The Fredösphere

I stirred up a mini-controversy by the ancient method of quoting out of context.  See my post, and subsequent comments, about composition teachers who impose style (typically, atonal style) on their students.  My link quoted Kyle Gann's sentence, "Earth to composers:  the 20th century is over!"  That prompted a few comments from Steve Hicken and Alex Ross (who took time out from making Super Grover paintings).  The quote sounds like Gann is imposing his own tonal style on others, but if you read the links, you'll see he's merely calling for an open market.

Some of us are still reacting to an attitude prevalant 20-40 years ago.  According to Gann, there's evidence that attitude is still around in some surprising places.  It's the attitude that atonality is just like impressionism:  widely rejected at first, then destined to be accepted, and finally embraced.  Therefore, any who reject it will be viewed by the future as embarrassing mossbacks.

I don't think atonality will ever be embraced because I (mostly) buy into the argument that tonality is founded on relationships within physics that people can intuit.  More to the point, however, I suspect the above scenario misreads the history of impressionism by locating the hostility in the general public, instead of in the art establishment.  If I'm right (and I admit I'm too lazy to research it) then those atonalist teachers correspond not to the brave impressionists, but rather to the grumpy old guys who ran the Salon de Paris.

Anyway, I think I just dived in over my head.  Mostly, I'm bored by pissing contests over musical style -- especially now that my maturing (or more bluntly, ossifying) brain can pay attention to weird stuff it used to find bewildering.  If Kyle Gann had not suggested otherwise, I would have thought this argument was long over.  Let a thousand flowers bloom.

Oh, and by the way: pop music is dead.