From: Alistair Hinton, UK
I will respond to Mr Wozniak's comments here but then refrain from further comment, since it is not my intention (and doubtless not Mr Wozniak's either) to appear to wrest the subject too far away from Mr Standford, who initiated it.
Mr Wozniak's comments on 'totalitarian régimes' and 'dictatorships', emotively inflammatory as they may sound, are indeed not far from the truth in this context -- a context that, for the sake of labelling convenience, we may as well identify as the Darmstadt / Donaueschingen / Köln empire that flourished in the 1950s and 1960s; we need only remind ourselves that it is not the whole truth. I do not doubt that some stultification (though not actual ruin) of careers, discouragement of broad musical education and prevention of some new music of worth from receiving attention were included in the fallout from this setup, although I think that it would be all too easy to exaggerate the alienation of the listening public arising therefrom, if for no reason other than that the kinds of music that emerged from this régime never supplanted other contemporary music or earlier music in worldwide concert programmes. The future of this kind of so-called 'high modernism' would now appear to be one in which the majority of the listening public has decided that it prefers older music and other kinds of new music -- the latter stance unfortunately giving rise to the wide acceptance of some of the minimalist music of which Mr Wozniak quite understandably writes with little praise.
What Mr Wozniak seems too inflexible to allow for is that history always moves, though not necessarily only in one direction at any one time and that likewise individual composers may move in several directions as their careers develop. Take the examples of Lutoslawski, who tried his hand at aleatory music in mid-career and yet whose final period works such as the song-cycle Chantefleurs et Chantefables and the Fourth Symphony respond to other more widely accepted influences and have accordingly been equally widely acclaimed. Look again at the music Ligeti wrote in the 1960s and early 1970s and then consider his ongoing series of piano studies.
I really cannot accept that something approaching 50% of the blame for alleged concert audience alienation in the 20th century should be ascribed to Cage; I think that to do so risks elevating his importance well above reality. I think that Schönberg's estimation of him as a composer (ie not one) and his reasons for that estimation are perfectly reasonable; I also think that far more people encountered the names of Boulez, Nono and Stockhausen far more often than Cage on concert programmes. As to Schönberg -- the real intended victim at the end of Mr Wozniak's gun barrel -- is it reasonable to consider him in the same breath as Cage? Apart from being so utterly different in cultural background, aspirations and technique, Schönberg developed compositional techniques based firmly on the melodic, harmonic and contrapuntal disciplines of the past to an unprecedented degree in his early works and demonstrated his phenomenal skills as an orchestrator 100 years ago; does he therefore deserve to be dismissed as a mere poseur, as Mr Wozniak does? No -- I think that Mr Wozniak and I can largely agree on Cage apart from the extent of his 'success' as an international concert audience alienator, but we must disagree diametrically on Schönberg because it seems that Mr Wozniak's expressed view of him here is based almost entirely on his serial and other atonal work, as though he never did anything else. I do, however, accept that the very name of Schönberg has for years continued to be one of the more potent emptiers of concert halls in certain parts of the world; where Mr Wozniak's and my view diverge, however, is that while he clearly believes that it was all down to Schönberg's callous insistence on strict atonal serialism, I am more inclined to ascribe it to Schönberg's happening to have coincidentally satisfied a perceived public need for a scapegoat. We should, after all, remember that Schönberg attracted encomia not only from his students but also from such figures as Busoni, Ravel and even Puccini!
Audience alienation goes back well before the post-World War II era in any case -- and did not Stravinsky figure just as largely in this? Nowadays, however, Le Sacre attracts wide audiences, just as do Schönberg's Variations for Orchestra and Piano Concerto.
The implied link between Hitler and Schönberg is simply too distastefully offensive for comment.
Schönberg's comment about 'his' system's ability to sustain the superiority of German music for the next century 'proves' nothing beyond the fact that he could make ineffably silly statements as well as the next man and far better than most.
Mr Wozniak's cavil at Berg's Violin Concerto tells us far more about Mr Wozniak than about Berg; I have no more time than Mr Wozniak does for the 'acceptable face of serialism' nonsense that has on occasion been thrown at that lovely work, but then I couldn't care less about this kind of thing in the first place; I no more reject a work because of its possible serial origins because it isn't equivocally tonal than I reject Mahler's Ninth Symphony because its finale is in a different key to that of Beethoven -- all I really care about is whether any piece of music is technically and emotionally sound, engages my attention and my concentrative faculties, has something worthwhile to convey and moves me -- or, to put it another way, whether it is any good as a piece of music.
I should perhaps clarify that I am a composer who writes mainly tonally based music and that, my early background and training in music notwithstanding, I have never felt inclined to work serially; several of my works include 12-note themes but these are no more treated serially than anything else I write. I have sought to use aleatory techniques just once, in one work, for about three bars only. I eschew minimalism because I consider it my job to write music that does not patronise my listeners.
As a parting shot, I cannot forebear to include mention of the fact that my Microsoft Outlook spellchecker thinks that 'aleatory' should read 'lavatory'; if the rest of my response has cut no ice with Mr Wozniak, he might at least appreciate this ...
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