That's exactly what I'm saying, I guess you didn't get me! When I say "dead end" referring to organised atonality, I mean that it didn't prevail and it didn't manage to be seen today as the dominating western musical current, neither did it mangage to be seen as the only "legal" continuation of Wagner and Liszt, who pushed tonality to its limits, thus leading to the historical development of musical material (the way Adorno saw Schoenberg's "emancipation of dissonance"). This "crisis" that I was referring to happened in the 1970's leading to the collapse of the notion of the musical material's historical development. That's why it's "OK" today for you and me or anyone as a composer to write in whatever style he wants, from medieval to modern, or even mix all of these styles in the same piece. (I agree that some of the reasons that this happened had to do with the malfunction of the communication semiotics, but I'm already off the subject). That wasn't the case 40-30 years ago, when writing a symphony in pure classical style was "bad" and could result to the composer even being lynched! I enjoy today's stylistic freedom and the composer's right to write in what he/she believes to be his/her own style, but for the same reason I think it's not so easy to draw the lines between genres, purposes, "quality" and so on of music.
If you're accusing Ligeti of writing "musica reservata", I think you're right. But can you name some contemporary (not necessarily "modern") composers that sell so many CDs as Madonna? I can name two:Glass, Gorecki (at least he used to). That means that their music is "better"? And yes, I would prefer an audience that would want to WORK to be able to listen to the single instance of a piece they paid to attend, because I would prefer a society which produces well-educated and musically "open" audiences (utopia, but that's how I like it :w00t: ), so yes, I guess I am talking to [potential] music students, even if they're studying on their own.
As regards Ligeti's "un-hummable" sound, and whether it should be called music or not, I think that one has every right to like it or hate it, but to say that it's not music, I fully disagree. I'm personally most satisfied with the ethomusicologists' general and global definition that "music is sound organised in a human way", and not with the definition: "I don't like it, so it's not music to me"
