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From: "Robert Eberwein"
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 15:50:53 PDT
Subject: Atonal Music

Someone, in a long post about Atonal Music, said;



I really had to laugh outloud as I envisioned a group of harmonica players
sitting around exploring 12-tone Music (as if harmonica doesn’t already have
a low enough threshold for audience saturation)! Sounds like something Dante
dreamt up. Is that a serious suggestion?

Seems to me that this kind of thread always snakes it’s way toward
over-intellectualization. So I’ll also indulge myself also.

IMHO, there is this tendency, in general, with Atonal Music…(or ‘Implied
Rhythm’ Jazz, or extreme Abstract Art (where the "Expression" is more
important than the communication), or Post-Post (Post?) Modern writing)))…
where, when the waters get muddy (as they inevitably do) someone does us the
favor of explaining to us poor Philistines, what is attractive about it.

Tell me what Schoenberg gave Music that was new, lasting or useful?

I say 12 tone music couldn’t even exist on it’s own. It is just
‘anti-western music’ (painted with dabs and globs of "oriental music" and
theoretical music/math). It couldn’t exist at all without undermining it’s
own foundations. It, pooh-poohs it’s own tradition, steals a little from
other traditions and then claims to have discovered something brand new. In
the end, it does nothing but, thumb it’s nose at the shoulders it stands on
and solicit followers. Followers (like Cage or Stockhausen), who give silent
concerts (concerts where they sit in front of a piano for the same length of
time as the title, "Four Minutes and 33 seconds") and dare us to call
bullshit.

Defenders of such indulgence invariably speak of The "Blue Note" in the same
way. People (in this Serial thread) have been likening Blues to Atonal
Music- simply because of it’s "in-between" notes. Much is made of it’s
mysteriousness. But the truth is, sometimes Blues is a little "off". It may
sound evocative and sweet, but it evolved out of missed marks. Someone
simply missed something they were shooting for. Like broken and (often
unnoticed) out-of-tune church pianos gave us some great Gospel. Like Jazz
Improvisation evolved from untrained musicians. Like Frank Sinatra’s style
of singing (simply unable to hit the note dead on), it all evolved from
trying to do something either not understood- or beyond one’s reach (for one
reason or another), and having a pleasing effect anyway.

It’s a classic case of missing the "Ding an Sich". Blues/Jazz emanates from
"failed" attempts to make "real music’…resulting in beauty anyway. Atonal
Music starts out to assume a superior position to all music that came before
it, misses it’s mark by a mile…and results in a noise which it’s converts
claim is an "acquired taste". Claiming discord, disharmony and confusion are
inherently "progressive’, the "music" is a failure that can’t be
acknowledged.

‘Atonal’ still has an appeal today (strictly for students) because one
can’t condemn it without appearing ignorant or tragically unhip. Serial
Music is completely intellectual and esoteric. It’s charm is the charm of
Indonesian cigarettes, odd tasting bitter teas and non-functional furniture.
It has a touch of India. A touch of the Orient. A touch of Anarchy… A touch
of self-loathing and counter-culture sabotage. The truth is, the only one’s
who like it, besides students, are those carving careers or hawking books.

Harp Content: There has never been, nor never will there exist, an audience
that would endure a harmonica player exploring atonal music (hell, just grab
the wrong harp and play the wrong song and you got it!). I’d sooner sing
Hiking songs with Idi Amin.

Cheers, Robb


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