Is atonal music dead?

It seems to me that possibly we are saying similar things, but calling them by different names. I see music as a very ethereal thing, and I agree that you should write what you want within reason. I don't think you should necessarily allow others to tell you what to write (unless that's your job, in which case it is somewhat unavoidable sometimes) but I think you should be able to improve and regulate yourself (one of the reasons I don't think one should write for orchestra until one has a decent grasp on the basics.) I don't correlate 'good' music with music that I like. I like a lot of stuff and I recognize that it's not good music. I like it for whatever reasons. I am not sure about defining what good music is; it has some intangible quality that makes it good.

EDIT - This post was directed to SSC. Gardener's post popped up while I was typing this.

Well, an interesting question is why not? If you like something, it's good right? To you it is, since you like it. Objectively we can't say, but at least we can agree that if you like something you can consider it "good" since you like it. That's basically the problem with your argument, since you're saying what you think is good doesn't correlate with what you like, but that's the only way you can even judge something (You like it, you don't or you're indifferent.)

And, well, improvement to me is someone who gets to know good what they want to do, what they like, why they like it, why they don't like this or that thing. Someone who is closer to writing what they really want to write, after they find out why they'd write what they are writing. ETC. Improvement is very VERY hard to judge in composition, but I'd say one of the factors I definitely take into consideration is knowing what you want and ensuring that your vision is realized just like you want it to be realized.

Not counting of course knowledge of musical matters such as history, all sorts of theories, blah blah blah musicology stuff. That's also all related to improvement in different ways.

So, improvement to me has much less to do with something written being "good" or "bad" and more to do with the composer evolving as an artist and getting to know him/herself better.

Would you not agree that evolving as an artist and getting to know yourself better often can cause you to write 'better'?

I agree with your second paragraph, but not with your first. To me, I can see something that someone else wrote and say "That is good, but I don't like it" The two are separated because while I can hear the composition and I can study it and I can see all the intricacies and the form and all that stuff, I can see that it's good. None of that factors into my personal tastes, however. I know examples are tough to use, but let's take some Schoenberg. I hate listening to Schoenberg. I've heard 5 or 6 of his pieces and I hated them. We studied a few in Theory class. I saw all the work that went into these 12 tone pieces. I can recognize that they are very well done. But I still don't like them.

I don't know if that clarifies what I mean or if it's just me repeating myself again, but I hope that helps clarify what I think.

Would you not agree that evolving as an artist and getting to know yourself better often can cause you to write 'better'?

I agree with your second paragraph, but not with your first. To me, I can see something that someone else wrote and say "That is good, but I don't like it" The two are separated because while I can hear the composition and I can study it and I can see all the intricacies and the form and all that stuff, I can see that it's good. None of that factors into my personal tastes, however. I know examples are tough to use, but let's take some Schoenberg. I hate listening to Schoenberg. I've heard 5 or 6 of his pieces and I hated them. We studied a few in Theory class. I saw all the work that went into these 12 tone pieces. I can recognize that they are very well done. But I still don't like them.

I don't know if that clarifies what I mean or if it's just me repeating myself again, but I hope that helps clarify what I think.

Well, that's the thing though, I guess your definition of "good" is something which shows effort according to you, or elaboration, or something along those lines. I think process music pieces are really neat and good, but they're extremely plain and often aren't more than a couple of instructions or a diagram or two. I happen to like this sort of thing quite a lot, so that's why I say I find it "good."

But when it comes to "bad" I don't really think there's "bad" music, just different tastes. I'd rather say "this isn't my thing" than "this is scraggy." I'm more generous with my standards, I guess.