Well, maybe Schoenberg didn´t know, that if you blend all colours in one bottle, there will be no colour at all… BUT, he indeed should have been able to hear this perfectly when same thing was done to music!

Any way, the audience noticed it, and yet composers ignored it, why? Because now anyone could become a composer, and no one could hear if the music was good or bad. All you could hear was sound and mostly very dissonant sound… Like writing a book whith lots of words without proper grammer. You can then publish a book without any skills in language at all… Yes, this parallel is scientificly proved. It´s not only philosofical!

Who could possibly belive in a random coinsidence, when this happens right in time for the big change of sponsorship of composers? Since the second world war for instance, State has payed for it hundred percent. Here in Sweden you even had to compose ATONAL to become a student at Royal Academy of Music! And this is still the case…

Today you actually don´t compose at all, now you only put together different sounds and become a sound designer/artist. No problems with me, as long as you call it what it is, and it stays where it should. That means in film/data industry… But calling it a symphony or piano concerto and have a philharmonic orchestra to perform it, should quallify for hospital care…

Yes we had in Europe some authers writing books and theater plays, while hardly could they be rankt as having normal healthy status, but did the audience stand up and “applaud” collectivly time after time when published all over the world? No they almost never did, no one mentioned and no one forgotten as we say in Sweden…

Rod said:
“Relief, an increase in tension, more tension, and a final state of release- and there you have a typical musical phrase”.

So, be it sex or music, body or soul, the laws of nature don´t seem to make any difference of the two dimensions in life…

Greetings,
Gunnar Colding

But in my personal taste I think that music is defined as “the balance between creating tension and release”.

It’s the use of dissonance and consonance, and the balance between these two factors what creates enjoyable music. Music without too much dissonance will sound clashing, disturbing and hard to listen with no logic at all. While music with no dissonance at all and no tension whatsoever (from the different forms of creating tension that exist: harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, change dynamics, etc), will result in un-disturbing but boring music.

The ear is seeking the resolution of the tension produced. And Tonal music provides that.

I think that enjoyable music is the one that finds the balance between these, too as most “dead Tonal composers” have found, and many modern tonal-composers do. Relief, an increase in tension, more tension, and a final state of release- and there you have a typical musical phrase.

Indeed there is also strong physics foundation for Tonal Music, the function of the degrees of the scale are in many ways related to the harmonic series a note produces when it’s played. The fifth of a scale is the “dominant” for a reason, which is indeed related to the physics of sound. That is why probably Tonal music sounds ‘logical’ or naturally attractive to most listeners.

So indeed, I thoughtfully agree the language of the Atonal music has nothing in common with its Tonal counterpart.

Still, I think that it is good that musicians research other directions and expand the theories about music.
However, should other musicians follow or not, that’s a different question.

Thanks for a great article!