The thread to end all "Is X relevant?" threads. Ever.

[Salemosophy]

Now, if you want me to clearly explain why it's "dumb luck" that X music or X culture survived, it's very easy really. It's not my "theory," really, it's what is actually agreed on in the fields that deal with this matter.

A given cultural tradition exists because this tradition has been perpetuated through various means, be it political, by force or conquest, or simply because people liked it better. An example? The religious traditions around the world, the culture pertaining to each country/group of people/etc.

Now, music and art are a special kind of thing, they are subjective. This means that there is no objectivity to speak of, much less in terms of X is better than Y (and there is an accumulating body of evidence on behalf of neurologists and neuro-musicologists that, biologically, we do NOT have a bias for any given sound sets, systems, anything. All is constructed through education and in the process of culturization).

I'm not going to disagree with this because you are right, at least to a point. What you fail to account for I will discuss later.

Which makes sense if you look at the actual variety of music out there in the world outside of the European-influenced cultures. None of it sounds like each other and in fact many use entirely different systems, scales, tunings and use parameters in entirely different ways.

I don't think you realize that in the only fields which what the majority of people think doesn't matter is in science, and musicology deals exactly with this. In German obviously Musicology IS a science like biology or sociology, and as such it remains objective. For it to do so, it must look to other sciences (sociology) where the phenomena of culture-formation and tradition are well understood.

Couple this with the fact music is subjective, it means that X music is invariably the same as Y and all that changes is, besides the actual physical properties, the cultural baggage and context.

So, here is your case if I understand it correctly. Music across the world can only be assessed through some subjective means. To do otherwise is to deny that at some particular region in some particular time such objective look at that pedagogy of music will not apply in all other cases. In other words, you are saying that the societal element is the single, determining factor in the survivability of music, and that factor is as random as flipping a coin. Hence, the survival of a given time period's cultures, arts, and collective knowledge on the whole is subjective and entirely "pure, dumb luck."

Nice argument, but across the board it is too broad and highly unlikely that the survivability of a particular work of music is entirely dependent solely on this societal element as a single determining factor. I'll explore this in a moment, but first:

Argue what you want, but if you can somehow prove the opposite of all I've said here, you should be well on your way to earning a couple of Nobel prizes or at the very least a good number of recognitions for the advance of human understanding. As music is only a byproduct of an evolutionary and biological process, therefore when I say "Music is subjective" it's not only my opinion, it's exactly what the researchers are finding with increasingly more certainty.

I've posted about this before, with sources and where to read more on the topic, if you're curious.

What I'm doing is really simple, I don't claim I invented or that any of what I'm saying is really my opinion, I'm just stating things as the are. Music cannot be objective unless you MAKE it objective and then that in itself IS already only possible because it's subjective.

This is a parody of the nature vs nurture argument in parenting. I'm pretty confused about why you think the "Subjectivity Argument" trumps any value argument, test of time argument, or anything else for that matter. Considering how broadly you apply it to the overall case, you never considered there ever being an exception to this case? I can think of several... but I'll hold off on this until the end.

This subjectivity argument is the trump card to any "value" arguments, to any "test of time" argument, as time can't test anything that is entirely dependent on taste, culture, context, etc. Most likely that the music any of us likes, we only like because we have been conditioned to do so by other factors that have nothing to do with music.

So, with all that, right back to my "dumb luck" argument, it's very simple really. Since objective judgment is impossible, the only possible, logical reason that any music today survives as it stand is that people have kept it from being destroyed for their personal reasons. Since their personal reasons are SUBJECTIVE and influenced by culture, context, taste, etc, they are no measure at all what so ever of anything but their own appreciation.

I remember one professor's example of the "Subjectivity Argument" that holds a lot of weight here. If everything is subjective, then it's okay to kill Jews and the Holocaust was a great time in world history. And you have to consider the culture in Germany at the time - they must have been all for it, right? Your subjectivity argument is a red herring. It's nothing more than a shallow argument for dissuasion of the idea that there is such a thing as quality in music.

Unfortunately, at some point objectivity MUST be applied to music as it is to the other arts. Not to the point that it overrules the subjectivity of the creator, but enough that it informs the creator and explains how it is done. Without objectivity, you really have no purpose for history, theory, or, for that matter, composition. It's all subjective and no one really cares. No one is accountable, and nothing can grow from it.

In essence, it's just lucky that people liked Bach's music and thus it survived, otherwise it would've been almost forgotten or it would be just a historical footnote if evidence of his existence had not been erased, like Zelenka's music which Bach was himself a fan of. Yet, only recently are people paying more attention to other composers which were eclipsed by the surge of popularity Bach had.

Oh, this is amusing. The interest in Bach today is more academic than ever! He's credited with everything from figured bass to experimenting in 12-tone rows. Nothing about Bach is popular except for the SUBJECTIVE rationale of prominent figures in musicology, who base their subjectivity on OBJECTIVITY. You're losing traction here.

If you want to "prove me wrong" or, as you so elegantly put it, "tear into my argument," you would have to prove that there is something objective in all the pieces that have, ahem, "survived the test of time" which we can measure, quantify and therefore prove that any piece containing those characteristics, by those characteristics alone should be able to therefore always survive any length of time or it's destruction.

I can name just about every theoretical concept I learned in music theory as a basis for this... all objective rationales reinforcing the importance of such figures in history and the contributions they made to the pedagogy of music.

Like in science, ideas that DO really "stand the test of time" do so because they have been found to work and be objectively true despite constant testing, probing and skepticism. Newton's laws of motion are rather old, yet they all hold not because they are old, but because they WORK.

Equivocating a theoretical principle in science with "age" in music is not the same as equivocating a theoretical principle in science with a theoretical principle in music. You have once again twisted my position. You do not understand my point, and I have pretty clearly explained myself at this point.

All you're doing at this point is ranting ahead on a position you assume I am taking when I have clearly stated otherwise in context. You have overstated my position into an abyss of absurdity in every thread we've debated the matter, and quite frankly, I'm insulted that I have had to waste this much time on someone with no capacity for intelligent discussion who actually admits to be a teacher of this material.

Your level of abstraction on the topic is severely off. You can go back and reread all my posts, but at this point, you're soo far off base I doubt you could effectively recover from your own assumptions.

If you can prove such thing exists in the music you have said "stands the test of time" I will gladly concede your point, but you must first overcome the subjective problem, then prove that all the music that has survived the "test of time" must all contain characteristics that hold true BY THEMSELVES rather than depending a culture or tradition to uphold it (after all, Newton's laws don't depend on any tradition, context or cultural conditioning, they stand on their own here and in mars, no matter where you go they will still hold true).

Okay, Mozart and Salieri. Two composers. Same time period. Same conditions. Same syntax to work within. Until recently, Salieri was but a whisper where Mozart was a tremendous boom. How can this be? If it was, indeed, social context and ONLY social context at work, how can you possibly explain how the survivability of Mozart's music is so much greater than that of Salieri's over the course of almost 200 years? Certainly the "pure dumb luck" model would dictate that at some point in time Salieri would be more prevalent than Mozart. How can it be that it never happened?

Could it be that Mozart was just better at what he did with the system he worked within than Salieri? Could it be that Mozart gave us more to study? There's nothing negative to say about Salieri here. Your model doesn't account for this, that two composers of the same time period could have such consistency in how dramatically one is preferred over another. What could subjectively explain this? Is it just even remotely possible that some objective concept attributable to Mozart was executed more profoundly than Salieri?

I guess not. We should stop studying Mozart now. We should replace all of Mozart's music with Salieri's because subjectively, neither offers more than the other. Trivializing the objective to forward this position only reveals how weak this argument really is...

(To complicate your job even further, you have to account for the fact that you need to find the same exact objective, quantifiable things you find in the western music you claim "survived the test of time" in music from all over the world, some of which is MUCH older than anything western we have historical knowledge of.)

Good luck with all of that, seriously! There are a lot of awards waiting for you if you manage to pull it off and you should MOST CERTAINLY present this idea if it's so good in the academic arena, you would be famous.

Complicate my job? It's been a no-brainer so far... your proposition is ridiculous.

Where do you think theoretical concepts come from? Are they just "made to be objective" rationales for studying music, or are they necessary for conveying music knowledge? What about history? Is the understanding of the development of 20th Century music a complete account? Of course not. There is too much information to do that, so the information is objective to facilitate understanding. Musicology in general, as a focus of study, objectifies concepts in music (like you just have) to convey a narrative that explains a large conglomerate of information in an efficient manner so that it can be more easily understood.

Your challenge has been to show how "pure dumb luck" applies to the survival of music throughout history. I should be able to point to any two moments in time, no matter the social interests of each, and expect to see extremely different results in the prominence of one historical figure to another. I should expect to see a prominent reaction to society's changes. This is not evident throughout history.

Stand two composers of historical importance from the same time period, one prominent and one not as prominent, side by side and show how your "pure dumb luck" argument is demonstrable by the rise in interest of the other as a result of social change. Show how concepts in music are purely the result of such social change and not the growth of music knowledge over time. Demonstrate this with several figures and then come back when you have a case to make.

Your blanket argument, while attached to an agreeable theoretical framework, is not in and of itself a well-established theory unto its own. You have taken liberties in this position even I don't take (and that's surprising considering how extreme my views are). You have failed to account for almost every musicological concept taught in music education today, how "pure dumb luck" is applicable to such examples as Mozart and Salieri, or how this even begins to address my position on balance in the music education curriculum where it concerns composition.

I'm really surprised that people with such dynamic backgrounds in education really buy this argument, unless of course they just want to believe it's true. It has no basis in fact when APPLIED to the pedagogy, and that, SSC, is the largest problem you face in offering this position.

[SSC]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, I made it really clear for you as to how to really kill my argument. It can't get any simpler on your end:

If you want to "prove me wrong" or, as you so elegantly put it, "tear into my argument," you would have to prove that there is something objective in all the pieces that have, ahem, "survived the test of time" which we can measure, quantify and therefore prove that any piece containing those characteristics, by those characteristics alone should be able to therefore always survive any length of time or it's destruction.

Dancing around it doesn't help, prove it or you don't have an argument, period.

PS: Speaking of which, are you daft? When did I say "everything was subjective"? You didn't really refute anything, you just danced around having to actually show evidence to back up your claims. That Salieri isn't "as popular" as Mozart means nothing except that, well, Mozart is more popular. How you get objective value (as in, not YOUR opinion, but the TRUTH that one is better than the other, as in superior though you have yet to define what superior even means in this context) out of that is a logical fallacy called appeal to popularity. If you can't realize this, whoops.

PS2: Ahh this all too hilarious not to mention:

Could it be that Mozart was just better at what he did with the system he worked within than Salieri? Could it be that Mozart gave us more to study? There's nothing negative to say about Salieri here. Your model doesn't account for this, that two composers of the same time period could have such consistency in how dramatically one is preferred over another. What could subjectively explain this? Is it just even remotely possible that some objective concept attributable to Mozart was executed more profoundly than Salieri?

LOL!

Just, LOL. Seriously do you READ what you type?

Again you face the problem of proving such an "objective concept attributable to Mozart" exists. Prove it, quantify it. Show me what that IS, not just "used techniques more profoundly" because "profoundly" is what? Define "profoundly," objectively! As in, deeply? What's that supposed to mean in objective scientific terms?

ETC ETC. LOL...

PS3: On second thought, I doubt you know what half of the words you're using actually mean. Do you know what subjective even means? What has any of this to do with pedagogy, and above all, if you can't even use objectivity to build your arguments (the Salieri comparison is idiotic at best) how do you expect to even try? Nevermind you are the one challenging the views of quite a large portion of the academic world (believe it or not!) so I'd expect you to have real arguments... but all I see is dodging the simple fact you can't prove X music is objectively better than Y music which kills your argument. If there's no objective superiority of any music over any other music, the only logical conclusion follows that there must be other factors that have NOTHING to do with the music that must influence the popularity of things, traditions, and what is "better for teaching."

But enough of this, you're either retarded beyond help or simply a troll and I'm done. Hide on the internet with your little opinions, it's better; at least you're not out there teaching, I hope, because that would indeed be real tragedy.

[Salemosophy]

You make me sad, SSC. :(

[SSC]

You make me sad, SSC. :(

Trust me, I really feel sorry for you. It must suck to be crippled mentally to this degree and I only imagine the sorrow you must have caused your teachers if you ever had any. No wonder you lash out at "the establishment," we need to tone down all the academic world to account for your poor state of rationality.

Fine, I guess we can always just dumb it down to "MOZART BETTER, SALIERI BAD," if it really helps you.

[Salemosophy]

I'm no longer participating in this discussion, SSC.

[Nik Mikas]

PRAISE JESUS!

[chodelkovzart]

i enjoy reading this thread.

[Guest QcCowboy]

i enjoy reading this thread.

that's totally irrelevant.

[SSC]

Bumped, sadly, to remind everyone that "discussions" don't work if one side decides on what they believe (with unshakable conviction) before they even get to knowing the first thing about the topic then hurry to find whatever "facts" they can to support their already preconceived opinion.

Not only this, but it's a dead horse topic and before anyone posts more crap on it they should be forced to read EVERY OTHER THREAD on it to date. Sticky! Sticky! Sticky!

:/

[Ferkungamabooboo]

Problem is, all these threads start as something intelligent, (CO's most recent one... I still wish I could read the source article. Dunno why that website hates me) and then people with an axe to grind (me totally included in that!) intentionally misread the topic and force it to spin out of control.

But yeah, these discussions should be banned, simply because no one (including myself) who frequents these threads know enough to actually say anything beyond, "I believe." And to be true, artistic choice is pretty hard to say much about other than "I believe." There's nothing wrong with thinking that there's one true path to artistic enlightenment...

[MatthewSchwartz]

I don't even know why you guys bother discussing this stuff, let alone being distressed if the discussion "fails".

It's the internet. :sleeping:

[SSC]

Problem is, all these threads start as something intelligent, (CO's most recent one... I still wish I could read the source article. Dunno why that website hates me) and then people with an axe to grind (me totally included in that!) intentionally misread the topic and force it to spin out of control.

But yeah, these discussions should be banned, simply because no one (including myself) who frequents these threads know enough to actually say anything beyond, "I believe." And to be true, artistic choice is pretty hard to say much about other than "I believe." There's nothing wrong with thinking that there's one true path to artistic enlightenment...

I'm not in favor of censorship, so what I'm asking is just for a warning/sticky/whatever that points anyone with the idea to start talking about this crap to read all the threads/relevant posts on the topic before they do anything.

The point is also that you can say what you think without taking a stance which is absolutist and indefensible (and/or also end up producing flamebait!) And really, I don't CARE if someone comes in and says "tonality is dog" and that's their opinion. Fine. But the problem comes in when instead of leaving it at that the thing keeps coming back again and again.

But what you say is also true, to actually have an intelligent discussion about this stuff you need to have people who at least know what they're talking about, which is also why I favor stickies/whatever since it'd be a source for people not to start spouting crap out of ignorance, then they'll have NO excuse.

Think of it like this, we can make a sticky thread where the more prominent theories are exposed and whatever discussion can start from THERE if it's about this topic, so nobody's going "OH YOU DIDN'T KNOW THAT--" there'd be no excuse for that. Hell I can write a pretty comprehensive article on the most common positions and definitions for a number of key terms that always cause trouble if that's what it takes.

The only cure for ignorance is education. Fine. But if it goes beyond that, well, what else?

[Salemosophy]

Think of it like this, we can make a sticky thread where the more prominent theories are exposed and whatever discussion can start from THERE if it's about this topic, so nobody's going "OH YOU DIDN'T KNOW THAT--" there'd be no excuse for that. Hell I can write a pretty comprehensive article on the most common positions and definitions for a number of key terms that always cause trouble if that's what it takes.

No. Just no. :horrified:

No one appointed you to be the "Thought Police" at YC, at least that I'm aware, and more to the point, you have to understand a position before you can write about it. This is just a bad idea all around, and appointing you to make a "comprehensive article" on it is the worst idea in the very long history of bad ideas.

No.

[SSC]

No. Just no. :horrified:

No one appointed you to be the "Thought Police" at YC, at least that I'm aware, and more to the point, you have to understand a position before you can write about it. This is just a bad idea all around, and appointing you to make a "comprehensive article" on it is the worst idea in the very long history of bad ideas.

No.

You write it then. That'll be fun.

PS: Oh, BTW, Be sure to include your theory that atonality is like poorly voiced jazz, yea? Can't do without that one.

[Salemosophy]

You write it then. That'll be fun.

PS: Oh, BTW, Be sure to include your theory that atonality is like poorly voiced jazz, yea? Can't do without that one.

I never volunteered. It's an unnecessary distraction to open discourse at any rate. Anyone who presumes to think they can capably and eloquently state positions they categorically dispute has no business even offering to state those positions in a sticky thread. No, I have no interest in making such a thread, nor am I about to stay quiet while you try to convince anyone you can impartially do so.

[robinjessome]

[SSC]

I never volunteered. It's an unnecessary distraction to open discourse at any rate. Anyone who presumes to think they can capably and eloquently state positions they categorically dispute has no business even offering to state those positions in a sticky thread. No, I have no interest in making such a thread, nor am I about to stay quiet while you try to convince anyone you can impartially do so.

Uh.

OK.

I'll write anyways k thx. If it gets stickied or what gets stickied that's not my decision but I think there is plenty of reason to do it and it wouldn't hurt to try see if it works. Others have already said something like this, hell, to this very thread. But this thread is completely inadequate for something like that, so I figure it's better to write something from scratch. I'll probably post it in the wiki and see how it works.

For the record, I won't state every single position, I'll state what Schoenberg said, for example, what the German musicologists define as "atonal" and QCC can write what the French/Canadians define it as, etc etc. This is a strictly academic endeavor and it is for the betterment of the forum, otherwise what would be the point?

Hell we can even state sources and give more reading material for anyone with interest in the same very sticky, so people can EDUCATE THEMSELVES before they start discussing or saying nonsense.

Clearly you're not opposing education are you?

PS: Academic endeavor means that you won't participate, btw, considering you willingly admit to avoid anything to do with that. But that's OK, you don't think it matters or it's necessary so no problem.

[Tokkemon]

I can only thank the Lord that SSC is not a mod here.

But if he were an admin, well...he would live up to the old creed: "These admins are like monkeys!"

[Ferkungamabooboo]

Wouldn't having viewpoints that demonize atonality be fully appropriate?

"Who's that MGladman? He can't play scraggy!" - Miles Davis on relatively atonal pianist Cecil Taylor

"What is practiced as art today -- be it music after Wagner or painting after Manet, Cezanne, Liebl, and Menzel -- is impotence and falsehood."

"... the unabashed farce of Expressionism, which the art-trade has organized as a 'phase of art-history,' thinking and feeling and forming as industrial art." -- Oswald Spengler, historian, Decline of the West p.158

"When you view an abstract expressionist canvas, time is in your control. You may spend as much or as little time as you like, click your tongue, attempt to say something sensible and, if you are sufficiently pretentious, quote something from the Wikipedia write-up on the artist that you consulted before arriving at the gallery. When you listen to atonal music, for example Schoenberg, you are stuck in your seat for a quarter of an hour that feels like many hours in a dentist's chair. You cannot escape. You do not admire the abstraction from a distance. You are actually living inside it. You are in the position of the fashionably left-wing intellectual of the 1930s who made the mistake of actually moving to Moscow, rather than admiring it at a safe distance." - noted Asia Times blogger/columnist "Spengler"

And then what about ones that have atonality as the highest forms of music?

My point is that a "canonical list" of "defensible" points of view is simply going to create the same issues you're kvetching about. These people ARE educated (one in music, one in history, and one in politics). And a copy-paste job is the WORST kind of education you can get.

You just seem to think that the one true way is pluralism. Other people don't. God forbid.

[Tokkemon]

"When you view an abstract expressionist canvas, time is in your control. You may spend as much or as little time as you like, click your tongue, attempt to say something sensible and, if you are sufficiently pretentious, quote something from the Wikipedia write-up on the artist that you consulted before arriving at the gallery. When you listen to atonal music, for example Schoenberg, you are stuck in your seat for a quarter of an hour that feels like many hours in a dentist's chair. You cannot escape. You do not admire the abstraction from a distance. You are actually living inside it. You are in the position of the fashionably left-wing intellectual of the 1930s who made the mistake of actually moving to Moscow, rather than admiring it at a safe distance." - noted Asia Times blogger/columnist "Spengler"

Ok. That quote just made my day! :D

[J. Lee Graham]

That is pretty fabulous, I must admit.

[jujimufu]

Let's also not forget about other points of view:

This is what my father told me when I was five:

a key signature is a king’s court in miniature. It is ruled by a king (the first step) and his two right hand men (steps five and four). They have four other dignitaries at their command.

That is what my father told me. What follows is all my own. One day a great man determined that after a thousand years, the language of music had worn itself out and could do no more than rehash the same message. Abolishing the hierarchy of tones by revolutionary decree he made them all equal and subjected them to a strict discipline.

In the days when Arnold Schonberg founded his twelve tone empire, music was richer than ever before and intoxicated by its own freedom. No one ever dreamed the end was so near. Schonberg was audacious as only a youth can be. He was legitimately proud of having chosen the only road that led "onward." The history of music came to an end in a burst of daring and desire.

-Milan Kundera, from "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting"

and

The collapse of music is obvious; Nor is anything to be gained by resisting it.

[...]

The composer is a person who troubles himself to produce something for which there are no consumers.

-Arthur Honegger, from the "Je suis compositeur" (trans. "I'm a composer")

and also, another quote you don't see coming:

That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are.

-Elliot Carter

and

Because essentially Schoenberg was an extremely gifted man. And in spite of many of his theories and so on, when he really began to write music, he still was guided very much by his internal hearing, by what we call your internal ear.

[...]

Besides merely some pleasure that we get out of the combinations of pitches together and lines, I think that there is some satisfaction that we get in the fact of having this diffuse thing organized very concretely and put onto a frame and have it actually decided.

[...]

But in the end, music is ultimately an aural art, pure and simple.

-Leo Ornstein

and a nice one to end with:

Great musicians accept everything that they hear and find something good. They take what they like and they throw away what they don't like.

-John Zorn

[SSC]

Wouldn't having viewpoints that demonize atonality be fully appropriate?

And then what about ones that have atonality as the highest forms of music?

My point is that a "canonical list" of "defensible" points of view is simply going to create the same issues you're kvetching about. These people ARE educated (one in music, one in history, and one in politics). And a copy-paste job is the WORST kind of education you can get.

You just seem to think that the one true way is pluralism. Other people don't. God forbid.

... Well it's not about writing particular opinions in the extremes, but giving definitions and sources for those definitions as well as explanations. You can say, uh, that X composer never liked Schoenberg's ideas and whatever but saying that "atonality" is bad makes no real sense, unless we define it first and point out literature where it appears and we can apply that label.

THAT is the entire problem. Labels and analysis ONLY WORK when coupled with literature (pieces) and there is an objective for applying them. Analysis IS after all also a form of interpretation, though it hangs also on historical facts and so on, you have to always adapt your analysis method to the piece you're viewing. Only then can you get any meaningful results out of the analysis.

The problem with these threads is that we never have our terminology set down, so it's impossible to begin discussing anything. Moreover, another problem is that we never talk about any given piece, and without literature all exercise in trying to DEFINE terminology is pointless since we have no reason to do it. There's also people who analyze Schoenberg without using the term "atonal" even once, it really depends on what you want to get out of your analysis.

So the suggestion is not to quote-mine people on their opinion of "atonality" but explain where it means what, and what it's understood as. Screw opinions, people have enough of those, I just want to get definitions that people can use (or agree or disagree on.) Anything that saves time in a discussion is VERY welcome, specially if it also kills any potential bickering over terminology and semantics.

Conflicting terminology exists in all systems and formulas of analysis, that's inevitable and it's not something that can be "fixed." Nor should we want to, as each system of analysis was tailor made to fit specific pieces, styles, whatever. Take for example the German system of function analysis, which isn't taught much elsewhere other than Germany yet I think it's one of the better systems I've seen for what it was designed for yet it has tons of problems and you have to really know how to interpret both the system and the piece to get anything out of it.

Honestly, to me "atonal" only signals a specific tendency/period which also happens to correspond to German expressionism, but is not the same. That's also the way I've seen it used often by musicologists, nobody in their right mind gives a seminar on "Atonality," for example, without first making very clear what they mean by it and which pieces they'll talk about where this applies. It could also be a historical piece, who knows?

But the point is that fighting over abstract terminology without really talking about the pieces from which any of these terms were derived is absurd and I assume a lot of people don't have experience in any of this, which causes all this mess.

Anyways, if it were up to writing opinions then why bother? I'm shooting for something more useful than "atonality is bad m'kay? no it isn't scallop :<" Like, say, list of prominent pieces which triggered the terminology, how they're built, what can be taken from it and how it applies in terms of historical progression. Then, of course, definitions based on these observed pieces (which are different depending on where you studied, who wrote the analysis, bla bla bla.) One thing is true though, the times I've been to seminars of musicologists from other countries/etc, the first and easy bridge between any terminological conflicts is not outright dismissal(!) but explaining so there's no confusion. There's no point in thinking a certain term is "wrongly defined" if we don't have a frame of reference for what it's used for, or what the purpose of a term is.

"Atonality" as a term is only useful, therefore, if we have a context where it is self-explanatory and for that to happen we can't use it just like that. Being more accurate is, for example, saying "atonality ala Schoenberg" for example, because at least it makes a reference to literature (even if vague.) This avoids the "Penderecki is also atonal!" pitfall, since putting Schoenberg and Penderecki in the same bag is nonsense, just like having definitions for atonality which put Wagner or Liszt together with Schoenberg.

I've given, for example, a set of definitions before: http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/tonalitys-purpose-today-17059-10.html#post260937 But of course I was rather brief and there's a lot more to say on this. Another thing worth remembering is that any such label can't be applied to just anyone, as labels are tools for analysis after all. It's like trying to look at Bach using systems designed to analyze 12 tone music. Sure, you'll find... something, but obviously it won't be very fruitful. Same thing with saying "Well by that definition Hindemith is atonal!" and sure as hell a lot of Hindemith isn't atonal, but the distinction isn't that he "escapes" the terminology parameters but that we're applying the wrong system and label to the wrong style/era. That's always a surefire way to have problems.

Anyway, that's that.

[jawoodruff]

I think whats interesting, and I think that very few made mention of this, when the 2nd Viennese School went 'Atonal' it was intentional - at least from what I've read on this, this seems to be the consensus. Prior to 'the move', you had very few composers utilizing avant garde means in their music (poor, misunderstood Charles Ives!)

Surely, Hindemith would've seemed rather odd had 'the move' not taken place (as would, also, the entire state of 20th century music - neoclassical, neoromanticism, minimalism, etc.)

I think a good question that those who have argued over the 'divine supremacy' of tonal music should ask themselves what went wrong? What made composers decide to abandon the practice? *I hope your reading Anti*

[Tokkemon]

I think a good question that those who have argued over the 'divine supremacy' of tonal music should ask themselves what went wrong? What made composers decide to abandon the practice? *I hope your reading Anti*

What went wrong is that Modernism influenced music as it influenced all other arts. What went wrong is that World War I happened. What went wrong was that the biggest war in the history of the world cause people to reject religious teachings claiming that God would never let something so terrible to happen.

But alas, Tonality still exists. So does atonality, but it's on the decline.