Re: Chord Function?

llatham@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
>I think that's the main point Orlando - we don't have any expectations.
When 
>this "new" music came about, listeners not only had their current 
>expectations not only not met, but thrown out the window, and to add
insult 
>to injury in their view, there were no new expectations presented in
their 
>stead. I think this resulted in what they considered a completely 
>disorienting listening experience.

Agreed. I can only add that dodecaphonic music is miserable at creating 
aural environments where a system of listener expectations can be 
grasped through hearing music rather than seeing its notation and 
studying scores. Tonal music's genre expectations are mostly audible, 
with the possible exceptions of complex invertible cannons at intervals 
besides the unison or octave.

>Now that we've had time to reflect (and there's a body of work), we can
at 
>least expect some things, however, they are still not the traditional 
>expectations so many people have come to know and love (and maybe even 
>be"brainwashed" into accepting).

Most serial music still doesn't sound any better to me than it ever did 
because all I hear are typical atonal sonorities that I can quantify and 
even reproduce, albeit without the serial structures.

>And of course this brings up another issue: some composers replaced the 
>expectations with others, and other composer chose to write in a manner 
>where listener's expectations are not part of the equation.

You've got it. The composition of music without any respect for 
listeners' needs for expectations in the first places is precisely what 
many classical music enthusiasts perceive as the rupture of the unspoken 
social contract between the composing class and the performing and 
listening cl*****.

Orlando