Audience reluctance in the face of twentieth century avant-garde music

摘要

Some fraction of the avant-garde music of the last century has met with little interest among many classical music goers, if not outright rejection. Such is the case of 12-tone serial music, aleatory music, and their developments (e.g., the Darmstadt School). While a small circle of people does appreciate these musical genres, the fact remains that 100 years after the invention of serial music by Schoenberg and his pupils, a large gap has opened between composers and listeners. We discuss here the possible causes of such a musical disconnect in terms of the difficulties the brain encounters (unless suitably trained) when it processes sound structures that are deprived of the basic elements of classical harmony—melody, consonance/dissonance dichotomy and rhythm. In the light of modern psychoacoustic and the neurosciences, classical canons prove to be inherited concepts rather than culturally acquired. This appears in the morphology of the train of neural pulses reaching the cortex: those triggered by music that is classically consonant are neat, periodic and recognizable, while those generated by the kind of music that does not appeal to the audience are confused and ambiguous, approaching those of random noise. The outcome is that the “musical” discourse appears void of syntax and context; it does not engage memory and does not lead to anticipation, consequently appearing to be of no significance to those who lack the indispensable professional training. And violating Stravinskij’s statement that music must be liked on its own, namely that its appreciation must stem from straight and simple listening—repeated if necessary—without need for any additional mental effort by the listener, or clarifications and declarations of intent by the composer.