“[A]ny musician who has not experienced — I do not say understood, but truly experienced — the necessity of dodecaphonic music is USELESS. For his whole work is irrelevant to the needs of his epoch.”
Pierre Boulez (“Eventuellement…”, 1952, translated as “Possibly…”)
(Wikipedia)

“No, it means the epoch rather than the musician is USELESS. Majority adoption justifies NOTHING.”
–My response.

There seems to be something about the training at the Paris Conservatory of Music since Messiaen that (a) encourages atonality and (b) discourages the free thought necessary to critically evaluate a musical paradigm, because every composer I’ve encountered or read about that spent a significant amount of time there has been absolutely intolerant of tonality for the simple reason that it isn’t the way “modern” classical music is composed. They see tonality as something archaic, to be discarded without even evaluating the idea.

And as anyone following my blog knows, I think discarding ideas without evaluating them is nearly always a very stupid thing to do.

They are also not content to simply hold their own views, but determined to impose them upon others despite resistance, with conviction born of either aesthetic absolutism or a lack of individual thought. In essence, like so many other people, they’ve subjugated themselves to the social demands on their eras rather than defining their own styles and writing music (or doing whatever) for the sake of its own existence (luckily, this nearly guarantees that they will fade when those eras are over, because social demand is nothing if not capricious and they have no other leg to stand upon).

It is also worth noting that classical music began to decline in popularity right around the time that Modernist atonality emerged. It isn’t a coincidence, and to say that atonal music is socially demanded is to ignore the very forces that marginalized classical music to begin with. The only music that’s truly in demand is popular music now, and it’s your own fault!

You’ve done something wrong when one of your variations on the Mister Softee theme ends up being this dark piece in C minor 🙂

The release, as usual, is slated for “when it’s done”, but I anticipate it being done over the next few weeks, depending on how much time I need to do my research, which takes priority.

Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata (no. 23) is one of the most amazing pieces of music I’ve ever listened to. Music doesn’t usually give me chills, but this piece did, especially the final movement. I was working on a theme that sounded somewhat like one of the thematic elements of the third movement and immediately decided to abandon it upon hearing the movement itself for fear of sullying such a powerful piece of music.

Modern classical-style composers seem so focused on carving out an original style for themselves that they tend to leave aesthetics by the wayside. I can’t see the point of this; regardless of how original one’s music is, it will never be heard if people don’t want to listen to it.

I’ve suspected for a while that this is the reason that classical and popular music began to diverge in the early 20th century, smack in the middle of the Modernist period.

Finally, I’m beginning to see some significant progress as a composer.

I just wrote a short passage for piano, violin, and cello that sounds like a cross between Beethoven and Gluck. The violin part is rather challenging to play, the cello carries the melody, and the piano interjects with a diminished 7th chord at the end. How these composers managed to write entire pieces like this is still beyond me.

It’s going into “Facing Fears”. Believe me, you’ll recognize it; it’s stylistically very different from the rest of the piece (and yet it fits).

Despite the fact that this piece is classified “near complete”, I just keep getting new ideas and I never want to end it. It’s not even that long, but it’s just fun to write. (Which is a little unusual; to me, music is fun to compose and writing is a challenge that I force myself to undergo in order to relay that composition to the world… so it can be promptly ignored). As I mentioned in my Treatise, the music I imagine is quite compelling. The ideas just won’t let me go until I’ve made them manifest. They demand expression.

The lyrics to this song are awfully appropriate when everyone around you is attempting to bend your prodigious talent to their own ends. Catchy, too.

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/s/sting-&-police/132153.html