I Miss the Gold Ole Days...

Juji! "I know that you don't care what people like" was NOT aimed at you! Infact none of that post was! I think either something got deleted and my post appeared next to yours, or something like that.

Well I certainly am opposed to serialism, but I would respect somebodies wish for composing it. I would discourage them, but that's it.
Now I will take your advice, but my opinion of serialism will likely not change.

Well largely because the cognition of serialism itself is doubted. If it is used as an extension of pre-disposed musical ideas in the same way as a fugue, then it's not so big a deal. But really I don't see how writing a tone row and then inverting it for example, is the same as 'hearing' a melody a bass line, counter-point etc. I think there is a big difference.

Yes I expect Schoenberg, (and frankly I think he was a genius) and many, many other serialist composers could hear the original tone row, but the result of inverting it and allying it with consequent permutations for example would be largely unpredictable.

Well what I meant was, that the mental processes involved in the creation of a non serialist piece of music are very different from a serialist piece. If you think about it, Schoenberg was being very mathematical in his approach, whereas before, he was being musical. Some people may argue to the contrary, and I'd be intersted to hear from them, but really from my point of view I can't see otherwise right now.

Well if Bach inverts a melody it could be said he is using a mathematical process. However, in many circumstances a melodic inversion simply will not sound correct within the laws of Bachian harmony. With serialism however, there is no right or wrong, an inversion would not be a result of a composers calculations and his ear. It is a huge leap of faith to even begin to accept any of the resulting harmonies as being aurally intentional. With Bach, this is a very different story.

With Schoenbergs tonal pieces, you can hear that more or less every note was musically intentional, although of course there will be some exceptions with every composition, unless it is written solely by ear. If I took a tonal piece, and transposed the melody up a semi-tone we would know it to be wrong. If I did this with a serialist piece, would we really know? (assuming we hadn't heard it before)

If you're interested I currently can't sleep and am intentionally forcing myself to stay up all night, then all day just so I can get a bloody nights sleep. I should be in bed, but I am currently falling asleep at around 4-7ish and its not good enough! This is probably why I am wasting so much of my time at this particular moment...! If I sleep now, I'll just get up some time in the afternoon and I don't want that to happen!

Well what is the context in which something arose in comparison to the actual music itself? Who cares if I don't know what the words in Nessun Dorma mean? Who cares if it was written about Puccini's cat, or if it was written about revolting against slavery? Would I have to automatically appreciate something if it had a philosophical meaning? I don't think this way with music at all, because music, philosophy, politics are not the same thing. A great philosopher is not necassarily a great composer and vice versa!

How bout this, we agree to disagree? I'll even go as far as deleting everything I've said even though at this point I agree with it! Tbh we have such conflicting views, that we probably won't reach a shared conclusion. Personally I think it would be in everybody's interest if we stopped and infact wiped the slate clean. Thankfully I've been able to discuss this with you while you've been here and we have not subsequently each gone off at ridiculous tangeants and havnt hopefully got to the level where we are insulting people personally! So I just think we should call this off! We wont agree... yet! Maybe I will come around to your way of thinking and then I'll look back and think what an idiot I was all along.

No that's not the case at all! Lets face it if we had this conversation in real life it would be completely different! Secondly, people wouldn't read our comments and potentially think we're both naive idiots. It's upto you, and I know I've been having this discussion with you and I'm partly at fault, but I would personally be happier if we just deleted everything that transpired and forgot the whole thing. I don't think I personally went too far, but I can see how I have upset you and I don't really want to upset anybody else.

Thing is, this is a music forum so we should discuss music and so forth, but if I've honestly upset or angered you then I don't really want to continue.

It's not backpedalling, I could keep going really, but despite the fact that I desperately need something to keep me occupied right at this specific moment (hopefully you read the bit about my current sleep problem), I would rather stop this alltogether!

I only think one of you is a naive idiot... lol