad” thing. Which sucks.

Rather than seeing 19th century music history as a gradually evolving “crisis of tonality,”

It was. Tonality became more and more saddled with its own weight as composers experimented with stretching its boundries. The late Romantics (Mahler, Bruckner, Strauss, et al.) took tonality to its limits, beyond which was visible atonality. As early as Liszt (in his Bagatelle sans tonalité) composers saw the edges of the system breaking down. But you don’t think so, do you?

is seems more logical to view it as both composers and listeners did themselves: as an ongoing search for new types of melody.

The search for new types of melody? I would recommend atonality! Or, perhaps “world” music and/or folk influences, for starters. Or, you know, some kind of pioneer.

From this perspective, the situation in greater Germany looks all the more interesting, and becomes increasingly understandable.

The Germans couldn’t find any new melodies? Or new types of melodies?

By the end of the 19th century, German music had, melodically speaking, effectively written itself out. The works of Brahms and Wagner, each in their own way, demonstrate this quite clearly.

You are seriously going to argue that Wagner and Brahms (for fuck’s sake!) were bad melodists?

Wagner, whose early work reveals him to be at best a spotty melodist,

I guess so! Good luck with that.

avoided traditional instrumental music entirely and evolved a style that allowed him to construct his music dramas on a basis more congenial to his strengths: using brief, pregnant motives.

You…I…he was an opera composer. Melodies in opera are…different, than, say, the theme of a symphony’s first movement. Jesus!

Brahms faced a bigger problem, in that he worked in the large, abstract forms created by the great composers of the classical period, and the basis of these media was melody.

It was really harmony and form (not to promote your previous argument). Melody is, of course, important, but the structure of the “large, abstract forms” is harmony-driven. Also, Brahms wrote awesome fucking melodies.

Writing good original tunes was, as Brahms himself recognized, one of his greatest challenges. His recourse to Hungarian melodies, alongside other supplements to his propriety thematic material (such as his frequent acts of thematic homage to past masters), was a frank acknowledgment of the importance in finding distinctive--or at least appropriate--ideas with which to populate his musical structures.

I…Symphony No. 4, Op. 98. Intermezzi Op. 117. Horn Trio, Op. 40? Have you ever heard Brahms?

Outside of Germany, things were going swimmingly.

Imperialism was totally underrated. That, and the Nationalism that consumed Europe and lead to WWs I and II! Awesome.

The great nationalist composers such as Dvorák, Sibelius, and the Russian school were exploring a vast fund of melodic archetypes inspired by their native folk music.

Nationalism is outstanding! Fairly, these composers integrated their folk music into their compositions, which is fine. Or even great. But your larger point is:

In France, music in large abstract forms had never been a priority, and when it became one at the turn of the 20th century, it proved infinitely adaptable to the French approach of “borrow from wherever but call it French.” Melody never had it so good.

Fuck the French! But your larger point is:

Only in Germany did the aesthetics of nationalism result in a doctrine of musical purity that made it virtually impossible for native composers to absorb new influences, and renew their stock of musical materials.

They had no folk music? So they were forced to turn to…progressive techniques? Those bastards! Also. Are “folk music” influences really new? Aren’t “new influences” more like musical developments (atonality, serialism) than adopting folk tunes?

Composers that attempted to do so, like Mahler, already an outsider by birth and ethnicity, were either spurned, or like Richard Strauss found themselves avoiding abstract forms such as symphonies, concertos, and chamber music entirely.

Those poor, poor, early 20^th century Germans.

Enter Schoenberg and his crew.

What is this, fucking “Entourage”?

It’s worth remembering that the twelve-tone method was born as a rejection of free atonality, and has as its basis a new way of thinking about melody.

Yes! What is your fucking problem?

The most immediately appealing thing about it, aesthetically, is that it represents a closed system: as “pure” as any there is.

Yes! What?

From a strictly intellectual point of view, and ignoring the question of depth of musical expression,

Which you completely define using tonality. And/or the canon. Right?

it would seem to be ideally suited to the creation of the kind of large, abstract forms that had come to symbolize musical greatness, German style.

It’s not, really. The miniaturization of the early 12-tone works conincides with the rejection of the large, Romantic orchestral genre. The eschewing of the Romantic tonal doctorine, logically, coincided with the discarding of the huge, sweeping grandeur of Romantic forms. This seems very logical to me. Compare Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 with Webern’s Symphony, Op 21. The compression of expression matches the compression of scale.

At least, Schoenberg thought so. It has tremendous appeal on paper, which is how most third-rate composers conceive of music anyway. That the final result may sound awful is always a secondary consideration.

Some people actually like this music. Maybe not too many. But that doesn’t mean you get to put it in the “bad” category. Even inferring that Schoenberg is a “third-rate composer” will get you some profanity-laced barbs from me. To wit: You are a fucking ignoramus. You have never listened to Pierrot Lunaire. You dismiss atonal music out-of-hand. Wait, I missed a profanity! OK: Fuck!

More to the point, there is plenty of twelve-tone music that does not sound awful, in which the method can be used to create a personal, expressive, and even appealing melodic style (take Rautavaara, for instance).

Not-awful twelve-tone music! Hedging. Better, but back-handed.

The serial revolution also aided in the creation of music based on criteria other than melody, a difficult proposition in non-programmatic pieces, but one which a few composers have managed triumphantly (consider Dutilleux).

You are so fucking generous.

We also know this because we now find composers writing tonal music equally devoid of traditional melody, and the result as often as not simply sounds ridiculous, the musical equivalent of trying to communicate in a language devoid of nouns. At least the atonal stuff does not lead the ear into expecting something that it has no intention of delivering.

Crappy tonal music is caused by crappy atonal music, which is basically all of it. Canon!

At a time when many composers of that nationality despaired of the creating an individual melodic style that was also aesthetically “German,” the opportunity to write music on a different basis entirely must have been all but irresistible.

What the fuck does this sentence mean? Atonal composers basically…could not help themselves from doing what they did? What!?

It’s not their fault that the vast herd of worthless lemmings at the university level

Jesus fucking christ.

took advantage of what started as a purely local artistic solution, and turned it into a style that allowed them to be at once modern and resolutely unoriginal, not to mention impersonal. Even so, there’s a certain honesty in the pride that they took in their sterility.

Sterility.

More to the point, greatness transcends the technicalities of style. It's a quality that may have seemed in short supply during the recent "twelve-tone interruption," but this is largely an illusion. It's always been a precious commodity.

I think it’s awesome that you’re the arbiter of greatness of composing. Fortunately, I’m the arbiter of greatness in criticism! And you, sir, are not great. You’re the atonal critic, as it were. Although in my book that’s a compliment, in your book it clearly is not.

Not the least of the atonal revolution’s accomplishments was to remind us of this fact, particularly now, when once again we are tempted to award the accolade of “great” to music whose principal value lies in its being merely inoffensive.

You are wholly offensive. You do not deserve the accolade “great” because you fail to be inoffensive.

A Texasman in New York

I liked this review pretty well. The writer wrote well. However, the anti-modernist bias continues to drip bile that leaves nasty stains on even the best-intentioned accounts of early modern music.

MET Chamber Ensemble engagingly offbeat

NEW YORK – Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and Alban Berg were among the seminal figures of 20th-century music.

True!

But nearly a century after their first essays in composing with all 12 tones of the octave, as opposed to the eight notes of traditional major and minor keys,

But…Bach used all 12 notes of the octave. Constantly. Regularly. So did Chopin. And Mozart. And basically every post-Renaissance composer, ever. Even some Renaissance composers did.

these three and their followers remain hard sells.

Sort of. As I’ve discussed before, perhaps often, the narrative of “nobody likes this music” is not helpful in this regard. Perhaps the reviewer doesn’t like this music?

In your wildest dreams, can you imagine the Dallas Symphony Orchestra playing a piece by Webern?

Yes. Yes, I can. It’s not really that wild a dream, either. It should be noted here that the reviewer writes for the Dallas Morning News and is in New York. Those crazy liberal East Coasters and their hundred year-old unlistenable music!

Even the Dallas-Fort Worth modern-music series avoid this whole chunk of repertory as if it were radioactive.

This is an argument? We’re not talking about really obscure pieces here, either. Pierrot Lunaire is, perhaps, Schoenberg’s most popular and accessible work. I found dozens of available recordings without even trying.

But James Levine, music director of the Metropolitan Opera and Boston Symphony Orchestra, has been a long-standing champion of Schoenberg and company.

True! Good research.

On Sunday evening, at Zankel Hall, the chamber-music hall buried in the bowels

Nice choice. The “bowels” are, I reckon, where the “shitty” music lives.

of Carnegie Hall, he and the MET Chamber Ensemble served up two-and-a-half hours' worth.

Of shit?

In retrospect, the revolution led by Schoenberg was inevitable.

I guess, in retrospect, it could be seen that way. Schoenberg certainly thought so. This is the “inevitable stylistic progress” narrative, and is invoked frequently enough. It is problematic, though. That’s probably for another time. We have more prose…

To the big narrative forms of late romanticism, it responded

It = the revolution? The revolution responded? Cool! That must have been something.

with stark disruptions and miniatures of wispy gesture and clattery cataclysm.

This is slightly unclear. How many things are there in this sentence? Three? “Stark disruptions,” “miniatures of wispy gesture,” and “clattery cataclysm”? Or is it “stark disruptions” and “miniatures of wispy gesture and clattery cataclysm”? Disruptions and miniatures are not…the same kind of thing, and it’s funny to phrase it this way. I think what he means is possibly “miniatures that feature stark disruptions, wispy gestures, and clattery cataclysm”?

Anyway, bonus points for “clattery cataclysm”. I just want to say that over and over. Try it!

Supersaturated harmonies based on predictable tensions and releases gave way to arbitrary unpredictability.

Honestly, I don’t know what this means. The music is…predictable, yet unpredictable. Or: the big, narrative late Romantic forms' predictability was replaced with unpredictability? That sounds like a positive thing. Right? No? We like our art to be predictable? Sigh.

Composed between 1909 and 1934, Sunday's fare covered quite a range of scale. There were the miniatures of Webern's Four Pieces for violin and piano (Op. 7),

Awesome pieces. Totally tiny and quiet, with subtle tone color manipulations. A little dense and hard to get at first. But cool.

Berg's Four Pieces for clarinet and piano (Op. 8)

Also awesome. More post-romantic and full of notes. Pretty accessibly expressionistic.

and Schoenberg's Six Little Piano Pieces (Op. 19)

Transcendent pieces. Great for beginning study of atonal style, and also analysis. I recommend this. Analysis. Of these pieces. And, well, in general. And these pieces in general.

At the maximalist end lay Berg's massive Chamber Concerto for piano and violin with 13 wind instruments. Atonal or not, this music can sometimes seem a jumble of tonal fragments.

That is true, especially of Berg. He retained various tonal elements in some of his works.

The Berg Chamber Concerto sometimes sounds like busy neoclassical counterpoint patched in and out of sync.

Sort of. Okay. But it’s cool right? Or good? What? Bad? Bueller?

The Schoenberg piano pieces seem like peeks into miniature worlds of sometimes haunting beauty.

Yeah. Rad.

What could have been a mortification of the flesh came across as genuinely engaging, at times downright seductive, thanks to performances lovingly detailed and finely finished. Standouts among the performers were Mr. Levine (a deft pianist as well as conductor), violinists Gil Shaham and David Chan, pianist Yefim Bronfman and clarinetist Anthony McGill.

You…you liked it? Or some of it? Awesome. That is great. Or did you just like the performances of the awful music? Or the performers? I’d like to hear more about what you think, sir.

And veteran soprano Anja Silja made a riveting experience of Schoenberg's Pierre lunaire, its speech-song settings of Otto Erich Hartleben poems as disturbing as the rawest expressionist paintings.

Good. That sounds good. Like I said, that piece is famously liked by people who don’t really like this music. So: what was good? I also want to hear some more about the chamber music you mentioned in the previous paragraph.

…

That’s it? Oh. Okay. That's kind of disappointing. It almost seems as though you didn't hate it because famous people were performing in New York.

Next time, I'd like to hear some more, please.

I Am Here to Report to You about Some Excellent Music Criticism!

I am here to report to you about some excellent music criticism!

I know, right?

It does exist! I am very pleased. I, however, have one small issue regarding the following. Let it be known, though, that I am very much mostly pleased.

This gentleman has written a very good review for the New York Times about a recent concert featuring some oft-derided music from a century ago. The concert sounds like it was great. The reviewer seems like he genuinely likes the repertoire. Plus: I really like the repertoire! He made me wish I had seen the concert. My quibble is: would someone who does not already know/like the repertoire be encouraged by the review to see the concert?

James Levine is a well-regarded conductor and pianist. The Met Chamber Ensemble is similarly well-regarded. The featured composers should be regarded similarly. Although the author, as noted, above, seems to like the music, he felt the need to...to what? Take an easy dig at it? Or, perhaps, nod to those that don't like it? Who would read a review about a Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg concert with any real interest if they've already made up their mind about the music? Certainly, in the first paragraph, Kozinn sort of abandons any effort to convince any unbelievers to attend the concert to gain greater understanding or appreciation of...

For some listeners the music of the Second Viennese School is by now - a century on - so thoroughly entrenched as to be standard repertory;

Yes. Yes it is. It is not played often enough, or written favorably about enough. And, when mentioned, it is often to deride better-loved composers such as Brahms. But it is historically significant. Also, if one cares to spend time with it, is fucking awesome music.

for others it was supplanted by other styles so long ago that it's irrelevant.

I suppose I understand what he's getting at, here. However, I could easily make the same argument about Bach vis-a-vis people who only listen to rock. Or jazz. Or hip-hop. Or Copland, for that matter. Supplanted by other styles? Like Renaissance in the Baroque era? Or Baroque in the Classical era? Or Classical in the Romantic era? Or Disco in the 1990s?

But if you're still trying to figure out what you think about it, the best idea may be to seek out a performance with James Levine at the helm.

Okay! That is great. I love that you wrote that. It encourages people to be intellectually and/or artistically curious. Which is great. Did I mention that it's great? You are totally asking people who are undecided to be welcome to listen, and attend, and, I guess, decide for themselves. Awesome.

Mr. Levine is a true believer,

This sounds sort of like he's in a cult. The cult of the Second Viennese School. Which I would totally join. However, your sentiment contains a note of...condescension? Even if the condescension is unintended, or well-intended. But you make it sound like he's not normal. Non-normative.

but where other true believers approach this music with earnest reverence, he makes it sing.

Ah. He makes the non-music sounds musical. He is an irreverent true-believer, in that he believes the crazy atonal nonsense is music, and in his role as interpreter, makes it sing.

Don't get me wrong, this is a great article, and I encourage you to read the rest. I only want to point out that even the best-intentioned review can contain hidden, or unintended, critique of music that a) is having image trouble anyway, and b) it purports to acclaim.

So, I was wrong. Kozinn doesn't abandon the effort to convince people to attend and listen. He merely subtly undermines his effort with loaded language. That's my issue.

Otherwise: well done, sir! Well done.
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