rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (07/03/84)
> It's interesting that you find Webern more tonal than Schoenberg. I have > always felt that if you looked hard enough at Schoenberg's "atonal" music, > you could find tonal processes going on. There's an intended one in "ode to > napoleon", of course, but I'm referring to more canonical things, like the > "orchestra variations", for instance. After all, S. composed a lot of tonal > music, and had a commanding grasp of traditional harmony, so do you think > he could really completely escape it? Just one final comment. Not to degrade Schoenberg, but you could probably just as easily analyze the scribbling of chimpanzees as having hidden tonality if you analyze "hard" enough. The point being: Just because you can analyze something 'thoroughly' and say "Aha! See that note there? That PROVES it's tonal!", doesn't mean that the result is HEARD as being tonal. That's the crux. It's like the story about the mathematics professor who, while teaching a class and drawing proofs on the chalkboard, wrote some gibberish following some previous gibberish, saying "This follows obviously from the previous equation." A student, bewildered, asked the professor to explain why it follows obviously. The professor stood looking at the board for about fifteen minutes, scribbling minute gibberish, then stood back and looked at the board for another fifteen minutes. At which point he turned around, faced the student, and said, "Yes, it follows obviously." -- Now I've lost my train of thought. I'll have to catch the bus of thought. Rich Rosen pyuxn!rlr