jeffw@tekecs.UUCP (Jeff Winslow) (01/05/84)
Nah, they aren't all related. It's just time for me to spout off again.
I don't think Bach, in analogy to Newton, had to invent his own system
(the even-tempered scale) for his music. The tonal system (which ultimately
required equal temperament to be convincing) was well established by 1680
or so, and codified by Rameau around 1720. And I don't believe equal
temperament was in general use until after Bach's death. (This belief,
however, is based on a remark by one who should know that the D# minor fugue
in WTC book 1 sounds horrible in the temperament used in Bach's day.) Bach
was a completer rather than an originator - sort of a throwback who built a
magnificent structure on foundations that his contemporaries were already
abandoning for quite different structures. Sort of like Mahler, or Gesualdo.
Not that his music isn't among the greatest, but give me Beethoven any day.
Ah, will you guys stop picking on poor old V.N.? Four things:
1. Schoenberg was very young when he wrote it, so it's not likely to
be a modern masterpiece. Beethoven judged by HIS first few published
works would end up some sort of rather risque follower of Mozart, rather
than the highly original master that he was.
2. It sounds cliched and over-sentimental only because generations of
Hollywood hacks since that time have gotten hold of the idiom and
ruined it. That's hardly Schoenberg's fault.
3. So what if he did abandon the tonal system only because HE couldn't
handle it (see 4.)? That says nothing, one way or another, about the
quality of his atonal and 12-tone works. Especially since the latter
works were written in his maturity and the tonal ones were not.
4. Having studied in detail the structure of V.N. for 10 weeks in
college, I can vouch for its technical competence, if nothing else.
(Yes, I know technical competence doesn't necessarily make great music.)
Jeff Winslow
P.S. I'm surprised people are taking tektronix!davidl's insults so seriously.
Can't you tell deliberate hell-raising when you see it?