The Sound of Music

After reading a review by veteran film critic, Rex Reed, I was convinced that he had held nothing back, spilling years of frustration onto the page. Reed began, “I’m no stranger to lament when it comes to the disintegration of quality in what passes for movies today, but then along comes a bucket of swill like The Union to remind me things are even worse than I thought.” If that isn’t a clue to his thoughts, he continues, “The movie doesn’t make one lick of sense, which means it falls perfectly in line with most of the other moronic time wasters that are polluting the ozone these days” and so on. Reed must have felt better getting all that off his chest.

A short time later, I came across an article in the Wall Street Journal captioned The 12-Tone Revolution at 100. It begins by stating that 12-tone was “an artistic tsunami that shook the classical music world to its very foundations.” Certainly, the author took some editorial license here; most of the music world plodded along without a sideways glance at 12-tone. The author moves on to drolly state that, “12-tone serialism attempted to instill in music a sense of mathematical inevitability. But it was seriously flawed.” The article points out obvious deficiencies in this musical fad, all in the understated tone of the Wall Street Journal.

At an NBA meeting some years ago, famed band composer Francis McBeth recalled a composer colleague who announced that he had just completed a new work and that upon examining the finished piece had discovered that it was entirely written in the 12-tone format. To which McBeth scoffed, “Do you know how unlikely this is? The odds against this happening are somewhat less than if you gave an infinite number of monkeys a typewriter and one of them would inadvertently type King Lear.” At another time McBeth stated, “I’m just so happy that I lived long enough to see Communism and twelve-tone music just go away. Crisply stated.

Whenever I hear a discussion about 12-tone, my mind flashes by to an old StarKist Tuna ad: “StarKist doesn’t want tuna with good taste; StarKist wants tuna that tastes good.” What music is and always has been is a combination of sounds that please the ear. These notes may produce joy, sadness, jubilation, romance, or any of a vast array of human reactions. How anyone could become so disoriented as to think that it should instead fit a mathematical formula and sound awful is beyond my comprehension. First and foremost, music should sound good. Can anyone imagine coming home after a tough day and relaxing to the dulcet strains of a 12-tone recording?

In the realm of horrible music, I would include a performance by the Chicago Symphony under conductor Kent Nagano by the Chicago Symphony of Brahms’ Requiem. Between each section of this masterwork, Nagano injected several minutes of cacophonous, low tones. After several of these interludes, I walked out muttering to myself about the audacity of anyone thinking he could improve on the work of the great Johannes Brahms.

The world of music is wide and wonderful. Besides the classical library, it includes everything from Paul Simon to John Philip Sousa, from William Russo’s Street Music to Richard Nanes’ Rhapsody Pathétique, from Louis Armstrong playing Beale Street Blues to Renee Fleming singing Der Rosenkavalier. Diverse sounds, all welcome to the ear, and none written to meet a mathematical formula. As for 12-tone: R.I.P

James T. Rohner
Publisher Emeritus