12 Tone Sucks Ow!

If you're needing a dose of music geekery, I found this article (via Arts & Letters) pretty interesting.

I think the guy who wrote it is a little hard on avant-garde music, but even though he argues that twelve tone music was a dead end, 'deeply flawed at their musical and philosophical roots', he does admit that plenty of good music has come out of restrained use of 12 tone and atonal principles.

Because even though a few zealots might never willingly listen to any tonal music, most people find the beauty in it's dissonance when it's contrasted with normal music. And even though real avant-garde never enters the mainstream (in fact, that's part of the point), some of the ideas it develops do seep through. I find that if I ever really pay attention to (God forbid) a Britney Spears or Justin Timberlake song, I can't help but feel that it wouldn't sound quite the same if people like Schonberg or Coil hadn't done what they did.