If by "last" you mean will they become concert staples and popular, the answer is already no. But if by "last" do you mean will people continue to record them, maybe. The earlier music of the Second Viennese School is soon a century old so it is not exactly new. One thing is certain: I give anything that's made it thus far more chance of surviving in any concept than 99.7 percent of what is being composed today.

 

I agree with you. Thanks for your comments!

 

They've lasted for a smaller audience, larger than that of Renaissance music I think. I suspect will continue to be more popular than Renaissance music.

 

I can't think of any reason why atonal music wouldn't last for centuries.

 

If it's well-crafted and has found and kept an audience for a few decades, it will last. Very little of it is likely to be popular or performed often, but there are plenty of recordings and there will be more.

It's hard to answer the part of the question that says "like past works," since our time is not like past times. Music composed since the invention of recording, especially in the multiple media of our time, can reach a much wider audience than music could in earlier times, and so it has a virtual guarantor that some one will remember it and want to hear it. Plenty of music, old and new, has survived which would otherwise be forgotten - or, in fact, already was forgotten until somebody unearthed it and recorded it. Mere survival isn't the mark of distinction it once was.

 

Maybe everything will be remembered by those that care. F.ex. people that investigate the past, musicologists, historians and the likes. They dug up Perotin and Machaut and now everything is available pretty easily

 

Where is that "Michael Jackson Eating Popcorn" GIF when you need it?

 

Lots of them work well as music for horror film scenes. (I'm not making fun of them)
I think that's where their artistry lies. They are still inventive in the way they can create certain emotions the music of the past could not. They just need be coupled with visual content to be 'convincing music'.

For example, in this documentary the music played around 20:00~ 22:00 sounds somewhat like Stockhausen and helps instill emotions and atmosphere appropriate for the visual material. I can't think of any other type of music that can do this better."

 

They just need be coupled with visual content to be 'convincing music'.

Nonsense. No visuals are going to elevate a lousy piece of music whether it's a tonal or atonal composition. All visuals do is distract one from listening closely to the content of the music. If anything is true, it's the complete opposite. Great music can elevate a film or program. This is why directors hire the best talent they can afford.

No one knows the future, but there's no reason to believe music lovers won't be enjoying Berg's Lyric Suite, or Schoenberg's violin concerto a hundred years from now. Not to mention Takemitsu, Lutoslawski, Elliott Carter, and many others. As for what pieces will be accepted by general audiences in the year 2200. Who knows?

 

Quick - name one, just one, atonal work that is in the standard orchestral repertoire.....can't do it, can you? That's because there are none. There are a few works that barely hang on but only because some conductors and orchestra feel an obligation to carry the torch for Schoenberg, Berg, Webern and their ilk. But audiences have made their preferences known both in terms of concerts and recordings. Sadly, concomitant with this is the narrowing of the repertoire in general. Summer festivals are practically indistinguishable from the regular season - it's the same old, tired, worn out tried-and-true Brahms, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Wagner...it's very discouraging. So like Kjetil said, atonal music is going to be known only to specialists.

The reason is those "hooks". In my opinion, music must come from the heart - it must make an emotional connection to the listener. And the further music gets from folk songs, the harder it is for the average brain to understand, enjoy and love. Composers whose music makes a connection with the listener will always be around. It may disgust and anger atonal composers, but things like the Dvorak 9th, Tchaikovksy 5th, and Shostakovich 5th will always thrill and excite audiences. So will Sousa marches.

 

Quick - name one, just one, atonal work that is in the standard orchestral repertoire.....can't do it, can you? That's because there are none.

1.) How many works of any kind are in the "standard orchestral repertoire," and how much fine music is rarely programmed?

2.) How many well-known atonal works are written for the standard symphony orchestra?

 

The good ones, yes. The bad ones, no. Just like all other music.

 

Did you start this thread with the purpose of it being shut down?



Thank you.

 

I'm sure that atonal works will last hundreds of years, maybe thousands. After all, they will never experience the wear and tear of too much listening.

 

It would be a tragedy if there weren’t because there is some great music there, but most people are idiots so who knows?

 

It would be a tragedy if there weren't because there is some great music there, but most people are idiots so who knows?

Most oeople are idiots because they don't like unpleasant sounds that calls itself music? I would've thought that spoke of the general wisdom of the human race

 

My heart wants the answer to the OP to be yes, my head says no if I understand correctly that the implication of the question refers to a general public taste. The works will last in academic archives and have already gained a cult status because we are not talking about second rate composers, but I doubt that anyone uninitiated or of milder ears will ever make the effort to get to know them.

One half of me (the pragmatist) asks reasonably "why should people bother?", the other half brings to mind Ives.

 

Don't forget Karajan recorded the music of the second Vienese School and it became a bestseller. Just how much it sold because the name of the conductor was on the label and just how much it sold because of the music was another matter. I have the set and I must confess I do not play it very often. It does however contain some fabulous playing If you like that sort of thing. I also have the Berg violin concerto but again do not play very often as I tend to like music which is more pleasant sounding. I bought Wozzek the opera in a sale but haven't had the courage to listen to it yet. This sort of music will find its audience among aficionados but not among the general CM public, Who want music they can enjoy

 

Yes, David's post reminds me that the music is archived digitally and will always be available. It also reminds me that the populous wont accept the demise of tonality's implications.

 

I don't know how often things are played in concert halls. But for artistic merit and beauty, I'd put Schoenberg's "Verklärte Nacht" forward as a piece that should survive and be played.

 

Yes, but it's not atonal now is it?

 

How long will the habit of some classical fans to divide music into tonal and atonal last? Is it that meaningful a distinction these days? I feel the distinction is only really useful for those fans who have pet peeves against some more modern music.

Some of the music of the last 100 years will survive and much will merely lurk in the background with those who have a taste for tracking down "neglected masterpieces" digging them up occasionally. That is how it has been for the music of other periods so why not this? I doubt, though, that there will be many atonal warhorses.

 

Perhaps in the future atonaphobia will be recognized as a treatable psychiatric condition that can be treated with pharmaceuticals and re-education camps

 

Yes. Maybe aversion to lying on a bed of nails may also be treated at such places.

 

I believe it will be of continuing interest as an important part of 20th-century history, like Freud was to psychology, and Picasso was to Cubism, all revolutionary in nature. It does not have to be beautiful to be of interest or value in its new language, where each liberated tone can sound independent of each other. It expanded the entire vocabulary in all of music to express the deep unconscious and the darker side of human consciousness, or other unusual states of mind, including the abnormal, that couldn't be fit into the 19th century model... I believe the problem that some listeners have with it is that as standalone works they often lack context, sound random or highly abstract. Pierrot Lunaire works because the music exists within the context of the character. Erwartung works because the music is like the background to a tale of terror on a woman's forest walk through the night. But then, sometimes context doesn't seem to matter at all, and yet I doubt that such works will have ever have great popular appeal even if it seems to be an indispensable part of 20th-century history. I would consider modern film scores unthinkable without the influence of the liberated vocabulary developed by Schoenberg and others, and the movies provide context where just about anything goes.

 

People who write atonal music (or twelve-note music, which is only a subset) primarily do so because they have something to say. The best of the works survive because musicians -- many of whom should know -- find enough of value in them to play them. I'm not aware of many who are motivated by spleen ("God, I hate this. I think I'll program it!").

 

People who write atonal music (or twelve-note music, which is only a subset) primarily do so because they have something to say.

That may be true in 2019, now that classical music has become a sort of eclectic smorgasbord of styles and composers (presumably) feel free to do what fulfills them the most. But I don't think we can safely assume it for serialism's heyday in the mid-20th century when, survivors of the academy tell us, there was considerable pressure felt by young composers to renounce the "earmarks" of tonality. The influence of fashion on artistic production shouldn't be underestimated. It may be that most music has "something to say," but in many cases - maybe a majority of cases - that isn't a requirement for production.

 

We'll never know, because we'll all be dead.

 

I was thinking that 25 years would be enough to give me an idea but it could take a lot longer before a consensus emerges. I could be still alive in 25 years but might not care that much.

 

Will Atonal Compositions Last Centuries like Past Works?

That's an unfair question, with all its implications, because modern atonal and serial music must be listened to "in the moment" in a minute-by-minute mode of listening, in a state of "being here now" without any preconceptions of one's mindset, expectations, or thought-constructs/paradigms which one has developed.

The "historical" mode of listening demands a firm grasp of one's identity or "ego" as it observes the music. It is much more narrative in nature, like reading; it demands retention of information and comparison, which is a very cognitive and thought-oriented process.

It's like comparing a listener who looks like Otto Klemperer, dour and pragmatic, with a younger listener who looks like Terry Riley, on mushrooms. These are two different worlds which do not usually meet, except in the case of astute, flexible, adventurous listeners like starthrower, philocetes, flamencosketches, and others like them.

This thread shows an attempt to throw these worlds together, out of miscomprehension, a naive optimism, or perhaps a negligent disdain. It's like trying to mix oil and water.

 

Not buyin' it. Whatever the style of a piece of music, human brains don't function without relating one thing to another - what comes before to what comes after - and composers don't (normally) choose each note by a throw of the dice. All of this woowoo about ego, mindsets, paradigms, naive optimism, negligent disdain, astute flexible listeners...jumpin' jiminy cricket! The absurdity of your position is exposed simply by asking "When we listen moment-by-moment, how brief is a moment?" How extended a passage of music can our brains attempt to hear as coherent before we are guilty of egocentric, naive, negligent, disdainful, inflexible listening? Can it be longer than one note at a time? Two notes? My God - three?!

The question posed by the thread may be a bit naive, but it isn't unfair, and certainly not for the reason you give.

 

Of course it will survive, as long as they don't destroy the internet (or civilization itself). It will never be very popular, though.

 

No one knows even if Bach, Mozart or Beethoven will last for how many centuries. It hasn’t been two centuries since Beethoven died. That’s a measurement of two centuries and not centuries upon centuries. But of course in those instances, I think they will. But I believe so will Schoenberg and his buddies, the boys of the sour chords. Why? Because they upset the people who like Bach, Mozart and Beethoven too much to shake them out of their comfort zone or complacency every now and then like bombs falling from the sky. Art is also supposed to shake people up on occasion and get them to look beneath the surface a little bit more, the unconscious, with a little terror thrown in for good measure as a reminder of the other dimensions of life that might be tinged with a bit of darkness... Boo! and things that go bump in the night. Two world wars that helped define the 20th century will help keep it alive.

 

No one knows even if Bach, Mozart or Beethoven will last for how many centuries. It hasn't been two centuries since Beethoven died. That's a measurement of two centuries and not centuries upon centuries. But of course in those instances, I think they will. But I believe so will Schoenberg and his buddies, the boys of the sour chords. Why? Because they upset the people who like Bach, Mozart and Beethoven too much to shake them out of their comfort zone or complacency every now and then like bombs falling from the sky. Art is also supposed to shake people up on occasion and get them to look beneath the surface a little bit more, the unconscious, with a little terror thrown in for good measure as a reminder of the other dimensions of life that might be tinged with a bit of darkness... Boo! and things that go bump in the night. Two world wars that helped define the 20th century will help keep it alive.

Why on earth is art supposed to shake me out of my so-called comfort zone? I've had plenty of things to shake me out of that like visiting war zones where people have hacked each other to death with machetes or seeing children picking food off stinking rubbish tips to stay alive. Art shaking people out of their comfort zone? Just an illusion for the complacent middle classes!

 

Good sounding (with emphasis on major minor thirds/sixths, perfect fifths/fourths) 12 tone melody will probably sound like a modulating tonal melody to the regular listener (I have the feeling that most atonal/serial composers were intentionally choosing "garbage" 12 tone sequences to work with).
And what if the composer is using something like 16th notes in moderately fast tempo - does it really matter what is the definite pitch when it is so brief?

So, I doubt most atonal stuff will last - usually it sounds intentionally awful.

 

Good sounding (with emphasis on major minor thirds/sixths, perfect fifths/fourths) 12 tone melody will probably sound like a modulating tonal melody to the regular listener (I have the feeling that most atonal/serial composers were intentionally choosing "garbage" 12 tone sequences to work with).
And what if the composer is using something like 16th notes in moderately fast tempo - does it really matter what is the definite pitch when it is so brief?

So, I doubt most atonal stuff will last - usually it sounds intentionally awful.

I'd say yes. Yes it does to a sincere composer embroiled creatively in the technical parameters he has set out for himself. It is a sure way to justify choice in an open atonal field and create a sense of inevitability (at least in the composer's mind). The fact that it doesn't conform to someone's taste does not lessen its honesty nor quality. One has to trust that the great composers are sincere and go along with their choice of notes, accepting them as definitive.

I do agree though that to the general listener, whatever notes are played will not affect their dislike of serialism and will even go so far as to say that yes, other choices in note combinations would be equally effective in atonality. All the more reason for a composer to keep a technical grip on his music less there be a free-for-all. The imposition of will into the music is the emotional input of the composer. It is also true that sometimes serendipity will show its hand and alter the course of events, but generally speaking, composers need to be able to justify (if only to themselves), the choice of notes and this is mostly done via rigour, a sense of adventure and an openness to the unexpected.