Schoenburg for the Soul

When ever I'm posting on this blog (or really everywhere in life) I try to not sound like an angry teenager. It's ability to be discredit any idea and the general annoyance it causes is legendary. I'd rather wake up tomorrow 30 years old, but I'm stuck being a teenager in body at least. I really hope what I see as a real problem isn't seen as some kind of "nobody understands me" rant that you can find all over the internet these days. See, I like my atonal music. I say tonality is dead and even if your in C it is not only possible, but it behooves you to dispense with the idea of harmonic and non-harmonic tones. I was a bit angered today at a certain discussion in class.

It started by a student asking what type of music the teacher listened too. He discussed his appreciation of 70's rock in his teens, and his move, as he got older, to exclusively classical music, which (and here's the problem) "is

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music written anywhere from as early as 1300 to, really, 1800." Maybe I will confirm my ignorance, but I don't know too many composers from 1300. In fact Palestrina (1500s) seems to me to be one of the first really enduring composers. But that really isn't the problem. I have no doubt that you can find music written at and before 1300 on those awful authentic instrument recordings that pop up all too frequently these days. The 1800 date got me wild. How can you neglect Chopin, Brahms, Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Schoenberg, Shostakovitch and Stravinsky? And thats only the big names, and not even all of them!

But it continued. He continued to say that atonal music was "bad for your soul". Now I thought that this could have been a fluke; he didn't really mean that, he was joking, his mind was clouded. Hopefully. But I raised my hand a clarified the statement. With a solemn face and grave words he repeated "yes, atonal music is bad for your soul." I was incensed! Worst of all, his argument revolved around the idea that atonal music is featured in horror films. It's a bad argument for a host of reasons that you can supply on your own. Simply bad logic.

I don't really mind that he doesn't like atonal music or that he even thinks it's bad for his soul. What bothers me is that he is telling a class of kids that atonal music is bad for your soul; essentially that listening to atonal music is a sin. Most of these kids don't know about classical music aside from their CKC Music class in middle school. And he is telling them that this kind of music, which is in some ways the culmination of over 5 centuries of harmonic evolution is bad for their souls. Any desire they may of had to listen to atonal music, or really anything written after 1800 is going to be called into question.

I cannot believe that atonal music is, in and of itself, bad for the soul. In fact I think it is good for the soul. If any music is going to bring me closer to God it is going to be Shostakovitch, not Bach or (please no!) Vivaldi. Maybe the aging classical audience is, maybe just among these 20 kids, due to the belief that their soul will be harmed by Schoenberg. Then again maybe I'm no different than the kid who will ardently defend My Chemical Romance as a real addition to the musical archives. I will comment my teacher on at least one front in this article. He said, "I don't understand how upper class white boys have a desire to emulate lower class black boys." Speakt da trut daug.