I listened to nothing but Schoenberg one week

I listened to nothing but Schoenberg one week

main

norman lebrecht

April 21, 2018

Things happen.

I needed to reference the Serenade opus 24 and found myself listening to it over and over again, bewitched by its otherworldly beauty.

The Serenade is the work in which Schoenberg introduced his twelve-note system. It is therefore the work most hated by anti-modernists.

So it was not a good moment for someone to send me Roger Scruton’s latest essay on why Schoenberg was completely wrong. almost criminally so. Scruton dismisses Schoenbergian post-tonality as ‘an arbitrary intrusion of abstract thought into a realm of empirical knowledge…’ and so on. The flaw in Scruton’s argument is that he cannot hear the beauties I hear.

There’s nothing really to discuss.

I am sad for him but not so angry as he is with the likes of me.

Read his essay here.

 

Comments

comment_count comments
Oldest
Newest
Oldest
Top rated

Comment as a guest:

MOST READ TODAY: