hamarplazt
100% No Soul Guaranteed
Through the rambler blog I got around this interesting critique of the status of 12 note composition in music history:
http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/archives20050301.shtml#98286
Now, I basically agree with the main point - that 12 note music is more a cult of technique than the heroic journey into the unknown that it's often described as - but one thing in particular puzzles me: that it's supposed to be a traditional argument for 12 note technique that it was an inevitable development. I'm no expert on this, and therefore hope to be enlightened by someone who is, but wasn't it the breakthrough of atonality that was seen as inevitable, and didn't Shönberg himself say that the 12 note technique was a way to control the limitless freedom of pure atonality?
Personally, I've always felt that the 12 note thing was an oddly arbitrary way to deal with the problem of pure atonality, or that it's somehow a cowardly way to avoid dealing with it at all. But maybe it was necessary so the composer could force himself not to fall back on tonal habits. More positively one could also see it as a kind of self restriction, a way to avoid the mess totally "free" music often end in. Not that it explains why this single idea of the 12 note series should be the only way to restrict oneself.
Eventually, even though I do consider the pure atonal phase more interesting than the subsequent serialism, a lot of the Shönberg stuff that I enjoy the most (and, I might add, in a direct, un-analytical way) is of the 12 note phase. And the one of his (main) works that I have the greatest trouble with is actually one of the "key" atonal ones - Pierrot Lunaire. But maybe that's just because I assume it's the main inspiration for the huge amount of deadly dull soprano+chaimber modern classical works that take up far too big a share of 20th century music.
http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/archives20050301.shtml#98286
Now, I basically agree with the main point - that 12 note music is more a cult of technique than the heroic journey into the unknown that it's often described as - but one thing in particular puzzles me: that it's supposed to be a traditional argument for 12 note technique that it was an inevitable development. I'm no expert on this, and therefore hope to be enlightened by someone who is, but wasn't it the breakthrough of atonality that was seen as inevitable, and didn't Shönberg himself say that the 12 note technique was a way to control the limitless freedom of pure atonality?
Personally, I've always felt that the 12 note thing was an oddly arbitrary way to deal with the problem of pure atonality, or that it's somehow a cowardly way to avoid dealing with it at all. But maybe it was necessary so the composer could force himself not to fall back on tonal habits. More positively one could also see it as a kind of self restriction, a way to avoid the mess totally "free" music often end in. Not that it explains why this single idea of the 12 note series should be the only way to restrict oneself.
Eventually, even though I do consider the pure atonal phase more interesting than the subsequent serialism, a lot of the Shönberg stuff that I enjoy the most (and, I might add, in a direct, un-analytical way) is of the 12 note phase. And the one of his (main) works that I have the greatest trouble with is actually one of the "key" atonal ones - Pierrot Lunaire. But maybe that's just because I assume it's the main inspiration for the huge amount of deadly dull soprano+chaimber modern classical works that take up far too big a share of 20th century music.