Robert Starace Music History II Prof.

Bruce Carr 4/13/12

Atonal Music is Inaccessible to the Average Audience: A Conventional Truth

At the onset of the Second Viennese School, music was changed forever. These men; Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg, set in motion a logical and mathematical approach to composition. Before we continue on with this discussion, lets define what atonal means for the purpose of this essay. Atonal music is markedly lacking a key or tonal center. Therefore, the term atonal does not broadly apply to all musics that use only non-functional harmonies, but more so refers to pieces in the set and twelve tone theory camps of atonality. In the rest of this essay we will discuss the reasoning from within the music establishment that allowed them to push at their audience. In the Finale of Schoenbergs Second String Quartet he omitted a key signature. This was an admission that a key signature served no purpose. There was no longer a tonic note, it was atonal. Schoenberg hypothesized, far too generally, that the notion of a tonic note was based solely on the tonal hierarchy. This means that the listener will subconsciously take count of each pitch and from those numbers, assign a tonic note.1 First, with his pitch set theory and later, with his 12- tone theory, he set himself and the other members of the Second Viennese
1

Phillip Ball, "Schoenberg, Serialism and Cognitition: Whose Fault if No One

Listens?," Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 36, no. 1 (2011): 24-41,

School the task of ridding the world of the tyranny of tonicism. His experimentations were expressed vocally as very philosophic. Schoenbergs aim was to leave the notion that specific notes and intervals were inherently wrong or cacophonous. His aims were honorable enough; the problem begins when his system purposely excluded a large section of his audiences musical experience, tonality. Serialisms blatant exclusion of tonality, limits its audience down to the musically educated. This made serialism a college professors music. Publish, (serialist music) or perish.2 Now we are going to take a moment to look into the mind of the creator, however argued, of modern atonal music, Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg did not want to alienate himself or his music from the public. In fact, as he came into the music life of Vienna, it was on the verge of extinction. Vienna was denying all things new, or innovative. Schoenberg along with architect Adolf Loos, began a campaign to push Vienna into a new place in time. Later in his life, Schoenberg publish a short essay in along with some writings of Loos about the state of concert going. Concert life must gradually cease to be a commercial business. Given the right organisation[sic], that will avoid all middlemen, arrangers and the like, and address itself directly to the public, it should easily be possible to do everything needed for the furtherance of art, even without state assistance. The basic fault in public concert-life is competition (concertare= to compete)3 Schoenberg had a passion for music. He also understood its place in society. He goes on
2
3

William Dougherty, "Class Lecture" (lecture, Drake University, Des Moines, IA, October, 2012)

Wili Reich, Schoenberg a Critical Biography , (New York City, NY: Praeger Publishers, 1968).

in his article to say that he believes the reason that the average audience does not understand contemporary music is that the public performances of the music are unclear. In order to fix this problem, he withdrew his efforts to bring the contemporary music to the public and created a private music club. This laid the ground work for generations after him to do the same. It seems to the average listener that they have been alienated. The previous musics did not require a learned background in music to not only comprehend, but to be emotionally affected. In order to fully understand the audience we must speak in terms of their experience. Audiences of music have had, since their inception, three primary questions: What do you want of me?, What is happening to me?, Why are we listening to this?4. The question of what the performing body wants from the listener seems simple enough. This is until you realize that with the separation of music from its intended societal purposes you begin to evoke the sensual and the evocative. With that there are people that cannot comprehend the nature of sound. The question of what is happening to the listener is inherently difficult. One must realize that through the absorption of music the audience heightens themselves out of the mundane, right into the world that the performers are painting for them. Even the act of clapping has significance to the listener. The act of clapping brings people from the heights that they were once living, down into the regular everyday society to which they belong. The question of Why are we listening to this? is the densest of them all. Because the ritual in which it engages is so mysteriously blank, so gratuitous, the audience of absolute music becomes a speculative community, suspended between a past and future, between atavistic memories and utopian hope. The music we listen to is a statement of mans existing, in a developed language of intensity that seeks to achieve its
4

William Fitzgerald, "The Questionability of Music," Representations, 46, no.

(Spring) (1994): 121-147,

whole essence in a world that has come to its senses. 5With this, you see that the audience participates in a way that is vital to the nature and success of classical music. They must lend themselves to the musician to be pushed and pulled the highest peak of this sublime art. These downfalls of serialism lead to one long-term truth. Who cares if they listen? That was the title of a journal article written by music critic Milton Babbitt. In this article Babbitt begins to change his own world view of composers from that of socialite to a workplace specialist. The most pressing statement from Babbitt was the statement; Why should the layman be other than bored and puzzled by what he is unable to understand6 People like Milton Babbitt who, in his writings stated that no only should modern composers not be worried about the criticism of the music- loving public, they should welcome it. Babbitt suggests that music is at a cross roads. He compares it to the field of mathematics prior to its acceptance into the university studies. He says that, where musics research is not immediately applicable, it should be set in place as a university research area, and taken out of the hands of the laymen. His final quote is potentially the most striking of anything his article states. But music will cease to evolve, and, in that important sense, will cease to live.7 One must beg to question, what caused these people to look over one of the most blatant facts of musical society. Only a small portion of music of each era is considered great and remembered. The composers that Babbitt was calling to leave the music culture of the day were probably of the sort that would not have been honored any way. What is the purpose in telling composers to pull their music from the public scene if that is the only way to get it honored? There is another fact of music that leaves a bit to be desired. Music has, for most of its existence,

5 6

Fitzgerald et al

Milton Babbitt, The Collected Essays of Milton Babbi tt, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2003), 48-54.
7

Babbitt et al

been institutionalized by people willing to house, feed, and pay musicians and composers. In the 1950s music was being patronized by Universities. How can the musical body of academics produce any community support if they are being encouraged by the big name academics of the day to withdraw their contributions from the public eye?8 It is with this that one must come to the conclusion that it was not the fault of the music that it is underappreciated. It is the fault of the music establishment. The common knowledge during the prime of serialism was that music was at the height of its science. If you were a biologist, you would not expect a non-biologist to understand your technical verbiage. How then, should a person not educated in music be expected to understand the techniques and theories of musically educated men? These are the musings of musicians that caused the art to be taken for granted, to be left behind in the past. It is truth that atonal music cannot be understood by the average audience. It is not the audiences fault though. They cannot be blamed, because they were not reached out to. People were calling to leave the uneducated behind the musical time. The musical establishment was the cause, the misunderstanding of the music the effect.

William Dougherty, "Class Lecture" (lecture, Drake University, Des Moines, IA, October, 2012)

Works Cited

Ames, Van Meter. "What Is Music?." The Journal of Aethetics and Art Criticism. 26. no. 2 (1967): 241249. Babbitt, Milton. The Collected Essays of Milton Babbit. Ed.Stephen Peles. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2003. Ball, Phillip. "Schoenberg, Serialism and Cognitition: Whose Fault if No One Listens?." Interdisciplinary Science Reviews. 36. no. 1 (2011): 24-41.
Dougherty, William, "Class Lecture" (lecture, Drake University, Des Moines, IA, October, 2012)

Fitzgerald, William. "The Questionability of Music."Representations. 46. no. (Spring) (1994): 121-147. Gawthrop, Daniel, Leon Botstien, Frank Gibbard , Tom Flynn, and Jurgen Thym. "Music Musings." TheWilson Quarterly. 29. no. 3 (2005): 7,9-11. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40233053? Goldman, Alan. "The Value of Music." The Journal of Aethetics and Art Criticism. 50. no. 1 (1992): 35-44. Reich, Wili. Schoenberg a Critical Biography. New York City, NY: Praeger Publishers, 1968.