malik@star.DEC (Karl Malik ZK01-1/F22 1-1440) (07/28/84)
Subj; Schoenberg and atonality After all this arguing about atonality, I thought it might be nice if we gave a few moments to poor Mr. Schoenberg himself. The following is from 'Structural Functions of Harmony', which he wrote in 1948. "My school, including such men as Alban Berg, Anton Webern and others, does not aim at the establishment of a tonality, yet does not exclude it entirely. The procedure is based upon my theory of 'the emancipation of dissonance.' Dissonances, according to this theory, are merely more remote consonances in the series of the overtones. Though the resemblance of the more remote overtones to the fundamental tone gradually diminishes, their comprehensibility is equal to the compre- hensibility of the consonances. Thus to the ear of today, their sense- interrupting effect has disappeared. Their emancipation is as justified as the emancipation of the minor third was in former times." - Karl