Quote:
Originally Posted by almacg
On the otherhand, the number of people who enjoy atonal works is probably about 0.01% of the general population (might be much higher in musician and composer circles). How can you possibly expect people to listen to something that to their ears, is simply a mess.
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-0.01% of the world population would still be more than half a million people. That's still not too bad.
- I know plenty of non-musicians who enjoy "atonal" music. And it's only a "mess" to many people because it's foreign to them. Mozart would probably be a "mess" to people who lived in medieval times. Young children often aren't so biased. They don't tend to care much about "tonality", they often just care whether it's exciting or boring.
I'm not saying that this should be the only standard according to which music should be judged, but simply that writing off certain music because you aren't already used to it seems like a poor justification to validate one kind of music over the other.
It is very true that many composers of the past -also- wrote pieces with the intention of reaching a broad public and maybe making some money. But if that had been their primary concern in all their pieces, a great majority of the awesome music of the past we enjoy today wouldn't exist, which would be a real pity.
And frankly, I don't care much about Bernstein. I enjoy listening to Webern more. And I too am a part of "the public".